IRIX and Software

I just noticed that Adobe Lightroom 4.4 needs over a GIGAbyte (>1Gb) of disk space just to store its binaries and scripts. FFS, its only a sh*t UI wrapped round a db and some image manipulation routines. So I was wondering... those of you that have 'real' software installed on their IRIX machines, are the installation footprints as large?

J.

Adobe is clearly out of control, how is it comprehensible that Reader is a 40+ megabyte download?

On my Octane Maya 6.5 Unlimited plus the shader library comes in at just under 500MB of disk space...

most 3d packages are something like 200-300MB depending on what you install (additional bonus textures, plugins with deps and stuff).
but those are the fat ones already. older or smaller ones don't cross the 3 digit MB mark at all.

Judging by my installation, it's about

1. 373 MB resources (203 MB in lens profiles, 147 MB in camera profiles, a handful of localization, and 234 PNG files that aren't even as big as one HFS+ block, which contain UI elements),

2. 230 MB plugins (23 reasonably sized ones to do things like Location, Facebook, Email, Flickr, Web export, crash reporting, and tether mode for Canon, Leica, and Nikon cameras, plus a 190 MB "layout toolkit", whatever that is -- looks like maybe for arranging hardcopy output), and

3. 330 MB "Support" (the most dubious of the three -- 193 MB of "DynamicLinkMediaServer" (wtf), 75 MB "TypeSupport", and a handful of other smaller... supports).

Plus ~90 MB in frameworks (52 at an average size of about 1.5 MB each). Camera Raw looks the biggest (perhaps because there are so many variations) at 16 MB.

In the old days, this would have been sixteen or twenty totally separate programs, from several different companies. Leica would have had their own program to deal with its camera raw format, that wouldn't have worked with or the same as Canon's or Nikon's equivalent, and if I wanted to switch from Nikon to Canon (or vice versa) I would have had to throw away a lot of software as well. I don't long for those days, because I have work to do. There's a lot of shit to support to be "modern". Be found this out the hard way, and never even got much past the halfway mark.

Does Lightroom even give any additional benefits to just using dcraw to decode those RAW images?

This is where the current direction we are heading with software is going off the rails, as people need superfast computers and SSD drives just to use some modern bloated buggy software.

I have seen the future and very much prefer the past.

Of course it does. It provides "Workflow Management" and "Output to Social Media" but you have to buy into the One True Way, either Adobe's or Apple's. Oh btw. dcraw compiled with -Ofast=IP35 weighs-in at 512Kb.

Here's my unscientific footprint count of the libs I recon you might need if you were to make a lightroom-esque application in C++:

6Mb libraw (C++ wrapper to dcraw)
1Mb sqlite
1Mb expat
1Mb graphicsmagicke
95Mb boost
20Mb wxwidgets
-------
124Mb

Out of this total, 115Mb is to help you deal with the Language-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named (boost) and the cross-platform UI stuff (wxwidgets). Also one might assume that a lot of the list is already installed on a target system.

So let's be generous and say that the actual application takes as much space as its dependencies, a further 124Mb, that gives us a grand total of 248Mb for our imaginary Lightroom clone. Still far less than the gigabyte Lightroom needs.

J.

PS. Not really sure what the point is that I'm trying to make, but I guess indignation is as good a reason as any to post on a public forum.

The entire Pro/E Wildfire 2 installation takes a few hundred megs less than two gigglebytes. That's cad, cam, fea, renderer, docs, the whole enchilada. Adobe is pretty awful on size ...

What are you trying to do, jimmer ? I notice that the same photos displayed on the V12 graphics are more natural and lifelike, while on Windows / Photoshop they are more commercial. I watch my nice realistic photos turned overprocessed (looks like the day after you did an acid trip) for display on Windows ... but if that's who will see it, that's whatcha gotta do. On the other hand, if you are looking for subtle, maybe stick to the V12 ?

In Lightroom? Selection/ranking of RAW images dumped to disk from SD cards and then some basic RAW developing: boosting detail in shadows and highlights, maybe some pinching of the overall histogramme to make the colour 'pop' a little bit more. Then a render to Photoshoppe for printing on the iPF6300. Us loves our iPF6300

J.

Aperture.app, version 3.2.4 that I use, clocks in at 913.4 MB in /Applications. Even itunes is almost 300MB...

with a calibrated screen they might be the same ?

Recently did a Final Cut Studio install on my Mac Pro that weighs in at 17.4GB - though to be fair I did select *every* install option.

my words exactly


not always but i find myself thinking that more and more often

It's really hard to say since different brands of lcd are so different but I don't think so. Our Windows monitor is calibrated frequently. It's a cheap calibrator but still.

I've tried messing with the gamma, the color curves, careful manual calibration (it's hard to find a hardware calibrator that works in Irix) ... the results are still essentially different. Not darker / lighter more red / less red. Just different . With the same file, btw. I've wondered about this myself.

So, I make it the way I like then the Assistant butchers it to look her way on Windows. Oh well. She's got better taste than me anyhow

it's not the monitor but the vpro. i noticed it right after getting my first one back then. the monitor settings don't matter. i had a number of different setups and switched between different platforms; still always the same result: looks best on the vpro.
never digged deeper but for some reason stuff on the vpro just looks extra nice. as hamei said it's not something specific but the overall look.

i also had several cases where clients said that it looked much better when they've seen it at my place.

You had IR graphics too, didn't you, foetz ? What's your feeling about the difference between v-pro and ir ?

yeah i still have it. an ir2e to be precise.
well as i said, vpro looks best but in certain cases the fill rate of the ir is just amazing. but if it's only about display quality the award goes to the vpro. never seen a more vibrant output and by that i don't mean vibrant as used in regard to tfts but natural, great colors and overall looks. hooking up the ir to the same monitor it looks a bit dull in comparison. far from bad but just not as neat as the vpro.


haha yeah the pic nails it

Thanks, foetz. That kind of real-world comparison is hard to come by.

Both IR and VPro allow 12bits/component color (48-bit RGBA). Most other graphics systems are only 8bits/component. Not sure the default display modes are set up for either of these, and I don't think DVI allows more than 8bits so you're stuck with analogue outputs.

So wait, does that mean using a DCD on my V12 truncates the bits per component from 12 to 8?!