(maybe a bit OT) The DipiWiki site

[Itamar]

I've been lurking in this forum for at least two years now and in my opinion this is one of the greatest places on the net today. People here are always so willing to help and share knowledge - simply heart-warming.

However, although a forum is an excellent way to get help, I find it to be rather lacking for reference purposes. What I mean is that if I read some post that days/weeks/months afterwards I'd like to return to... well, unless you're very organized and save each thread that interests you (and there are those here who do that) most chances are that you won't find it again.

There are also a lot of tutorials on the web that you can turn to, but there are a lot of them and it is very easy to get lost in the sea of information.

By now you're probably wondering what's my point. Well, in order to organize all this knowledge in a better way, I decided to launch a new site, DipiWiki.org (which can be found at http://www.dipiwiki.org/tiki ). It is a wiki-based site (if you don't know what wiki means, google it - hopefully I'll get around to writing about it in the site someday) that hopefully will grow and will be rich with knowledge pertaining to digital photography and retouching. The idea is that this site is made by us and for us.

You are more than welcome to take a look although right now there isn't much content (actually I've prepared only one real page for demonstration purposes about High Pass Sharpening. It can can be found here: http://www.dipiwiki.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Higa+Pass+Sharpening ). If you feel up to it, participate in the short poll that is displayed there. If you like the idea, I invite you to register (free), start contributing and pass the word around. If you're excited about it as I am, drop me a line and let's see how you can come aboard as an editor/admin/whatever.

The site is still under construction (I installed it only today) but I hope that sooner rather than later it will be fully stable. If you have any ideas, comments, wishes, etc... I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know.

Itamar

 

[Quanah Parker]

Itamar,

Ken Leonard has put together the Photoshop Online Users Guide, which is very good. You may be trying to accomplish the same thing.

http://porg.4t.com/nav.html
--
Gary Willson
http://texasposters.net
http://willsononline.com

 

[Itamar]

Hi Gary,

I'm familiar with Kent's online guide (it saved me a lot of frustration many a time). I must admit some of the inspiration for http://www.dipiwiki.org/tiki came from it. I've been even meaning to ask Kent's permission to use his guide as the foundation for Dipiwiki. However, Kent's guide - while extremly thorough - has a major drawback as I see it: Since it is being maintained by a single individual it (the guide) is limited by nature - no offense Kent. No matter who's the person who maintains such a list/guide/site, if she's doing it all alone than most chances are that a team's collaborative work will be better by orders of magnitude. When working in a team you get different views, more resources and above all - motivation.

One person may skip a tutorial for being too basic/advanced/boring/technical/... - but if a team can share the work then the outcome, in my opinion, will reflect everybody's input and therefore will be more complete. I often wished I could edit Kent's guide, and while there ways in which it could be done partiallly (e.g., saving a copy of it locally and building from it) - these are not as effeciant nor as effective as Dipiwiki. If I were to edit the list for myself, all my knowledge would remain with me. If I was to publish my own guide - I would be just adding to the already vast ocean that is the net.

In conclusion (and forgive me for being so verbal about it), I think a collaborative platform such as Dipiwiki is the optimal answer. This is why I bought the domain, payed a hosting service for 20GB bandwidth and 1GB space, and put in the time to launch it. If we pull our resources together I feel that the results would be amazing.

Itamar

Itamar,

Ken Leonard has put together the Photoshop Online Users Guide,
which is very good. You may be trying to accomplish the same thing.

http://porg.4t.com/nav.html
--
Gary Willson
http://texasposters.net
http://willsononline.com

--
----
Itamar

 

[Kent C]

Just to clarify, PORG is Ken Leonard's not mine. Although my archives are there and at atncentral for download - which you are welcome to use.

And my archives are a collection of posts mainly here from retouch so a 'collaberation of sorts' although 'organized' by me. And in that sense you're right - not everyone organizes in the same manner - a problem that would be with any colllaberation as well, btw ;-)

I've considered organizing by Photoshop's menu. It wouldn't consume many of the tasks, but I think it would be a good way to organize links on tools, adjustments, filters, etc. Other things like merging images, photoart effects, procedures such as B&W or PWL would be harder to nail down.

I've also considered doing a survey here at retouch. For example:

What is your favorite tutorial for X? And getting a consensus, but that kinda happens anyway....

I already linked your "High Pass Sharpening" Although I'm wondering about the 'Higa' pass sharpening....
--
Kent

http://www.pbase.com/kentc
For prior discussions on most questions:
http://porg.4t.com/KentC.html
or d/l 'archives' at:
http://www.atncentral.com

 

[Itamar]

Sorry about mixing my Kens and Kents.

I agree that the post here are collaberation par excellance - but aren't they a bit messy to work with when you want information? For example, when I search dpreview's Retouching forum for Higa (strike that) High Pass Sharpening this is what I get: "Showing 1 - 30 of 234 results." A bit daunting in my opinion. How many will I have to scan until I find what I need? Do I need to read all of the posts in a thread because sometimes the best tips are in the last posts or should I just stop after getting some answer?

A tutorial on the other hand is the exact opposite of a post - it is organized, well-thought out (hopefully) and to the point. But these suffer from being written by one individual. To prepare my demo page in DipiWiki I scanned 5 different tutorials (although I thought I was familiar with the technique). It suprised me to see how much they differed and what each one put the emphasis on. The final result is the combination of all these tutrials.

Not everyone can write a tutorial - some lack the knowlege, some lack the courage, some lack the stage - but given a platform and a team spirit I believe everyone - new puppies to old dogs - will be able to enrich the collective.

I like your idea about organizing the archives - I've given a lot of thought to the subject myself and would love to hear your opinions on the subject. Although I too thought of Photoshop's menu layout as an option, but as you said only for the filters, tools and commands. And anyway, if this is the direction to take, I feel PSP, GiMP and the rest should be represented as well. Such a task could easily be done by a team.

Finally, the Tiki platform offers a lot of modules one couild use for surveys, forums, polls, whatever you want.

P.S. The Higa was corrected althoiugh the right thing to do was to wait for you to do it

Itamar

I've also considered doing a survey here at retouch. For example:

What is your favorite tutorial for X? And getting a consensus, but
that kinda happens anyway....

I already linked your "High Pass Sharpening" Although I'm
wondering about the 'Higa' pass sharpening....
--
Kent

http://www.pbase.com/kentc
For prior discussions on most questions:
http://porg.4t.com/KentC.html
or d/l 'archives' at:
http://www.atncentral.com

--
----
Itamar

 

[Itamar]

Correction - the High Pass Sharpening page can be found at http://www.dipiwiki.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=High%20Pass%20Sharpening

Itamar

 

[Aby]

The main point of this sort of initiatives is quality of the contribution.

How do you filter what's good for placing or not. It's a tremendous fulltime job.

And...if you don't filter...it becomes a forum!?

So the first thing to do IMO ... choosing guru's who are willing to cooperate.

Kent...Feivel and others are specialists in PP. If they are willing to participate in this process of building a huge knowledge-database, it may be succeeds.

Just MHO

--
Arno

 

[VG]

Itamar,

You are correct in that places like this have fragmented knowledge gains and even the attempt by some to gather related links still leads to fragmentation. The threads themselves often contain so many 'useless' responses, 'useless' usually being 'here is my attempt at it'. I'm using that term from a strictly knowledge based view and not in any attempt to put down the users here.

A particular case in point lately has been a 'new' action and the continual pleas for detailed instruction on how it was done. The complexity of Photoshop and the vast diversity of digital edting often doesn't allow for detailed specifics. I gave up a long time ago trying to explain how I myself do things as the requests for clarification were overwhelming.

If you could orient content more towards detail and not towards examples, then the knowledge gained would be useful in a broader sense and not just, 'Oh! I want to get my little girl or my kitty to have that look!'. The forums I peruse are filled with requests on how someone got a particular look. Giving a tutorial on how they did this look is not the same as learning how the tools accomplish this.

I personally believe that is the single most overlooked aspect of digital imaging. The web is full of experts or just every day people that show you how they achieved a specific output. Only a very tiny slice of this actually explains what the tools are doing. That is why there is such a tremendous request for 'how did they do this'. That, and the fact that a lot of people don't want you to know.

As the the wiki based concept, most of the wiki sites I've been to have that Unix, open source, college backroom disorganized look and feel to them. There is often a tremendous amount of content, but due to the nature of wiki, it can be difficult to extract useful info without a lot of browsing. Content headers tend to be short, cryptic and numerous.

Now, don't let all this feedback discourage you as it's all part of the necessary game we play. If I had listened to all the people that told me I couldn't do this or that in my life, I'd still be stuck in an underpaid 9 to 5 Dilbert cubicle somewheres.
Regards and enjoy your task,
VG

I've been lurking in this forum for at least two years now and in
my opinion this is one of the greatest places on the net today.
People here are always so willing to help and share knowledge -
simply heart-warming.

However, although a forum is an excellent way to get help, I find
it to be rather lacking for reference purposes. What I mean is that
if I read some post that days/weeks/months afterwards I'd like to
return to... well, unless you're very organized and save each
thread that interests you (and there are those here who do that)
most chances are that you won't find it again.

There are also a lot of tutorials on the web that you can turn to,
but there are a lot of them and it is very easy to get lost in the
sea of information.

By now you're probably wondering what's my point. Well, in order to
organize all this knowledge in a better way, I decided to launch a
new site, DipiWiki.org (which can be found at
http://www.dipiwiki.org/tiki ). It is a wiki-based site (if you
don't know what wiki means, google it - hopefully I'll get around
to writing about it in the site someday) that hopefully will grow
and will be rich with knowledge pertaining to digital photography
and retouching. The idea is that this site is made by us and for us.

You are more than welcome to take a look although right now there
isn't much content (actually I've prepared only one real page for
demonstration purposes about High Pass Sharpening. It can can be
found here:

http://www.dipiwiki.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Higa+Pass+Sharpening ). If you feel up to it, participate in the short poll that is displayed there. If you like the idea, I invite you to register (free), start contributing and pass the word around. If you're excited about it as I am, drop me a line and let's see how you can come aboard as an editor/admin/whatever.

The site is still under construction (I installed it only today)
but I hope that sooner rather than later it will be fully stable.
If you have any ideas, comments, wishes, etc... I'd appreciate it
if you'd let me know.

Itamar

 

[Itamar]

I fully agree - this is why I posted this in this forum hoping to get the big-guns on the wagon. However, the Wiki idea is that anyone can contribute - filtering is done by everyone by either editing other user's input or rolling back changes.
--
----
Itamar

 

[Itamar]

Thanks for the well-though reply. I share your sentiments exactly and this is why I felt a wiki site can help in organizing the knowledge and supplying A-grade tutorials that are synthesized from the input of many individuals.

I agree that wikis have their limitations and drawbacks, but I hope we'll be able to circumvent those. I don't have any definite solutions as I'm learning the ropes as I go.

And don't worry - after investing $9.25 in the domain (actually x3 since I also bought .com & .net) and $4.95 a month for hosting, I hope I won't get discouraged too quickly

Itamar

 

[VG]

Thanks for the well-though reply. I share your sentiments exactly
and this is why I felt a wiki site can help in organizing the
knowledge and supplying A-grade tutorials that are synthesized from
the input of many individuals.

I agree that wikis have their limitations and drawbacks, but I hope
we'll be able to circumvent those. I don't have any definite
solutions as I'm learning the ropes as I go.

And don't worry - after investing $9.25 in the domain (actually x3
since I also bought .com & .net) and $4.95 a month for hosting, I
hope I won't get discouraged too quickly

Itamar

 

[Patricia S. Jones]

...all the contributors and responses to the above topic. So far, they have been open-minded, carefully thought through, and potentially collaborative. PORG has provided a good answer to many people's "easy" quest for "your workflow," and I bet this new concept will be a helpful resource for many people as well. Keep on thinking!

Regards...
Patsy
http://www.pbase.com/patsysj