Goodbye

I hate to say this but I'm am saying goodbye to photo.net as a paying member. I have been a paying member for about 10 years now but the unwillingness of the owners of this site to listen to it's membership has totally frustrated me! I did not have any problem with the old version that, in my opinion, worked quite well. The old saying..."If it ain't broke don't fix it" aptly applies to the "old" version!

 

I want to thanks all the members who left feedback on my pics and comments. I hope that I run into you guys on another photo site someday. Right now I am moving to Digital Photography Review. It's not as good as photo.net used to be but I like it.

 

Bye

MC

Sorry to see you go. Not only are a long-term member but you joined before 2000. That's a good club to be in! I rather liked the simplicity of the old PN and I do wish they had kept it, while improving functionality and maybe tweaking the typography. Many very popular forums are relatively simple - they run off BB or vBulletin. But PN was unique in that it was based on 1990s HTML. I liked that and I don't know anyone who wanted to modernize.

Sad to hear, but I get it. Best wishes.

I rather like the new PN format with it's inclusion of a few new forums, an increase of the maximum photo dimensions from 700 to 1000 pixels, and placing the latest posting on top of a forum, rather than the most recent topic (I know that some disagree about this). I also like that people can "like" a posting. It gives quick feedback in, for example, the "no words" forum as to peoples preferences. If a number of people really "like" one of my photos, especially those whose sensibilities I have learned to value (i.e. have similar sensibilities to my own), then that gives me some incentive to further refine the photo and, perhaps, print it and display it.

MC, sorry to see you go, but I understand. While I don't have problems with much on the forum side of things and overall think the new design is serviceable, I still find the critique and portfolio part of the site not functional enough so I've pretty much withdrawn from that side of the site, which is regrettable because that's more what I'm here for. I'll check DP Review to see if it meets the needs PN is no longer meeting. Good luck to you.

MC -- best of luck & happy landing. I do understand, my usage is way down, though I haven't found anywhere new, and have no plans to leave.

Aside from you wishing to have the site remain unchanged, what about the new design makes your participation so bad you would want to venture over to DPReview? I find the layout easy to navigate. Posting is straightforward. I am still having issues with uploading pics, but that was last tried by me a month or more ago. Seems the site is fine.

Best of luck to you.

I understand. Take care and aloha.

'Aloha' is one of my favourite non-English words in the whole world. :-) AFAIK it is more than a mere greeting.

I agree, and have been here less and less. It's not enjoyable anymore. I hated losing the "Unified forum." It taught me about areas of photography that I don't do and allowed me eliminate areas that were totally irrelevant to me. I used to love the "No Words" forum, and participated the a great deal, but now it fills up the recent posts. Ordering by the latest posting makes the site appear to be more active, but it makes it harder to go back to an interesting thread. My paid membership goes into the summer, so I'll wait until then to decide whether to continue. All the best to you.

I find the site blinking about half the days I open it. It is difficult to log off because the log off button is only on a second or so. The site seems to have had a drop in visitors and new threads for at least a year or two. Seems like many former regulars aren't posting or posting much. Perhaps we just know it all now? Just kiddin.

Joined this site back in the late 90s when I first got interested in photography. I dropped my paid membership recently (prior to the change) simply because my interest in photography had waned to the point where I just wasn't using the site much. I still enjoy popping in on the forums from time-to-time though to see what's going on. But pretty much every year since I first joined, there were folks clamoring for site changes. Not sure what they were looking for exactly, but I think this new version was an attempt to respond to those criticisms (and there were many). So for every one who dislikes the new format, there is probably at least one other who likes it. I personally had no problem with the old format, but don't think the new one is so bad. But again, my interest has always mainly been in the forums, and they seem to be as accessible as they always were.

I've just started using photo.net again. Up until last week my internet connection was a dongle with a very weak signal. It worked perfectly well with the old version of photo.net but when they upgraded it wasn't powerful enough to open the site and would lose connection every time I tried. I now have a proper internet connection and it works ok, so I'm glad to be back.

I'm spending less time here as well and seriously considering no longer paying for membership.

 

And I do like the new design but I really can't tolerate the softening of my images upon upload. I dragged and dropped this softened PN 2.0 version from my browser to my desktop and compared the MB size to the original jpeg and it gets cut in half as in 600KB turns into 300KB after upload. And I even chose a stronger compression setting in Save For Web from Maximum to High Quality and it still cut it in half. That's unacceptable!

 

I now have to come up with new sharpening settings that over cranks the sharpening to compensate for the softening but then introduces strange squiggly lined tile patterns after upload.

 

Another annoying thing that changed from the old site is I can't make a comment on a photographers entire portfolio where all the thumbnails of a folder are showing. The comment section only shows up on individual images. Maybe I'm not clicking the right menu or sidebar selector. And if I am misunderstanding how to navigate this new design it still should be made more obvious on how to do something this simple.

Though I do not gain much that I used to ( advice, inspiration,fellowship) during the first ten years, I will likely renew. For old time sake and to keep the lights on. Perhaps there are new and old who gain from what was and might be. And I have to admire those who have pulled the wagon as community members to provide some of the direction/serious involvement or similar that appears to be well AWOL from the current owners. As to word aloha, Karim. thanks,it means both welcome and a friendly parting and good tidings and so much more. I would throw a lei but only a figurative one to double oh two who is parting for good....

I don't really see DPReview as an alternative to pnet. I've nothing against it - I post on there myself occasionally - but it's an equipment-centred site and is a subsidiary of Amazon, so the basic ethos is somewhat different. Anyway, if that's what you like, enjoy it.

I think we've lost a few things with the change and that's going to be true anywhere. What annoys me the most and often just makes me not bother here is that I now have to log in every time I want to visit. No other web site that I frequent, and there are several, requires a log in every time. This one didn't either and I had gone probably years since having to log in. I don't care to recall passwords and don't do it well. It is annoying and will often make me just move on. Early in this change when I tapped the log in button all that information simply popped up and was no problem but not any longer.

 

Rick H.

Rick, not sure what the issue might be for you, but I generally do not have to re-log in each time. Once in a while I get kicked off, but for the most part, I stay logged in. Don't know if it matters, but I use Google Chrome as my browser.

I have to,log in about once a day and have heard several others complain about it. I'm on Safari on a Mac, laptop, iPad, and iPhone all require it.

I remain logged in if I leave this site. But, I do log out when I am leaving Photo.net. That way when I return and log in any new forum responses since my last visit are in bold letters. When I go to my log in page my user name and password are already there so I only have to hit Sign In. I'm using Firefox 52.0.1 Edited April 17, 2017 by James G. Dainis

James, I find the titles of newly responded to forums go bold and my alerts are updated just by refreshing any page and don't have to log out for that to occur. Just a little shortcut you might try.

Fred, Thank you. I will try that.

Sorry to see you go, MC. I am not finding much here that interests me anymore. I won't leave, but, like so many others, I simply won't be coming around as much as I used to.

 

I don't enjoy the site very much any more. There is much to be learned on this new version, but toward what purpose? This change has wasted a lot of my time, and, frankly, it is now more trouble than it is worth.

 

I miss the old Photo.net. I won't miss this one when it finally slips beneath the waves. It really isn't the same place any more.

 

--Lannie

Jordan I just bought this laptop 6 or 7 weeks ago and it is a Windows 10 machine, my first venture into a recent operating system in some time. If I log in during the day then I don't need to do so again but after midnight all bets are off and I have to do it again. I see no need for this situation to exist and am not happy about it.

 

Rick H.