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I just released v1.9.2 btw, it's in 64-bit, yay! http://photosounder.com/changelog.php
Developer of Photosounder (a spectral editor/synth), SplineEQ and Spiral

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:tu:

Very nice to see Photosounder updated. Fantastic creative software, happy to see it maintained :hyper:

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Just posting to report that the Help button is not working here (Unable to find “Photosounder 1.9.2 User Guide.pdf”). Mac OS X El Capitan, Photosounder 1.9.2 last build. Where is the Guide supposed to be? I could move it there manually, if needed.

Some simple wishes (probably already covered before, I suppose): a Rewind button; the possibility to click anywhere on the image and start the sound from that point, in any situation; the possibility to play or save only a selection of the sound; a faster redraw, if possible; extended Undo.

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XComposer wrote:Just posting to report that the Help button is not working here (Unable to find “Photosounder 1.9.2 User Guide.pdf”). Mac OS X El Capitan, Photosounder 1.9.2 last build. Where is the Guide supposed to be? I could move it there manually, if needed.

Some simple wishes (probably already covered before, I suppose): a Rewind button; the possibility to click anywhere on the image and start the sound from that point, in any situation; the possibility to play or save only a selection of the sound; a faster redraw, if possible; extended Undo.
I don't think I can directly fix the manual thing because Apple with its Gatekeeper update of macOS 10.11.5 made it pretty much impossible to open files in the same folder (since for execution the app is copied alone to another random location). So I could always bundle the PDF inside the app bundle, but then you wouldn't be able to find the PDF file outside of the app. Apple ruins everything.

As for the rewind button, there's B (on the keyboard), maybe that does what you want? The other suggestions are more for version 2.x (already being written, just yesterday I started implementing basic dialogs), new features for 1.x are probably going to be very limited. I might redo the redrawing system to a certain extent though, we'll see.
Developer of Photosounder (a spectral editor/synth), SplineEQ and Spiral

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Thank you, you are right: I didn't check well the keyboard shortcuts section of the manual. Using the down arrow, the left arrow or the B key, according to the case, help very much.
No problem with the manual, it can be opened in the usual way, of course.
I'm using Photosounder a lot in these days…

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XComposer wrote:I'm using Photosounder a lot in these days…
Cool, may I ask what for? I've been selling it for over 9 years but I'm still wondering what people actually use it for... :D Surely I can't be making a living from having people listen to photos of their cats :lol:
Developer of Photosounder (a spectral editor/synth), SplineEQ and Spiral

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A_SN wrote: Cool, may I ask what for? I've been selling it for over 9 years but I'm still wondering what people actually use it for... :D Surely I can't be making a living from having people listen to photos of their cats :lol:
Sure, if you ask. I'm composing a piece for trombone and electronics, which will be performed here in Milan at the end of May. All the pieces in the concert (by various composers) will be on the theme of trees and nature. My piece, in particular, will be on the theme of "leaves". The leaves of trees, with all their different beautiful shapes.

The electronics part is based only on trasformations and hybridizations of sounds of leaves (rustling, crackling, etc…) and sounds of the trombone (and some vocal sounds); the notes of the chords are taken from mapping the lines formed by the veins of some (selected) leaves onto a grid with the notes or frequencies (Photosounder helps…); and, yes, the photos of dozens of leaves (made by my wife and me) are first reduced to outlines (with GIMP and Topaz ReMask), then, with Photosounder and other programs (which "convert" images to sounds in various ways), they are transformed into sound and then reprocessed into suitable musical materials for the piece (for example, through convolution with trombone sounds, or passing them through resonators tuned according to the chords I mentioned before, or transforming them through spectral morphing). As usual for me, I experiment a lot (also with stretching – by varying resolution in Photosounder -, spectral inversion – by using "vertical flip" in Photosounder –, and spectral rotation - by using "rotate" in Photosounder –) and I produce a lot of sounds, then all the sounds undergo various selections and finally the "best" sounding materials are mounted into the real composition.
The composition will be accompanied also by a visual component, a video that I will produce, including the photos of the leaves and also the images of their outlined elaborations used in Photosounder (and in the other programs). The piece will have also a little "theater" component, that the trombonist will be requested to perform, according to a simple plot (dealing with the passing seasons).

Photosounder is not the only tool I'm using in this project (I am actually using about twenty different softwares, I think, to mention only the most important ones), but it's surely one of the most used and useful ones.

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I just realised I need to do a quick update of Photosounder and add a few blending modes, one that is quite important for a video tutorial that I want to do. There's something that I didn't quite understand when I was working on Photosounder, it's that the volume of sounds when added together (as sound waves) isn't equal to the sum of the volumes but to the square root of their squares, kinda like a hypotenuse. And that very much applies to Photosounder at the pixel level. If you have a noise of volume 3 and your full signal has a volume of 5, then once you subtract the noise your signal shouldn't have a volume of 2 (5-3 = 2) but rather a volume of 4 (√(5²-3²) = √(25-9) = √16 = 4), so I need to add this as a blending mode so that any type of subtraction might be done correctly.

Although now that I think about it it might make noise removal less forgiving giving you more residue...
Edit: nvm, after some quick test it kinda sucks at least as far as noise removal goes.
XComposer wrote:
A_SN wrote: Cool, may I ask what for? I've been selling it for over 9 years but I'm still wondering what people actually use it for... :D Surely I can't be making a living from having people listen to photos of their cats :lol:
Sure, if you ask. I'm composing a piece for trombone and electronics, which will be performed here in Milan at the end of May. All the pieces in the concert (by various composers) will be on the theme of trees and nature. My piece, in particular, will be on the theme of "leaves". The leaves of trees, with all their different beautiful shapes.

The electronics part is based only on trasformations and hybridizations of sounds of leaves (rustling, crackling, etc…) and sounds of the trombone (and some vocal sounds); the notes of the chords are taken from mapping the lines formed by the veins of some (selected) leaves onto a grid with the notes or frequencies (Photosounder helps…); and, yes, the photos of dozens of leaves (made by my wife and me) are first reduced to outlines (with GIMP and Topaz ReMask), then, with Photosounder and other programs (which "convert" images to sounds in various ways), they are transformed into sound and then reprocessed into suitable musical materials for the piece (for example, through convolution with trombone sounds, or passing them through resonators tuned according to the chords I mentioned before, or transforming them through spectral morphing). As usual for me, I experiment a lot (also with stretching – by varying resolution in Photosounder -, spectral inversion – by using "vertical flip" in Photosounder –, and spectral rotation - by using "rotate" in Photosounder –) and I produce a lot of sounds, then all the sounds undergo various selections and finally the "best" sounding materials are mounted into the real composition.
The composition will be accompanied also by a visual component, a video that I will produce, including the photos of the leaves and also the images of their outlined elaborations used in Photosounder (and in the other programs). The piece will have also a little "theater" component, that the trombonist will be requested to perform, according to a simple plot (dealing with the passing seasons).

Photosounder is not the only tool I'm using in this project (I am actually using about twenty different softwares, I think, to mention only the most important ones), but it's surely one of the most used and useful ones.
Interesting, that sounds pretty elaborate! How do you do the convolution with trombone sounds in Photosounder though?
Developer of Photosounder (a spectral editor/synth), SplineEQ and Spiral

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Well, I have not tried to do convolution within Photosounder yet; maybe I could try, perhaps with GIMP and a layer in Multiply mode… (?)
I have used another software so far (Fog Convolver). I'm very much used to jump from one software to another continuously.

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XComposer wrote:Well, I have not tried to do convolution within Photosounder yet; maybe I could try, perhaps with GIMP and a layer in Multiply mode… (?)
I have used another software so far (Fog Convolver). I'm very much used to jump from one software to another continuously.
Oh you mean actual audio convolution, I thought it was something like using convolution to add harmonics from a pure tone.
Developer of Photosounder (a spectral editor/synth), SplineEQ and Spiral

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Yes, actual audio convolution, but with a single long note of the trombone. The trombone sound acquires a sort of strong halo of harmonic glissandoes, like a peculiar "jew's harp"…

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XComposer wrote:Yes, actual audio convolution, but with a single long note of the trombone. The trombone sound acquires a sort of strong halo of harmonic glissandoes, like a peculiar "jew's harp"…
The problem with that is that you're limited to the note of the trombone recording.
Developer of Photosounder (a spectral editor/synth), SplineEQ and Spiral

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I'm not sure if I understand what you mean, but, well, not a problem, I can transpose the sound whenever I want, I can do it on many different notes, I can build chords and, apart from that, my music is often based more on timbres than on notes… and, besides, the electronic part is a sort of background: the main lines are played by a real trombonist, live.

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XComposer wrote:I'm not sure if I understand what you mean, but, well, not a problem, I can transpose the sound whenever I want, I can do it on many different notes, I can build chords and, apart from that, my music is often based more on timbres than on notes… and, besides, the electronic part is a sort of background: the main lines are played by a real trombonist, live.
Convolution in Photosounder does something pretty different. Except "horizontal convolution" which is pretty similar to regular audio convolution, but the other two convolution modes can be used to create harmonics. So I meant that if you convolve by a sound (like, normally) then the output is gonna be the same note as the input note, no going up or down as you like.
Developer of Photosounder (a spectral editor/synth), SplineEQ and Spiral

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So I must try convolution in Photosounder. I'll try it, thanks!

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