Glad to see the renaming. I got a lot of, mostly, good humored abuse when I suggested something similar a few years back
Not at all sure about the proliferation of sub-forums. A lot here post about how best to develop workflows with multiple products (e.e Lightroom and PhotoLab)
Crazy idea from a coding idiot...
As a user of DxO Photolab and Affinity Photo, I like the range of specific forums suggested. The level of granularity has been mentioned as a potential concern.
What if for some catergories that could fall under a broader general forum catergory, the forum thread title woud have to include mandatory tags for product and process followed by the question. Users could then set a filter like in Excel, to only view product and process threads relevant to their needs, and then revert to an unfiltered view.
Just my 2c. Is it hard to split it at some later stage? I'd consider making it on on demand basis. Broader forum descriptions stimulate discussions (as people see a lot of messages/comments in one place). People may be reluctant to post into an abandoned/low activity subforum as they wouldn't expect to get an answer there.
Once a generic subforum gets too overcrowded, it can be split further into subforums.
It's not difficult to create a new forum at the same level as the one it will replace. But moving threads across takes time (and we are bount to get some wrong).
I'm open to all suggestions and I will discuss it all with you before I do anything if I see anything even vaguely contentious (this is a community forum and your opinions do matter)
I really liked having all softwares under one heading because it was how I discovered more about different options. If there is a good search function then it is simple for someone to pull up threads about their preferred software but if there are set sections then people are not likely to post in say the DxO section and then also go post the threads into the general section so people may not know there is a post comparing DxO to another software, if that makes sense? I don't know what is possible but I would like to suggest just a main post-processing forum but with the ability for the user to set a personal preference to just have threads on their chosen softwares to separate out and appear for them on their device. That way both things are accomplished...as I say it would be a shame to get so specific in the categories that people missed threads in different ones.
I don’t think we should break things up until we have a higher member count. If you’re keeping score, I’m a DxO PhotoLab 6 user, having given up waiting for Canon to optimize DPPro, which was my go-to editor for many years.
You can already do this simply by clicking the categorical “Post Processing Software & Techniques” link on the main forum page, or by clicking the breadcrumb trail when visiting a specific sub-forum.
I’m not sure that you’d want to have separate forums for each editor. A single place to go for most general post processing stuff is probably a better idea, IMO. If you’re having an issue with Lightroom, some Lightroom users can chime in. Capture One, DxO, or Darktable issues? Their folks can chime in for those editor-specific questions. Lots of people are fluent in (and regular users of) a number of different brands of software, sometimes all at the same time. It’s often helpful and informative to see what others come up with using different software than what you are currently familiar with too. I can maybe see separate forums for colorization, infrared, astro, portrait retouching, and other more specialized sorts of processing, but for general processing tips and comparisons, I think you’ll get more mileage out of single forum where lots of different processing options can be considered in the same place. My earlier RAW processing specific forum suggestion was intended to operate in a similar capacity.