GridIron Flow Review
Posted on 31. Aug, 2009 by Terry Reinert in Featured, Reviews, Software
Two months ago the internet exploded with blog posts and press releases announcing the latest software tool from GridIron Software. I am sure by now you’ve all heard of it… Flow. I had to see what all the hype was about so I jumped on the opportunity to review the software. I sat down to play with it one evening expecting to have the review finished in a week. After a few hours of using Flow I realized that my review would be a bit delayed. The delay wasn’t because it was tough to use but more due to the fact that it has a lot of features and is a very powerful tool. I wasn’t about to cheese my way through a quick review of it. I had to dig into it, mess with it, use it for things it wasn’t meant to be used for (or at least try to), and really figure out how good this new tool is going to be. And now, after two months of using it on and off for different projects, here is the scoop…
Oh, and I decided to do this review a little differently… you can read all sorts of stuff about Flow with a quick Google search… so instead I am going to show you Flow as I applied it to different projects I worked on. There is nothing overly fancy here but it shows how Flow reacted to the things that I do.
First up, a simple Flow map of post processing some images taken at the STS-127 shuttle launch… The following images are of the Flow UI and were generated completely in the background without any actions from me. Flow just watches what you’re doing and stores the relevant data that it needs to manage your assets.
The left image shows the images that I was processing and the connections they have with other files. You can see how I used my white logo in each of the PSD files and that JPG files were generated from each of the PSD files. The center image shows the same but with only one of the PSD files selected. This pulls up the version information for the file on the right sidebar along with a thumbnail preview. The right image shows the file information window that shows a larger preview of the image along with all the information that is stored in the image file.
So the example above was a very simple Flow map dealing with a few files of the same types that didn’t really inter-relate much. Lets step it up a little and look at something that is a bit more involved but not by much… building a PowerPoint presentation using various files.
Flow automatically built this map as I imported and pasted images into the presentation. Take a look at the bottom of the application and you’ll find some time tracking information that Flow automatically logs as well. That’s right, Flow will tell you exactly how much time you’ve spent on any given project. Not only that, but it will tell you how much time you’ve spent working on each individual file within that project. I found this feature interesting since I don’t usually keep track of the time I spend on projects. Flow opened my eyes to where I spent most of my time. For those who actually track their time, you know those who actually do graphics work or photography for a living, will find this feature very helpful.
Can anyone guess what example is coming next? HDR! Anyone curious how Flow handles an HDR workflow? Not as well as I had hoped honestly. If you look at the images below for this example you will see that Flow did not pick up the connection between the original CameraRAW files and the merged Radiance file. It only picked up a single CameraRAW file. Once the image came out of Photomatix Pro, Flow began tracking the files again under a new map. It did not pick up the connection between the Radiance file and the tone mapped TIFF file.
But there is some good news to follow the crushing blow that HDR work flows gave Flow. That good news is the ability to add manual links in the Flow maps. I simply opened up Finder, selected all the CameraRAW images that I merged together to make the Radiance file, and dropped them onto the Radiance file in the Flow map. Flow made the connections as shown in the image below.
Those examples show you on a basic user level what Flow can do for you. There are a lot of other things that it will do for you that are more advanced features… such as packaging all of your project files for you. Basically, you have a project map showing all of the files in your project. You click a few buttons and Flow packages all those files up so you can send them to your client. So long as all your project files are being tracked in the map this feature alone will keep you from forgetting to include a file or two when you send files off to your client.
There are a few things to mention that Flow doesn’t exact do well like the HDR shortcomings mentioned above…
Flow doesn’t support certain file types like Camtasia Studio and QuarkXPress. My guess is that GridIron will get a lot more file support into future versions of Flow but that is just a guess. In regards to QuarkXPress not being supported… come on people, buy better software. 
Another shortcoming is that Flow will sometimes make file associations that do not exist. Take a look at the image below. Tampa-18.psd -> VatStore.jpg should not be connected in any way to NormGritty.jpg. I was editing these images around the same time but there is no component of those images that was used in the NormGritty.jpg file.
One of the things that I wished Flow did better was track source code. It does an OK job of handling web files but it does pull in temp files and other things that just make the map more confusing instead of helpful. The image below shows a map of a web application that I developed. Many of the entries on the map are temp files and others have the wrong application icon associated with it.
In the end I think Flow has a lot of potential. I don’t do enough in-depth graphics projects to really make it useful for me. If it tracked source code better (specifically JAVA and C/C++ code) then it would be a HUGE win. I really hope they fix up the source code support and expand it to other programming languages in future versions. Until then, I think that I will continue to play with it from time to time but never really utilize it in any kind of professional fashion. But that is me; someone who does a whole lot more code work than graphics work. If you are a graphic designer that switches around between projects and work on a diverse set of file types within each project then Flow will blow you away. It is definitely designed for employees in a graphic house.
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Daniel Brown
01. Sep, 2009
Terry,
We (and especially I) feel your pain regarding HDR, but this particular instance is due to the fact that we don’t (currently) track Photomatix Pro. In essence, since Flow didn’t “see” the files go into it, only come out of it, a new map was born. As you suggest, this is simply a matter of adding support for that application (along with a flurry of others.) There is a clear benefit to being able to backtrack a photographic project to the source RAW files and we’re working on that.
As for the other “mystery” connections between files, there are a few things that could cause that phenomenon. Since Flow tracks “events” and which documents were in the foreground when those events took place, there are unexpected ways to “trick” Flow into thinking there is a connection. Fortunately, if you Command-click (Right-click on Windows) on any node, you can tell Flow to break the connection between nodes. This is also handy when, for example, you copy a PSD file with upper layers to be used as a template in another project, but it will really have no relationship to the previous file.
Likewise, as you discovered with the radiance map, files sometimes need to be “related”, but don’t necessarily get copied/pasted among themselves. For those times, you can manually “associate” files with an entire map (budgets for a project or client comments in a word file), or associate one file with another (vcard for a freelance designer that created a Flash element, for example.)
Worth noting to Photoshop folks – Flow’s versioning function allows you to “undo” a “flatten and save” – the most dreaded of all Photoshop fumbles. (Flatten layers, save, close, drag file to Flow, revert to previous version, you get your layers back.)
As you suggest, there is a great deal of potential in Flow. I wish I could show publicly what we’re working on “behind the scenes”. All I can say is – stay tuned…
Daniel Brown
Sr. Evangelist – North America
GridIron Software
Terry
01. Sep, 2009
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for leaving the comment with all that information. I realized after reading your comment that I did forget to mention that you can break the associations manually just like you can add them manually if needed. I also didn’t cover the versioning functionality. That was on my list of things to talk about and I overlooked it. But you are absolutely correct in that the versioning system does allow you to revert your files back to a previous state even if you do something crazy to them (like flatten & save in Photoshop as you mentioned).
Another thing I forgot to mention is that Flow works great for tracking files that you save with different names. One of the screenshots in the review shows how the name of the file went from Tampa-44.psd to NormGritty.jpg to NormGritty_Text.jpg. I usually leave my file names the same and just append the ending of them to indicate what modifications that new file contains. Sometimes though I need to change the entire file name. Then it becomes a pain to find the original file since I have to look through the thumbnails to try to find it. Now I just open up the map for that file, look at the associations, and open the original file in seconds.
I cannot wait for future versions of Flow that supports a lot more file types, specifically those associated with HDR. I can manually create the associations now but it will be great when it does it all automatically.
Thanks again for commenting to get more information out to the public!