advertisement


Photo editing software

purplepleaser

purplepleaser

pfm Member
Hi

I have a couple of Canon cameras with the supplied DPP software. I am wondering if i need to spend a lot of money on the likes of CS3 or would something like Elements be good enough for general editing/conversions.

I have no experience with these sort of programs. Just looking for a bit of advice.

What do you use and recommend

Thanks

Lee
 
Hi Lee,

Over the last few months, in my Digital Imaging course at Uni, i've been using Photoshop Elements 4 (old), and Photoshop 7. If you can get hold of a copy, I would go for 7 - you can do all kinds with it if you've got the patience.

Greg
 
Not sure if this is good advice, but I have elements 5 and also ACDSee 8. I also have an old and slow computer.
Elements takes ages to open and for basic easy stuff I find ACDSee much easier and less intimidating. Maybe I should sit down and try harder with Elements, but for me ACDSee is all I need. I don't do much other than minor tweaking to exposure, contrast, highlights and shadows and a bit of cropping, so if you want more, then maybe try elements - I could happily sell you a copy of elements 3 if you want, but I think you can download ACDSee as a trial, so why not take a look..!
 
I use CS3, and feel like I need to book a summer course to work out how to use it. So far (9 months) the only bits I have really used are: convert from RAW and adjust exposure etc, resize, Unsharp Mask, conversion to B&W, Curves and Levels. I recently mastered the batch function to convert from RAW to jpeg using standard settings as a default to get the things ready to review.

I believe you can do most or all the above except Curves in "Elements" for a 10th of the price.
 
Surely I'm not the only person that finds CS2 and 3 simple to use? I'm far from a pro user. but I'm pretty good with photoshop which has all come from just sitting and using it, if I get stuck I use the manual or search google.

Corel apps on the other hand, I have always struggled with.

I guess elements probably has most of the stuff you will need though, I wouldn't want to pay for the full suite for simple editing and conversion etc.
 
You only need Photoshop is you want to do fancy stuff like radical colour noise removal, certain types of advance sharpening, perspective correction, etc. Assuming you don't want to go nuts with glowy, emobssed text with drop shadows and remove a disgraced Uncle from a family picture in a Stalin style.

For everything else Lightroom (or Aperture on Mac) does everything you could want and is very easy to use. Lightroom/Aperture also do the whole catalogue management thing integrated into the editing tool unlike the rather cumbersome Adobe Bridge which does the equivalent in a classic Photoshop workflow.

You only really need 4 things from Photoshop although one of them is Curves which would count Elements out for me. For basic just fix teh pictures and put them on the web though it might well be perfectly excellent.
 
The Windows release of Elements has had curves support since version 5. The new version 6 has it for the Mac too.

I use Elements, it does everything I need an image editing program to do (resize, USM, levels, dust cloning), supports many PS plug-ins, Adobe Camera RAW, and has website building and batch processing facilities if you need them. Plus, it's cheap. Never tried Lightroom or Aperture.

-- Ian
 
They don't come much cheaper than GIMP. It's available for no cost, just download it. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's just some crappy free software, either - it's very powerful.
 
hacker said:
They don't come much cheaper than GIMP. It's available for no cost, just download it. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's just some crappy free software, either - it's very powerful.
Click to expand...

hacker.

i hate to say it, but the preview refresh on curves (the single most important tool) is utter crap. better than before but they are still miles behind photoshop in that regard. once that is sorted out (if ever), i will switch over.


vuk.
 
As much as gimp is free, its also shite. Why anyone would want to make believe they are using software from windows 95 is beyond me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top