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Do I need Photoshop?
farfromthesun
Registered Users Posts: 24 Big grins
I'm considering purchasing some photo editing software, but it's a bit of a minefield out there.
Photoshop CS3 runs around $600, it's younger sibling "Elements" coming in at around $120, which is quite a difference - is there such a gulf between the two?
Are there other products out there that you've experience of that you would recommend? Any advice appreciated - I don't want to make the wrong decision, either way.
Thanks for your advice, Ryan
Photoshop CS3 runs around $600, it's younger sibling "Elements" coming in at around $120, which is quite a difference - is there such a gulf between the two?
Are there other products out there that you've experience of that you would recommend? Any advice appreciated - I don't want to make the wrong decision, either way.
Thanks for your advice, Ryan
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WELCOME TO DGRIN!!
Yes, there is a gulf of difference between them. The question is, do you need those extra tools that are in the full version?
Well, if you use LAB, false profiles, channel blending, etc. probably yes.
If you just want to tweak colors and contrast, probably no.
I would almost suggest looking at programs like Lightroom and Aperture instead of Elements -- most of the functionality and you get photo management too.
There's a difference between Elements and Photoshop. All Elements is, is just a subset of what's in Photoshop. You're not short changed by any means, unless you want to get really fancy. I'm not sure what features the latest version has but Version 3.0 did not have a channel mixer nor did it do curves. But I really didn't miss them all that much because there are other tools that perform similar functions such as levels and hue/saturation.
If you've never done photo editing before, Elements is an affordable means of getting into it. I found it to be a nice introduction to the full blown version and when I finally made the leap from Elements to Photoshop, the learning curve was relatively painless.
http://lrichters.smugmug.com
Let me make an analogy: So far whe have effectively "I'm doing a home improvement project. I'm looking at the whiz-bang electric, rotating head professional screwdriver. Or do I just need a plain old Phillips manual one?" To which we have suggestions of "nah, you need a socket wrench set," yet we don't know what the project is yet.
http://www.chrislaudermilkphoto.com/
You know you can edit photos without buying anything made by money sucking Adobe. I've been doing very nicely with Corel.
This is why I feel nervous about just diving in - this is the kind of thing I wouldn't really consider. My OS is Windows XP - not particularly fond of it and would prefer a Mac I suspect, but I can't justify a new computer specifically for imaging when I consider my workload. Getting a Mac would be a completely unjustifiable indulgence at present. (I am not a professional, and I intend to use it for a) editing functions (more control and power than Picasa, which I do like), and b) astrophotgraphy processing. The latter is the more challenging /demanding I believe.) I hope that answers the questions....and thanks again.
Of course I didn't! Do go on....
Cheers all - Ryan.
Sorry!
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1155872554948
If I were you, I'd just get Elements and not worry about it. For about 99 percent of what you would want to do in Photoshop, you can do in Elements. It just might take a little longer
The difference is kind of like this: Say you are wanting to perform a specific effect on a photo. Something more complex than cropping or whatever. With Elements you might have to do three different things to accomplish the effect, but with Photoshop you simply pull down the Filters menu and select the effect and a menu with sliders giving you all the variables you need are right there and its a 5 second task.
Elements is the base model car and Photoshop is the V-8 luxury sedan. Both will get you from A to B.
Nothing against Corel, it's a fine program, but if you've not had much experience with either program, a vast majority of folks use Photoshop or Elements more than Corel programs. So when it comes to any questions you might have, the knowledge base is larger with the Photoshop/Elements crowd.
Good luck.
I presume you are shooting JPEG and not RAW? This causes another fork in the discussion.
For general editing, I'll agree that Elements is an excellent starting point. The majority of people use one of Adobe's products. AFAIK you can use that for an upgrade price to full-on Photoshop later if you find you need it. In either case, it really sounds like LR is not the right tool and Aperture is now completely irrelevant. If you want to look at other options, there is Paint Shop Pro (the Corel product mentioned), Picture Window Pro, and the GIMP (a freebie ported from Linux). There's probably a few fringe products I've missed, but these are the main competitors to PS.
I use Photoshop CS, largely because of the reasons Bratch noted. This is where all the knowledge is. Everyone will be coming from a PS-based knowledgebase, 99% of the books and tutorial websites will be PS-based.
IMHO there is no advantage to getting a Mac. XP-based machines are equally capable for imaging work and still hold a slim price advantage.
http://www.chrislaudermilkphoto.com/
I stopped upgrading Adobe and Microsoft products when they went to the dark side of licensing with activation schemes and forcing upgrades via the RAW updates. The greedy bastards can choke on it for all I care.
Am I bitter or what
"Failure is feedback. And feedback is the breakfast of champions." - fortune cookie
I've procured a cheap copy of Elements, will feedback with my experiences.
Shay, further to your comments regarding the "dark side of licensing" - I've noticed some activity like you've mentioned on my pc, and feel uneasy about it.
Quite ironically (for a photograhpy nut) I am staunchly private when it comes to sharing any kind of information, so am quite interested in this side of things, and how best to steer clear, but without doing myself a disservice in the process. How widespread is this kind of thing, and should I really care?
Thanks again all...RB.
Well they don't. And I personally won't let it. So last year I spent transitioning my entire workflow to linux (ubuntu specifically) and have started actively opposing these land grab thefts of our freedom. It is outrageously greedy and is one of the few things that boils my blood.
They have no right to control my usage of the product. If I need to reinstall the software a dozen times, I don't want some dude on the phone telling me "sorry, that has been flagged as unusual, you shouldn't have to install it that many times, you will have to buy another activation number."
Ya right. If I take my bicycle into the shop for repairs or upgrades a dozen times, I don't call the manufacturer and ask for permission to unlock the wheels. It's my dang bike, I can pimp it out any way I desire without first seeking permission from some despotic company.
And that is exactly what they are becoming, despots, and we are letting them by rolling over and just allowing every new restriction and upgrading to every new version of ever more crippled and restrictive software.
"Failure is feedback. And feedback is the breakfast of champions." - fortune cookie
I wonder how many people there are out there who have (un)knowingly clicked "OK" without giving it a second thought? Millions, I suspect.
The guy who sits next to me at work, six years or so younger than me, looks at me like I'm an eccentric old weirdo when I rant on about CCTV, Speed Cameras (that don't flash, therefore don't deter, so basically generate revenue), GSP & mobile phones, intrusive powers that be (this usually prompts the "..if you've nothing to hide..." argument.
I just want to take pictures!
Why do you think you 'need' Photoshop? Have you considered Lightroom? This provides image editing capabilities in addition to a wide range of other image management functions, but is specifically designed for photographers rather than for any and all graphics manipulation purposes.
While it provides only a small subset of Photoshop's overall editing capabilities, these will increase over time (including an enhancement due in the next few days or weeks). If, at a later stage, you really need the horsepower (and can justify the cost) of Photoshop, this can be integrated nicely with Lightroom.
In my own experience, I have Elements but haven't used it for more than a year. Lightroom has all the editing capabilities I personally require.
Just a thought for your consideration!
This is off topic, so I'll keep it brief
I am getting close to being able to do so. It has been taking longer than I expected, but it is coming
"Failure is feedback. And feedback is the breakfast of champions." - fortune cookie
Excellent, I wait with baited breath
Buying Photoshop (or the whole Creative Suite) is like signing up for the priesthood. If you aren't SURE it's the right thing, you probably should pass. To put it differently, if you really NEEDED Photoshop, you'd probably have it already. Some folks start with Photoshop, then ask themselves if they need to buy a camera (really).
If you want to do creative image editing, prepress work, and a lot of stuff that really has very little to do with photography in the traditional sense, then you need Photoshop or something similar (it does have some competition). But if you want to manage your photo collection and post-process your pictures - in other words, if you want to do what the majority of photographers want to do - then you have lots of options that, in my opinion, are not just cheaper than Photoshop but truly better tools for the job, because unlike Photoshop, they're designed from the get-go for working photographers and not to do anything else.
So what are your options? Here are a few off the top of my head:
- Adobe Lightroom (ignore the word "Photoshop" in this product's official name)
- Apple Aperture (similar to Lightroom, but runs only on Macs)
- Bibble
- Phase One's Capture One
- Lightcrafts Lightzone
- Silkypix
- Whatever came with your camera (?)
- Adobe Photoshop Elements
- Apple's iPhoto
- Google's Picasa
And I'm omitting, oh, another dozen or so that are buried lower down in my head. (Eight months ago I would have mentioned Raw Shooter, but it's been bought by Adobe and some of its strengths have been folded into Lightroom.) I think all of these have fully-functional 30-day demos. If you are shooting Raw - and I assume that you are - do make sure before you bother that the program you're trying supports your camera's Raw format.After trying nearly everything that supports Pentax Raw (PEF) files, I settled on Lightroom myself, so I'm generally in agreement with those who have already recommend Lightroom. I second especially W.W. Webster's comments.
However, while Lightroom (like Apple's Aperture) does have tremendous post-processing capabilities - I almost never feel the need to go anywhere else - it is also true that it is designed especially for photographers who shoot a LOT of photos and need a solution designed particularly for workflow efficiency. I came home last night from a volleyball game with almost 200 photos (very typical). It took me about half an hour just to copy the photos to my hard disk. It didn't take me much longer than that to process all 200 photos using Lightroom. I'm a keyboard shortcut maniac in Lightroom, in love with the sync and preset functions. On a one-photo-at-a-time basis, I think Lightroom's Develop module is really good - quite good enough to satisfy me. But it's not uniquely good. What is uniquely good about Lightroom is how its develop or post-processing tools mesh with its library features, its meta-data management options, and all the rest. There are programs out that that will take the gold in individual events; but Lightroom is an outstanding tri-athlete.
If I were a less promiscuous, more selective shooter, rather than going to Photoshop, I personally would be using Lightzone from Lightcrafts. I'm really fond of its zone-mapping tool, which makes sensitive tonal adjustments to photos very intuitive. It also provides some Photoshop-like features that Lightroom lacks, including the ability to apply adjustments to selected areas of the photo; and the somewhat related ability to create masks. It's got some quirks, to be sure, and I'm not flat-out recommending it. Mainly, in my experience, it seems pretty slow. I'm just mentioning it as something worth considering and something that often gets overlooked.
Bibble (Pro or Lite) and Silkypix are both excellent Raw workflow/image processing programs. Bibble isn't as pretty as Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture, but I have tried it and it's chock-full of powerful features, some of which are definitely more powerful than corresponding features in Lightroom. (I'm thinking in particular of Bibble's noise-reduction feature.) Silkypix has a bit more visual sex appeal. I have not used it, but I know a number of photographers who swear by it. I'm unfamiliar with Capture One but it too comes very highly recommend. My impression is that it's really a high-end product.
Google's Picasa and Apple's iPhoto, on the other hand, are "low end" products - but in the very best sense of the word. iPhoto is relatively cheap, and Picasa (which can do nearly everything iPhoto can) is free. Neither provides pro-level processing tools, but that's not a knock. If you mainly need a knife to butter your bread, you don't want a 97-function Swiss Army tool, you want a butter knife.
I don't like Elements personally. I've owned it forever and have thrown myself at it time after time. I keep it mainly so that I have access to those one or two Photoshop features that I need once or twice a year. In general, while Elements has a lot of features, I think it's too complicated and too slow for serious use. If I really felt that I needed Elements, I'd probably upgrade to CS3. Fortunately, I do not really feel that need!
On the other hand, you might. But you very well might not. Anyway, it's a great day to be a photographer and to have so many really excellent options. My advice would be, first, take a look at what came with your camera. The software that came with my Pentax K10D isn't at all bad. Some aspects of the software that came with my old Canon were really excellent. And I'm told that Nikon's software is excellent, too. You might already have something that you're pleased with. It's surprising how many people take the camera out of the box, start shooting and never install the software that they paid for - at least to take a look.
But if the software that came with your camera doesn't light your fire, then get Picasa (you're a Windows user, I think) and use it to manage your photos for starters. It's free and it will deal with whatever folder structure you set up on your hard disk. Then, while you're storing the photos in Picasa (and possibly taking advantage of its non-destructive editing features), you can try out some of the other more powerful but NOT free programs mentioned above or others that you dig up on your own.
Good luck,
Will
I hasten to add (before I get charged with heresy), that I have nothing to say AGAINST Photoshop. If anybody else already has Photoshop and loves it, feels it's essential to their photographic practice, etc., I'm happy for you and wouldn't for a second try to persuade you to switch to anything else.
Will
The first seven are primarily RAW converters, which the OP is not interested in. The last item, Picasa, as originally mentioned as having been used and not up to the task (surprise). Finally, the system in question is an XP box, so Aperture and iPhoto are irrelevant.
If you have read the following posts, you would have seen that the OP did finally get Elements as that is the best option for his needs. We're just waiting to hear his experience with it. In the meantime, we drifted off topic.
http://www.chrislaudermilkphoto.com/