editing software for beginner?

Elaine · February 28, 2008

I have a friend with a Rebel XTi who is eager to learn more about photography and needs some editing software without spending too much. I would tend to recommend Elements to start with because that's what I'm familiar with, but I know there are lots of options. So, to be fair, I thought I'd ask if there were any others that would be good to consider...ones that would offer lots of growing room. Suggestions?

nmh · February 28, 2008

Some options

Elaine wrote:

I have a friend with a Rebel XTi who is eager to learn more about photography and needs some editing software without spending too much. I would tend to recommend Elements to start with because that's what I'm familiar with, but I know there are lots of options. So, to be fair, I thought I'd ask if there were any others that would be good to consider...ones that would offer lots of growing room. Suggestions?

For balance, I am going to start by plugging the GIMP - it is capable, but can take time to learn. Does your friend need bitmap editing, photo retouching, or something else? Some of the other options include picasa, psp, and iphoto. Possibly aperture.app or lightroom would be more helpful than just pixel pushing. If your friend wants to try raw conversion without spending lots of money, the DPP software that came included with the camera is reputed to be quite powerful, with UFRaw as an alternative.

ziggy53 · February 28, 2008

Elaine wrote:

I have a friend with a Rebel XTi who is eager to learn more about photography and needs some editing software without spending too much. I would tend to recommend Elements to start with because that's what I'm familiar with, but I know there are lots of options. So, to be fair, I thought I'd ask if there were any others that would be good to consider...ones that would offer lots of growing room. Suggestions?

I recommend Picasa (Windows only) for beginners, and I use it for general personal use as well. As a viewer and organizer it's hard to beat at any price, and it's free!

It also has basic editing and post-processing with excellent cropping and straightening, competent sharpening, very nice redeye reduction and fast, intuitive color and tone adjustments. All changes are non-destructive until you either commit the changes or, as I like to do, make a copy of the image with the changes.

Picasa has a great CD/DVD burning software that allows you to create an autostart CD/DVD with a slide show. You can also send e-mail with image attachments from within Picasa.

You can even get a wonderful linkage to SmugMug which works from within Picasa and allows you to upload images into a new or existing gallery.

http://picasa.google.com/

achambers · February 28, 2008

DPP is very good for RAW conversion, just make sure to get the latest version from Canon. The new version (3.2) has corrections for specific lenses and a few other new tools that the older versions don't.

Elaine · February 28, 2008

ziggy53 wrote:

I recommend Picasa (Windows only) for beginners, and I use it for general personal use as well. As a viewer and organizer it's hard to beat at any price, and it's free! It also has basic editing and post-processing with excellent cropping and straightening, competent sharpening, very nice redeye reduction and fast, intuitive color and tone adjustments. All changes are non-destructive until you either commit the changes or, as I like to do, make a copy of the image with the changes.

Picasa has a great CD/DVD burning software that allows you to create an autostart CD/DVD with a slide show. You can also send e-mail with image attachments from within Picasa.

You can even get a wonderful linkage to SmugMug which works from within Picasa and allows you to upload images into a new or existing gallery.

http://picasa.google.com/

Does Picasa handle RAW?

jziegler · February 28, 2008

Elaine wrote:

Does Picasa handle RAW?

Picasa does handle RAW for many cameras.

I was in a somewhat similar situation to your friend this fall, and eventually decided to buy Paint Shop Pro, and also use Picasa for basic editing, organizing, and uploading to SmugMug. I feel Paint Shop Pro is a bit easier to use than Photoshop Elements (although I have only used old versions of Elements) and the price is quite good.

I also did try the GIMP, and although it is very powerful, it is a bit intimidating to use at first, and there is not the wide variety of documentation for is as there is for Photoshop.

ziggy53 · February 28, 2008

Elaine wrote:

Does Picasa handle RAW?

Picasa will open and process in 8 bit mode, enough for sorting and basic functions.

For more advanced RAW processing, and freeware to boot, try Raw Therapee (RT). RT has extremely high quality demosaicing and excellent sharpening. RT allows you to save to 16 bit TIFFs for further processing in an advanced image processor and it allows you to save settings so you can apply those settings to files that need similar processing. RT has enough power that you may not need anything else. RT can also open other common raster file types for general processing.

I still suggest Picasa for "beginners" as your thread title indicates, but as they understand the concepts and progress into RAW, RT can be a very valuable tool.

claudermilk · February 28, 2008

This is one of the rare occasions that I will have to disagree to a point with ziggy. While Picasa is a good beginner app, IMHO you get what you pay for & it's quite easy to do better. For someone just starting out it's fine, but once you get serious you will outgrow it quickly & want more. At that basic level, the camera came with some software that's decent for a beginner as well.

Once they get more serious, then it may be time to look at Elements, or the GIMP. Getting even more serious, PSP, PWP, or the 800lb gorilla PS.

regarding RAW, here's Picasa's help page on that: http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=15625 (in short, for the camera in question it appears the answer is yes).

ziggy53 · February 28, 2008

I'll also plug the GIMP as a very powerful 8 bit image processor. Since the latest version it is very similar in power and concept to PhotoShop. You can even get some RAW support and multi-platform capabilities.

Like PS, the GIMP requires some serious time to fully understand its support for layers, brushes, color control, cloning etc. If you take the time it rewards you with considerable processing power.

jeffreaux2 · February 28, 2008

What about the Canon DPP software. It handles the RAW files and most basic adjustments. Beyond that, I would suggest Elements. It isn't scary expensive, and would provide most anything she may want to do to a photography be it RAW or jpeg.

The most commonly named software out there is photoshop. If, in a couple years, she decides to really jump in deep then she should already be familiar with working with layers, and have an intuitive understanding of what to expect with photoshop.

I started out using GIMP. It is free. It is not intuitive. I next moved to PS. I found it much easier to get things done. It is a little more intuitive.

After several versions of PS I bought PS Elements bundled with Premiere elements a couple years ago(primarily for video editing). I actually was surprised at how powerful elements is as an editor. I did not feel hamstrug in any way when using it rather than PS. My one complaint would be not being able to view very large sizes of my images....."fit to screen" has more room to roam on PS.

I almost exclusively use Lightroom and PSCS3 now....but now and then for a simple task I will pop into elements.

I think it is very reasonably priced for such a powerful editor.

cmason · February 28, 2008

ok i have a few different opinons:

Considering the request is for someone new to this, and looking for a basic package, I think the first recommendation is Elements. Beyond that, I usually recommend PaintShopPro, because it is both very powerful, but also very easy to use, which is fairly rare. Lightroom is very powerful and easy as well, but admittedly appeals to more advanced photographer, one that has found the issues with 'workflow'. But it is easily more expensive than the other two.

I think Picasa is too basic for most, but is worth more than it costs. In contrast, I think GIMP is confusing and worth about what it costs...but just my opinion.

nmh · February 28, 2008

cmason wrote:

ok i have a few different opinons:
...cut...
I think Picasa is too basic for most, but is worth more than it costs. In contrast, I think GIMP is confusing and worth about what it costs...but just my opinion.

Interestingly, I have found that for almost anything I have tried to do with GIMP, I can (easily) figure it out or find step by step instructions. My experiences with PS have been much less positive. I was going to say that Picasa is microsoft only, but I found this. It seems to be the microsoft version under wine.

Pittspilot · February 28, 2008

Elaine wrote:

I have a friend with a Rebel XTi who is eager to learn more about photography and needs some editing software without spending too much. I would tend to recommend Elements to start with because that's what I'm familiar with, but I know there are lots of options. So, to be fair, I thought I'd ask if there were any others that would be good to consider...ones that would offer lots of growing room. Suggestions?

Download the trial of Lightroom, if it isn't outside the budget (and it can be had discounted through various routes).

If your friend learns much they will soon run into the issues that LR handles well, and I'd recommend starting out with LR rather than learning one thing, then having to learn something else.

Cheers

Elaine · February 28, 2008

Thanks for all the suggestions! Unfortunately, I believe Lightroom is beyond budget right now, so I think PSE 6 or PSP might be the preferred choice. My friend is not new to DSLRs, just new to the XTi, so while he's not a total beginner to all of this, he is just getting to the point of really wanting to improve his pics and move forward with photography. Thanks!

luc · February 29, 2008

I would suggest Helicon Filter which has an ingeniously intuitive user interface, has many high quality editing tools, but does not require a new user to come to grips with the logic of layers, adjustment layers, masks etc.
More editing capabilities than Lightroom, including nice retouching options and very affordable; lossless and 16-bit editing by default; more or less everything for photo optimizations.

http://www.heliconsoft.com/heliconfilter.html

slpollett · March 1, 2008

I definitely consider myself a beginner and I use Paint Shop Pro. I'll admit that I haven't learned how to use all the features yet, but it is inexpensive and fairly easy to use. The help features and tutorials are pretty good also.

Sherry

TBT · May 17, 2008

This thread may be old but not much has changed.

The main Issues with picasa as I see it:

No upgrade path.

If all you are going to ever do is use picasa, it's great.

But if you want to convert over to another application you'll be in a bind as nothing recognizes the picasa edits:

You can make all of your picasa edits destructive then import to your new application.

You can export your picasa edits and maintain two copies of everything.

Or you can throw out the picasa edits and start from scratch.

It's a big deal if you have 50K picasa processed pictures and are considering moving to something else.

Other picasa issues:

No multi word IPTC keywords. San Francisco is stored as two keywords. One for San and one for Francisco. The IPTC standard alows up to 64 characters in the keyword field, including spaces.

Destructuve handling of red eye edits. While most edits are non destructive red eye edits are destructive. A backup copy is kept in a hidden folder, but that backup copy has the same filename as the original.' If you are militant about leaving your originals untouched this may be an issue.

Metadata such as the fact you have "starred" a picture in picasa may be lost when you move to another application. This is a real pain as the first part of any workflow is seperating the wheat from the chaff. A possible workaround is: select stared pictures. Apply a keyword such as PICASASTARRED, import into app of choice. Select all PICASASTARRED, then apply the appropriate rating. That's a good onetime fix, but a pain if you want to keep picasa in your workflow....

All that said I love picassa, I really do. But the lack of dual monitor support, lack of RAW support, etc have me looking at moving to another platform. Right now that move will require redoing a lot of work I've already done leading me to the conclusion that it was probably not the best choice of software for this beginner.

editing software for beginner?

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