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3 Aug 2012, 12:01 (Ref:3115578) | #1 | ||
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Photo Editing software.
I assume Photoshop is still 'king' as far as photo editing software goes? But given the prohibitive price for a casual dabbler such as myself what are the best alternatives? I've looked at Photoshop lightroom and Photoshop elements but I'm not sure which is better (or why) and exactly wht they offer. All I'm really after is some simple tweaks to colour, contrast, brightness, sharpening and that kind of thing as well as some minor editing. I've used Picasa but that seems a bit limited - anybody got any recommendations?
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3 Aug 2012, 12:39 (Ref:3115593) | #2 | ||
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Adobe Lightroom is the answer. I use it for most stuff...
It doesn't really work with layers, which is CS5s BIG USP. I have a copy of 2 if you would like one? |
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Tim Yorath Ecurie Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Fan of "the sacred monster Christophe Bouchut"... |
3 Aug 2012, 13:26 (Ref:3115608) | #3 | ||
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GIMP can do image processing and is free. Never tried it for photography but it can do most of what Photoshop can do.
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Andrew Cliffe - Norwich Photo & Racing Exposure |
3 Aug 2012, 15:20 (Ref:3115651) | #4 | ||
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What's the difference between lightroom and elements? I would guess your use of it is beyond what I'd be looking at doing given that you're a far more comitted photographer than me
I'll take a look at GIMP, I'd not heard of that before. |
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3 Aug 2012, 15:34 (Ref:3115654) | #5 | |
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GIMP was Linux only at one time but now it is ported for a PC, just download this…
http://www.gimp.org/windows/ Or if you want to try Linux… http://www.artistx.org/site3/ Burn it to CD/DVD, or you can run it off a thumb drive. You can boot to it and run it on a PC without installing it or changing your PC in any way, it has a lot of 2D-3D software including GIMP. |
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3 Aug 2012, 15:53 (Ref:3115659) | #6 | ||
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Personally I've found that most modern editing software works ok once you know how to use it properly.
It all depends on how far you want to go as the top of the range ones(read expensive) are really only for the "top of the range" professional pictures and has so much on them that most people wouldn't or couldn't use hardly any of the facilities. It is possible to produce good pictures from a cheap or free editing system but lets face it learning how to take that perfect picture in the camera in the first place is best ! |
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Balls of steel (knob of butter) They're Asking For Larkins. ( Proper beer) not you're Eurofizz crap. Hace más calor en España. Me han conocido a hablar un montón cojones! Send any cheques and cash to PO box 1 Lagos Nigeria Africa ! |
3 Aug 2012, 16:11 (Ref:3115679) | #7 | |||
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Yep - but it's my general lack of competance in this area that leads me to need editing software |
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3 Aug 2012, 17:00 (Ref:3115696) | #8 | ||
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The fact is that you can't make a "silk purse out of a pigs ear" and a rubbish picture can never be made perfect.
A sharp focus is IMHO the key to a "good" picture and no editing afterwards is going to make it loads better in that respect. At least digital photography has made the ability to take hundreds of shots for that "one" a dammed sight easier. I like several posters was brought up on "film" where you couldn't see the results immediately and had to wait until you got home and developed it so you learnt the hard way in cost of film/chemicals/time etc. Most of the professional photographers on a shoot would take loads and loads of films to get those few shots that would make the mags back in those "old days" Photography is still the same as it was since it was invented where the perfect exposure is "X" made by speed and aperture depending on what you are taking and what you want to achieve. I don't know what type of camera you have but if you can experiment on manual settings (and understand what they do) that will teach you a lot more than playing about on computer software. Last edited by GORDON STREETER; 3 Aug 2012 at 17:05. |
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Balls of steel (knob of butter) They're Asking For Larkins. ( Proper beer) not you're Eurofizz crap. Hace más calor en España. Me han conocido a hablar un montón cojones! Send any cheques and cash to PO box 1 Lagos Nigeria Africa ! |
3 Aug 2012, 17:29 (Ref:3115708) | #9 | ||
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Lightroom was designed specifically for photographers and I will admit I rarely need to venture outside its capabilities. So, 90% of the time I use it. It will do non-destructive edits - contrast and exposure adjustments, sharpening and minor blemish removal - spots, redeye, and so on. Has a good cataloguing system so you can find an image quickly.
Photoshop comes from the opposite end of the spectrum and is for visual artists to create an image from scratch or to edit images. Lots of tools, many of which are not needed by a photographer. Photoshop Elements has 80% of the features of photoshop at 30% of the price, but if you like what Picasa offers, Lightroom offers the same, plus a lot more of similar style of things, and then you can open the image in Photoshop, PSE or GIMP for the final tweaks that Lightroom isn't designed to do. Adobe give 30 day demos of each I think. |
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3 Aug 2012, 23:04 (Ref:3115800) | #10 | |
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or, if you're a mac bandit, pixelmator is a great photoshop alternative.
personally i can't get my head around lightroom, but i figured out how to use photoshop first a long time ago so i guess it's just what you're used to |
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4 Aug 2012, 13:39 (Ref:3115968) | #11 | ||
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Although SLRs and some compacts/bridge cameras have the ability to use manual I'm surprised how many people only shoot snaps on "auto", they buy a decent camera/lens set up and then shoot "baby on the lawn classics" when a decent compact or even a smartphone would suffice for what they want as they are not likely to print them out and even if they do only 7x5 maximum.
I used to develop loads of B&W and colour films for myself and others and I remember one person that had brought a 35mm non reflex camera and when I looked at the film some shots were OKish but most were under or over exposed. When I asked him how he worked the exposure out he said when he brought the camera from the shop the salesman said "I'd advise you to set it on 125th at F5.6", so that's what he did for years and wondered why most of his photos were never that good when he got them back from whatever firm he sent the film to ! At least a simple modern point and shoot camera will produce good results as long as people understand its capabilities and can work round them. I'm not knocking any editing software as it's a free world, I use one myself that can produce amazing results but a apart from cropping and the occasional tweak on light/dark/contrast I leave well alone. If of course you want to get rid of that "dustbin or skip" and substitute a tree in an important wedding shot then you can do it, but you shouldn't have got it in the shot in the first place |
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Balls of steel (knob of butter) They're Asking For Larkins. ( Proper beer) not you're Eurofizz crap. Hace más calor en España. Me han conocido a hablar un montón cojones! Send any cheques and cash to PO box 1 Lagos Nigeria Africa ! |
6 Aug 2012, 15:51 (Ref:3116708) | #12 | ||
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Sometimes you cannot choose you Point of View, so the odd bin, etc, sneaks in.
Lightroom has a Clone/Heal feature to 'lose' them, but you need to watch what it's doing at times... Mainly LR is crop/straighten, auto levels, then teak to what I want, and a sharpening tweak. That's it. I have CS5, but I haven't really used it for about a year now. The guys on the magazine use it, as it handles layers, which they need to use... |
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Tim Yorath Ecurie Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Fan of "the sacred monster Christophe Bouchut"... |
7 Aug 2012, 10:43 (Ref:3117038) | #13 | ||||||||||
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Blimey. That's a lengthy post! Thanks for the opinions though Last edited by BertMk2; 7 Aug 2012 at 10:44. Reason: How long is that post?! |
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7 Aug 2012, 15:14 (Ref:3117162) | #14 | ||
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Blimey Bert ! that was a long post to read, it took me two beers in time
Seriously though it is possible to get carried away with editing software to "improve" a picture and someone's idea of a masterpiece might be someone else's rubbish, photography like loads of other things is subjective. While I'm on this subject there was a photographic exhibition in the next town down here last week by someone that probably cost them a fair bit of time and money to set up. I may not be the best judge of photos but to me they were poor to mediocre and my wife would have won hands down if it was a competition ! Whatever software you finish up with I hope that it does what you want and you are going the right way in trying different things, like anything practice makes perfect. Don't fall into the trap that you need a million pound camera/lens set up to take that amazing shot either, I'd like a quid for everytime I've heard people say to my other half "your camera takes terrific pictures" |
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Balls of steel (knob of butter) They're Asking For Larkins. ( Proper beer) not you're Eurofizz crap. Hace más calor en España. Me han conocido a hablar un montón cojones! Send any cheques and cash to PO box 1 Lagos Nigeria Africa ! |
7 Aug 2012, 16:03 (Ref:3117188) | #15 | ||||||
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7 Aug 2012, 19:15 (Ref:3117242) | #16 | ||
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If you are looking for an alternative there is Corel Paintshop Pro X4 (Which I was pre-installed on my computer when I bought it.) which does the same role as Photoshop and has a similar interface to it.
However I think Photoshop CS5 blows it out of the water in usability. Plus Adobe Bridge CS5 is useful for working with the metadata of files and RAW's. The single major problem is with Adobe products is their price and unless you are a student, the current edition of Photoshop -CS6- will set you back £667.20, while the creative suite which has other packages such as Illustrator can range from £1,810.80 to £2,667.60. You can subscribe to the Adobe Creative suite however from £46.88. Still, if it's only for private use Corel might better sense, it's only £60. Word of warning though if you are using Corel, watch out if you are opening files. Before I got CS5, I had to save files as TIFF's in order to work on college projects at home I noticed it had the odd habit of flattening my layers. Hope this helps! |
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2 Oct 2012, 17:56 (Ref:3145312) | #17 | ||
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Reading through this lot makes me realise how much out on a limb I am with this! I have been using Corel Photopaint since its early versions and can't see anything you can do in Photoshop that I can't in Corel. I tried to switch to Photoshop but just found Corel more comfortable.
On the other hand, I now do most of my workflow in ACDSee Pro. It looks a lot like Lightroom, works very much the same, and doesn't seem to have any drawbacks. |
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24 Oct 2012, 12:51 (Ref:3156998) | #18 | |
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I recently tested Gimp, but felt much more comfortable with good old Photoshop. I just didn't like the interface. Maybe it's different when you don't know PS.
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“People can have the Model T in any color – so long as it’s black.” ― Henry Ford |
3 Nov 2012, 09:23 (Ref:3161810) | #19 | ||
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Windows Live Photo Gallery that is a free download from Microsoft is all you will need for the level of 'expertise' you are seeking.
It can make good photo's better, and save some rubbish from being a complete waste of time. Easy to use with just a little patience and time experimenting with the options. 'Proper Photographers' either don't need editing software or need top of the range products, you and me never need spend money on such things. www.picasaweb.google.co.uk/rbmapics Cheers, Bob. |
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3 Nov 2012, 16:55 (Ref:3161924) | #20 | ||
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I do very little editing, but I find my ageing copy of Photoshop does everything I need.
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3 Nov 2012, 17:18 (Ref:3161939) | #21 | ||
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Quite right, you shouldn't have to alter photos that much apart from cropping and maybe contrast, take them correctly in the first place, in this day and age with digi cameras even a trained monkey can do it !!!
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Balls of steel (knob of butter) They're Asking For Larkins. ( Proper beer) not you're Eurofizz crap. Hace más calor en España. Me han conocido a hablar un montón cojones! Send any cheques and cash to PO box 1 Lagos Nigeria Africa ! |
3 Nov 2012, 19:23 (Ref:3161978) | #22 | |||
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Cheers, Bob. |
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3 Nov 2012, 19:27 (Ref:3161979) | #23 | ||
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Me too.....
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3 Nov 2012, 19:41 (Ref:3161988) | #24 | ||
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Easy peasy!
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Balls of steel (knob of butter) They're Asking For Larkins. ( Proper beer) not you're Eurofizz crap. Hace más calor en España. Me han conocido a hablar un montón cojones! Send any cheques and cash to PO box 1 Lagos Nigeria Africa ! |
4 Nov 2012, 18:30 (Ref:3162509) | #25 | ||
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