Help me choose some photo software

[wagon and horses]

Evening all,

I am looking to start to play with some of the photos I have taken with some photoshop type software.

Can anyone recommend any particular version/brand?

Cheers

[Chicken Pox]

Never used it but some here swear by GIMP (afaik Free), I have old Photoshop CS2 and latest Elements 8 which seems to do pretty much the same job for ~£70 plenty of tutorials on the web.

[flat-planedCrank]

wagon and horses said:

Evening all,

I am looking to start to play with some of the photos I have taken with some photoshop type software.

Can anyone recommend any particular version/brand?

Cheers

I'm guessing you have taken JPG images rather than RAW photos?

Photoshop Elements 8 (the latest one) will probably do everything you want - photo management and powerful editing tools - its about £59 on Amazon.




Cheers.

[wagon and horses]

I can take RAW, not been bothering up to now.

[flat-planedCrank]

wagon and horses said:

I can take RAW, not been bothering up to now.

Fair enough, but I've just checked and it looks like Photoshop Elements actually uses a similar (might actually be the same) RAW importer. So either way its probably worth a look.

You can download a demo - http://www.adobe.com/go/tryphotoshop_elements_win



What sort of editing do you want to do? If you don't actually want 'pixel pushing' level of control then some RAW processing software might be more suited / faster to use.


Cheers.

[wagon and horses]

Just to play around really, nothing much really - tones, filtering etc

[flat-planedCrank]

wagon and horses said:

Just to play around really, nothing much really - tones, filtering etc

Photoshop Elements is probably perfect then.

For a bit more money (like £200) you could also look at Adobe Lightroom, it won't give you fine control like Elements will, but for image management and general processing it seems to have a good rep.

There is a demo of Lightroom as well - http://www.adobe.com/go/trylightroom


Cheers.

[cracked one off]

wagon and horses said:

Just to play around really, nothing much really - tones, filtering etc

http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDownload.htm

free and works ok for basic stuff.

[heyho]

If you've never used any PP software at all, I would look at paint.net to start with.

[deltaevo16]

Lightroom best picture editor IMHO

[rottie102]

Free Picasa from Google is really good and it handles RAW files ok.

[Eggle]

If you google lightroom 3, Adobe are giving free downloads of the Beta version. ( Usage will cease when LR3 is released, but it will give you a good trial, with no restrictions )

[Platinum]

Does Photoshop use the same interface as Elements? i.e. would it be easy to move onto Photoshop and apply what you have learnt from Elements?

[flat-planedCrank]

Platinum said:

Does Photoshop use the same interface as Elements? i.e. would it be easy to move onto Photoshop and apply what you have learnt from Elements?

The 'editing' bit is pretty similar, photoshop is not as hand-holdy (a technical photography term) as elements though.

In short - pretty much so, yeah


(You can always try the demo of Elements's pricey relative to compare - http://www.adobe.com/go/tryphotoshop )


Cheers.

[Platinum]

flat-planedCrank said:

Platinum said:

Does Photoshop use the same interface as Elements? i.e. would it be easy to move onto Photoshop and apply what you have learnt from Elements?

The 'editing' bit is pretty similar, photoshop is not as hand-holdy (a technical photography term) as elements though.

In short - pretty much so, yeah


(You can always try the demo of Elements's pricey relative to compare - http://www.adobe.com/go/tryphotoshop )


Cheers.

Thanks.

I have downloaded the trials of CS5 and Elements, so will have a play around. There seem to be a few copies of CS4 on Ebay that I might bid on.

[ian in lancs]

Lightroom is a great organiser and editor. I also use elements for some portfolio editing (layer stuff) and as a route to specialised portrait editors. LR rules!