Advice for a novice

[tankerman24]

Any advice please, Im a novice when it comes to photography, always had a camera to take the usual family and hobby pics. I dont have an expensive camera (Finepix s5600) and with my other hobbies Im not allowed one (Westfield and now thinking about a Motorbike). What is a cheap and easy to use pc program to use to alter my images. Photoshop etc pros and cons.
Ive seen some of the superb photos on here and would like to experiment a little. thanks

[beano500]

Advice:

Take some photos



Take some more photos



Then take some more photos

(then post some on here and ask for critique and comment!)

[Dogsey]

beano500 said:

Advice:

Take some photos



Take some more photos



Then take some more photos

(then post some on here and ask for critique and comment!)

^^^ What he said ^^^ ... and download Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/) to adjust the photo's ... it's like Photoshop for free!

Edited by Dogsey on Thursday 4th October 14:20

[ajg31]

I would say dont jump into DSLR ownership. I personally find my 350 too much for me to get fantastic shots from, and find more times than not i get sub point and click pics

[andybuk99]

Photoshop is the programme you should be aiming for, if you can get a version 8 for a reasonable amount go for it. Gimp is ok but if you are serious go for photoshop because of all the 3rd party addons etc.

[sstein]

GIMP is awful, it's obtuse, the interface is terrible, unintuitive and dated.

I hate it!

Get photoshop.

-

Stuart

Edited by sstein on Friday 5th October 11:12

[JohnS]

I'd recommend downloading the 1 month trial of Adobe Lightroom as a starting point.

It doesn't have the ability to do the artistic things like changing colours, filter effects, removing bits from the photo etc, but it's a useful tool for cataloging your photos and doing basic adjustments for saturation, contrast, exposure, noise reduction, sharpening, red eye removal, cropping etc.

I find it's fine for 98% or more of the photos I take, that just need a basic tweak and cropping. It does help you focus on taking the right photo in the first place which I found very helpful.

Although I have a copy of Photoshop at work, I rarely use it these days.

John