Which Photoshop do I buy?

[EdJ]

Decided it's time I bought Photoshop for my PC but when I look it up on Amazon, there are loads of them - Elements (really cheap), Student Edition (still fairly cheap), CS4 (quite pricey).

This isn't for professional use, I just want to get something that I can use to make a few edits to my pictures which I'm currently doing using Picassa. Saying that, do I even need Photoshop?

Any thoughts appreciated.

[GetCarter]

If it's just for edits and simple stuff, then Elements will be fine. It'll do 90% of CS4

You can't buy the student edition unless you are a .. er... student

CS4 is proper all singing all dancing.

ETA... no you don't need photoshop. GIMP does it all and its a free download. (Google it - it works just fine - but watchout for the results on google! ).

Edited by GetCarter on Thursday 28th May 17:55

[Funk Odyssey]

GIMP all the way -- free and very very good.

[uriel]

I got a cheap deal when I bought CS3 from a US Adobe dealer. They were selling upgrade copies of CS3 bundled with old unregistered full copies of CS (I think, maybe CS2). That combined with the exchange rate at the time meant I paid just over £200 for a legit copy if CS3. I e-mailed Adobe to clear with them that doing it that way didn't break some licensing clause, and they were fine with it.

[cs02rm0]

Funk Odyssey said:

GIMP all the way -- free and very very good.

+1

[miniman]

My vote goes to Lightroom. Unless you want to do serious editing rather than just post-processing, it is spot on.

[Snapper7]

I have not used Photoshop Elements and therefore couldn't comment on it. But I do use Photoshop (Still on CS3) and I have to say that it is the business. After ten years of using it I am still learning new tricks. But what you can do is amazing.

You could also look at Adobe Lightroom

[Major Bloodnok]

I've got Lightroom, Elements 5 and Paint Shop Po X2 on the desktop and the Gimp on the laptop. The Gimp's fine, but I find it hard to drive. Elements and PSP are similar in capabilities (PSP does a few things that Elements doesn't and vice versa) but, to be honest, Lightroom does 90-95% of all the work - almost everything I post here comes directly from Lightroom. It really is the dog's spheroids (if you work in RAW, that is).

[Funk Odyssey]

Major Bloodnok said:

I've got Lightroom, Elements 5 and Paint Shop Po X2 on the desktop and the Gimp on the laptop. The Gimp's fine, but I find it hard to drive. Elements and PSP are similar in capabilities (PSP does a few things that Elements doesn't and vice versa) but, to be honest, Lightroom does 90-95% of all the work - almost everything I post here comes directly from Lightroom. It really is the dog's spheroids (if you work in RAW, that is).

you work in IT?

[jon-]

Gimp has it's quirks but is certainly the cheapest.

Another vote for lightroom 2. It's a setup from Pisca, and will be a full replacement.

All the tools are designed around post processing of images, so it makes it very easy to blow the contrast, remove a few spots, crop and add a graduation filter. You can do all of the above in 45 seconds once you're used to it.

[andy-xr]

I've been using Lightroom for around 3 months now, to do all lighting/general exposure and colour work, then exporting to Elements as a TIFF to do further processing (ie patch/heal) if needed

I was going to buy CS4, as thats the one I'd need for the D300 NEF files, but I've just bought an unregistered UK CS3 instead which was much cheaper. I want the healing tools that Elements either doesnt have or cant do as well as CS, and I just cant get along with PSP. My thinking is I dont need CS4 if I do the RAW conversion to TIFF in Lightroom.

[EdJ]

Thanks for all the replies. Very helpful. So would Lighthouse 2 replace Picassa? What do you folks think of Picassa?

[cirks]

As I haven't got around to keywording most of my images yet, Picassa is still brilliant for finding images and is quicker than Lightroom. If you want to do really quick changes or 'play around' then I think Picassa is great.
I bought Lightroom discounted and got a excellent deal on CS4 at the same time. To be honest, I think you can live very happily with Lightroom and Elements unless you really need the extras that CS4 gives. I'd suggest you download the trials and have a play before committing. Elements covers nearly everything you could want to do.

[Major Bloodnok]

Funk Odyssey said:

Major Bloodnok said:

I've got Lightroom, Elements 5 and Paint Shop Po X2 on the desktop and the Gimp on the laptop. The Gimp's fine, but I find it hard to drive. Elements and PSP are similar in capabilities (PSP does a few things that Elements doesn't and vice versa) but, to be honest, Lightroom does 90-95% of all the work - almost everything I post here comes directly from Lightroom. It really is the dog's spheroids (if you work in RAW, that is).

you work in IT?

30 years behind the keyboard as a software developer. Fed up with it now, and want to do something else - I'd love to get into photography full-time, but have no idea how to go about it.

The £30-ish I spent on RawShooter Premium was one of the best investments I ever made, since it got me a free copy of Lightroom after Adobe killed RSP. At first I hated Lightroom because it wasn't RSP, but after the steep learning curve, it becomes an absolute joy to use. You have to get a book to get the most out of it, though. Martin English's book is very good.

Picasa's a good little package for minor tweaks and stuff, but you'll soon exhaust its possibilities. I keep it around because it's free and understands RAW. Having said that, I mostly use it for pulling my Picasa web images down for putting on the iPhone.

[Robert C]

I have Lightroom, Elements 7 and CS3.

For all the pictures I take I use Lightroom with the odd trip in Elements.

I also receive pictures to go on a number of websites and into magazines I then use Elements for them in most cases. The most I use CS3 for is to convert images from RGB to CMYK for professional printing.

If you are only talking about taking a limited number of pictures Elements would be my choice and its pretty intuitive to use.

I too have tried the GIMP and agree with the person who commented it was hard to drive.

Robert

[miniman]

There is a version of Gimp called Gimpshop IIRC which overlays the commands / toolbars etc from Photoshop onto Gimp so that it is more familiar for PS users. Nonetheless, I still couldn't get the hang of it and :cough: bought :cough: a copy of CS4.

[artov60]

On the Picassa angle I was introduced to Faststone Image Viewer. For lots of little tweaks and organising pictures I prefer it to Picassa. Generally I use CS3 but there is a lot to learn to get the best out of it. I still have a long way to go.

[Famous Graham]

If you're finding Lightroom doesn't *quite* do everything you want in terms of workflow, then look for the Mogrify plugin. It adds a whole lot of functionality like borders, watermarks and so on.

[Major Bloodnok]

Famous Graham said:

If you're finding Lightroom doesn't *quite* do everything you want in terms of workflow, then look for the Mogrify plugin. It adds a whole lot of functionality like borders, watermarks and so on.

It is indeed very good, as are Jeffrey Friedl's Flickr, Picasa, etc. upload plugins. The only irritation with the mogrify plugin I have is that the "add text" module doesn't recognise the copyright symbol.

[dibbly_dobbler]

Chaps - forgive the thread resurrection but I am struggling to get the hang of GIMP and I wondered if anybody knows a good help site (strictly idiot level )

Alternatively maybe I should give GIMPshop a go as I will probably get Photoshop at some point in the future ?

Any help/advice gratefully received !