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Thread: Photo editing software
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7th April 2009, 11:52 AM #1
Photo editing software
Having bought a DSLR recently I find myself using photo editing software to a greater extent.
When using my "happy snapper" I was satisfied with using AcDSee, a basic photo editing program that also allowed quick and easy change of image size for uploading to the forum.
It does not however handle RAW (later versions might). I have played with Adobe Photoshop Elements (6) but my computer slows down to a crawl (512Mb RAM). Am in the process of ordering more RAM, but in the meantime I have played with Picasa 3, which does a good job, particularly with organising pictures. When downsizing photos in Picasa 3 to 800x600, it finishes up with image around the 200Kb mark, from the original 4.5Mb.
I have read good things about the open source (free) GIMPShop program.
Does anyone here use this, and how do you find it compared to the Photoshop type programs, either the full blown version or Elements?
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7th April 2009 11:52 AM # ADSGoogle Adsense Advertisement
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7th April 2009, 12:00 PM #2.
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Once you use full Photoshop, . . . . . . everything else seems second rate.
If you want to work with RAW images and use the more or less unlimited undo then you need a lot of RAM. I'm using a 4 year old Mac with 2Gb of RAM and although the speed is OK the RAM is barely enough for serious work. I work a lot with panoramic images of ~200Mb each so I really need to update sometime.
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7th April 2009, 12:11 PM #3
Photshop is by far the best, but a full license is very expensive. Photoshop elements is pretty good for general home use and will set you back something like $150 (I think).
GIMP is really very powerful and can do some amazing stuff and is free, but i would say it is more of an image manipulation program rather than photo editing program. It's also fairly complex (as opposed to Photoshop CS3 which is very complex).
If it's for home use, go for Elements. It will do what you need it to without amazing complexity. If you crave complexity and a four-figure license fee, CS3 is the bees-knees...
For free stuff, Irfanview is also a very good, fast, lightweight program to do batch edits, cropping, etc, much in the same vein as ACDSee.
Oh, and Picasa is top shelf for organisation. I have tried plenty of apps for photo management and nothing comes close, free or otherwise, to the simplicity and ease of use with Picasa.
Hope this all helps.
Dave
PS. You are right - 512MB wont cut it with anything capable of doing decent editing (GIMP included). Go for 2GB - depending on how old the RAM is it should be fairly cheap....but together with the coffee civility flowed back into him
Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour
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7th April 2009, 12:25 PM #4
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7th April 2009, 12:35 PM #5
Sorry guys, I haven't got esoteric hardware
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7th April 2009, 12:42 PM #6.
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One way to look at this is that good quality image processing software and computers replaces film and processing. People thought nothing of spending X on a camera and then maybe even 10X on film and processing during the life of the camera. Good Software and a decent PC won't cost as much.
For me i's a bit like like buying a thicknesser without factoring in a decent DC and appropriate PPE.
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7th April 2009, 12:48 PM #7GOLD MEMBER
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I would try GIMP and see if it does what you need it to do. After all, given the price you have nothing to lose. You could do with more RAM though. I have 1GB and find most photo editing I do is OK, but I tend to edit JPGs not RAW. The card in the camera is too small to store RAW. I have sometimes purchased slightly older versions of software on eBay at significant savings, which could be a way to go if you want to use Photoshop.
PeterThe other day I described to my daughter how to find something in the garage by saying "It's right near my big saw". A few minutes later she came back to ask: "Do you mean the black one, the green one, or the blue one?".
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7th April 2009, 12:52 PM #8Cro-Magnon
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Lightroom.
It is a digital darkroom, giving you the level of control you'd expect from a film-based darkroom, but not including the warp/text/fiddle-around stuff you get with image editors.... as long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. (A.Hitler)
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7th April 2009, 12:54 PM #9
forgot about lightroom...
Is that a Mac only app or have they written it for Windows as well? (I'm too lazy to check )
Cheers,
Dave...but together with the coffee civility flowed back into him
Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour
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7th April 2009, 12:57 PM #10Cro-Magnon
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Ozkaban, Windows too. I run it on Vista.
... as long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. (A.Hitler)
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7th April 2009, 12:59 PM #11
Elements here
Upgrade the RAM most definitely, go to 4GB if you can but at least 2GB as a minimum.
You will notice that so many other things go faster and improve not just the photo software.
We use Elements at home and for most of the stuff we do it is fine, we got it as a bundle with a DVD/Video converrter software thing which seemed good value at the time, but as have never used it probsably wasn't worth the extra $40."Rotten to the Core"
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7th April 2009, 01:04 PM #12
Have been reading about Lightroom and it seems that most people use this as a pre-quel to Photoshop. They do the RAW conversion to TIFF or JPG in Lightroom and then go to Photoshop.
Am I interpreting this correctly?
As an aside, I find the black background look of Lightroom, Photoshop and Elements very annoying, as I do websites that have text on a black background.
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7th April 2009, 01:25 PM #13Hewer of wood
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Just as a btw, Win XP will only address 3.2 gig so there's no point in installing more with this OS.
Cheers, Ern
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7th April 2009, 01:29 PM #14
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7th April 2009, 01:32 PM #15
I have the full adobe suite including Photoshop, it is very complicated and I use it rarely.
I use Aperture on my Mac, very simple and cheap."There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark."
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