Thread: Photo editing software

Fred, I can't answer your q. about GIMPshop cp to the others. It's free so obviously your only investment is time.

I've been using PSP 9 for cleaning up and resizing images, and Irfan for basic batch processing, but recently upgraded Elements 2 to 7 for a paltry $115 or so and am really liking it. (IIRC you can change the skin if you don't like the default dark colour).

The 'heal' tool is great for removing spots and scratches from the transparencies I'm scanning in, and the Save to Web function alone is worth the money. What would speed up my scanning and archiving would be the option to save an edit in two file formats: a large TIFF and a compact JPEG for sharing. Maybe it has it; must chk the help file.

Non volatile memory is also needed in large quantities. The slide scanner produces images from 40 to 70 meg using the highest res so a terrabyte drive is going to be needed soon.

If you've only got 512meg of RAM, I'd suggest adding more as Photoshop really likes its memory space.

DDR2 RAM is only about $40 per gig these days, so a stick or two of that (ditch the 512meg stick as its probably slower than the current DDR2 stuff on the market) will make a massive improvement in speed.

Originally Posted by Master Splinter

If you've only got 512meg of RAM, I'd suggest adding more as Photoshop really likes its memory space.

DDR2 RAM is only about $40 per gig these days, so a stick or two of that (ditch the 512meg stick as its probably slower than the current DDR2 stuff on the market) will make a massive improvement in speed.

Very good advice.

Alternatively you can record actions - I use a few to make workloads quicker, but still charge the client the same amount of time to do it prior to creating specific actions for batch processing.

More RAM is always good.

It also helps - if you have several Hard Drives - to run some disk access tests and allocate Photoshop's swapfile(s) to the fastest drive, not just accept the defaults.

Originally Posted by rsser

Just as a btw, Win XP will only address 3.2 gig so there's no point in installing more with this OS.

Not true. 32-bit WinXp has 4GB address space, but after all HW devices (System ROM, APICs, PCI devices, graphics cards, etc.) are allocated at boot you only have around 3.2-3.5GB left available for use. (64-bit XP will address 128GB of RAM, but common consensus is that x64 is a dog anyway. )

Because only the program-accessible RAM is used in Device Manager's "Total RAM" figure, people assume that XP can't see the rest of it. Bzzzt. Wrong.

It is worth installing 4GB in XP.

(BTW, if fully populated with 4GB there is a /3GB switch you can set in the boot.ini which modifies the virtual address space, allocating 3GB for programs to run and the remaining 1GB for the system, but this "squeezes" the OS & degrades overall performance. Really, it should only be used for dedicated systems that only run one memory intensive program all the time. Such as rendering farms.)

I use paint shop pro to do all my photo editing. Its very similar to photoshop, just a different brand. & as has already been said, once you've used it you won't ever want to go back.

Hi bigshed

I have been using the Gimp for about 6 months now and now am comfortable enough with it to use it for any of my photo editing needs. First I started using it on my old PC which had a Pentium 4 with 512M ram, it worked but for some functions were painfully slow(processing files from a 6M pixel image). For the last couple of months I have been using it on a new PC with a dual core and 2G ram.....now I never wait for more than 2-3 seconds for any image processing function, most of the time its instantaneous.

As for Gimp compared to photoshop...I think the Gimp is great...you cant beat the price and it seems to able to do most things photoshop does. I have worked through a few photshop techniques from magazines and the net using gimp and found it pretty much equivalent.

The major difference I see is in the layering functions. Photoshop has a thing called adjustment layers which means instead of duplicating an image to create a new layer to perform some function on, it just creates a layer that stores the settings for that particular function there for making the file smaller.....As far a I can tell Gimp doesn't have this, but it doesn't actually stop you preforming similar techniques. It just means until you combine or your layers and convert to JPEG the file will be larger. Obviously there are probably many other differences but from what I have seen so far the differences only effect how things are done not what you can actually do.....the gimp is a very powerful piece of software and in the right hands (someone with patience to learn) it will do everything photoshop does.....

P.S. the latest thing I have tried in gimp is the RAW converter plugin....it is way better than the software that came with my camera (Nikon viewNX) and works seamlessly with the Gimp.

As an example here is the original and an image I created from it using gimp....following a photoshop tutorial

Thank you all for your input, lots to think about.

One thing that comes through loud and clear is that I need more RAM and to that end I have ordered 2x1Gb, and will be ditching the 512Mb.

I have looked in Adobe Elements 6 to see whether one can change the skin colour, and haven't been able to find a way of doing that.

Like all Adobe products, it is very memory intensive, and not a good memory manager either. I use Adobe Acrobat a lot and eventually it ties up so much memory, and doesn't release it on exit, that you have to actually shut down the computer and start again.

I will have a look at Lightroom, there is a trial version, but before I do that I will look at GIMPShop.

Brown Dogs' glowing testimonial has certainly convinced me that it is worth investing some time in. The investment of time is the main reason that I asked the question here, I am aware that all these programs involve a huge learning curve and I would rather start with the "right" one.

Having seen some of Brown Dog's photos, both here and on another forum, I am convinved that GIMPShop is capable of producing the goods, even if I may not be so capable.

I am certainly impressed with Picasa 3 for organising photos and doing quick edits and fix-ups, it requires virtually no learning curve whatsoever. Things that take me ages to work out how to do in Elements I can do without thinking in Picasa and I only downloaded that when I bought the camera! So it is certainly much more user friendly than the Adobe product and the number of books on how to use Adobe Elements is certainly testimony to that.

So, as soon as my new memory arrives (and I get my new monthly download limit-I am almost out!) I will download GIMPShop and "have a go".

G'day Big Shed,

So your PC doesn't only use the memory needed for an application at the time of usage? Bugger.

Good idea to use the freebie before diving in and spending what you mightn't need to. If you were on a Mac I could give you P/Shop v9, CS2 or if I was really nice CS3, but not CS4 - that's what I use daily. The rest are in the cupboard playing hide-e-go-seek.

Originally Posted by Brown Dog

Hi bigshed

P.S. the latest thing I have tried in gimp is the RAW converter plugin....it is way better than the software that came with my camera (Nikon viewNX) and works seamlessly with the Gimp.

As an example here is the original and an image I created from it using gimp....following a photoshop tutorial

Great images, even the original one! Well done!

I have done some RAW conversion with Digital Photo Professional that came with my cCanon camera, and it seems to work OK, but would rather have an "all -in-one" program that can do it all.
The editing functions in DPP are rather basic, but then again, it was free and it is easy to use (haven't had to resort toreading the manual yet!)

Thanks for your comprehensive answer BD, I appreciate you taking the time.

I've been using PhotoShop Pro for a few years, but following an article in last week's Green Guide, I've just downloaded the newer version of Gimp to see if it's anymore user friendly than it used to be.

Originally Posted by Big Shed

Like all Adobe products, it is very memory intensive, and not a good memory manager either. I use Adobe Acrobat a lot and eventually it ties up so much memory, and doesn't release it on exit, that you have to actually shut down the computer and start again.

Have a look at Foxit reader. It's free and has a tiny footprint on your puter compared with Acrobat.

Hi Big Shed,

Good day!

I'm curious as what brand of DSLR you bought? I think some brands such as Nikon and Canon provide a bundle software in some of their DSLR product lines.

I don't own a DSLR, and am really wanting a Nikon D90. I have a point and shoot Sony DSC-H5. I both use Photoshop and GIMP, mostly for adjusting the images levels and resizing for sharing the photos with relatives and friends, but nothing more complex than that.

Cheers!
Archie

Brown Dogs' glowing testimonial has certainly convinced me that it is worth investing some time in. The investment of time is the main reason that I asked the question here, I am aware that all these programs involve a huge learning curve and I would rather start with the "right" one.

Dont get me wrong....If I could afford Photoshop....I would get it. I would also probably get lightroom 2 (that looks like a really nice program) but for the hundreds of dollars it would cost... I would rather spend that on a new lens or speedlight or one of the hundred other things would love to get for my camera . So unless I get a massive cash injection from somewhere...I will have to stick with the free stuff

Even down the track if you do decide to switch to photoshop (you would have to go to the full blown version not elemmets).....the stuff you learn in Gimp wont be wasted. It has all the same basic but powerful tools that you will use most in editing photos. Things like levels, curves, layers and layer masks....once you undestand how to use them it wont mater if you use Gimp or Photoshop.

I have done some RAW conversion with Digital Photo Professional that came with my cCanon camera, and it seems to work OK, but would rather have an "all -in-one" program that can do it all.
The editing functions in DPP are rather basic, but then again, it was free and it is easy to use (haven't had to resort toreading the manual yet!)

I was very impressed with the gimp plugin( think it is called ufRAw). The main reason i downloaded it was because the Nikon converter I have doesn't have a "slider" control for adjusting WB it only uses pre-set settings that were complicated to set up. And even though the plugin doesn't actually run inside gimp (its a separate program) once you have you photo the way you want it...you just hit the gimp button in the corner and it opens up gimp with your photo (in TIFF format) ready to edit...too easy

Thanks for your comprehensive answer BD, I appreciate you taking the time.

No problem ...glad I could help

Originally Posted by Woodwould

I've been using PhotoShop Pro for a few years, but following an article in last week's Green Guide, I've just downloaded the newer version of Gimp to see if it's anymore user friendly than it used to be.

Have a look at Foxit reader. It's free and has a tiny footprint on your puter compared with Acrobat.

Thanks WW, be interested in your impressions of GIMP

As for an Adobe Acrobat Reader, I hadn't seen the Foxit reader, but a lot of my work is producing pdf documents in Acrobat, but I'll see whether the reader is a bit faster and smaller than Adobe's.

Originally Posted by marvel25

Hi Big Shed,

Good day!

I'm curious as what brand of DSLR you bought? I think some brands such as Nikon and Canon provide a bundle software in some of their DSLR product lines.

I don't own a DSLR, and am really wanting a Nikon D90. I have a point and shoot Sony DSC-H5. I both use Photoshop and GIMP, mostly for adjusting the images levels and resizing for sharing the photos with relatives and friends, but nothing more complex than that.

Cheers!
Archie

G'day Archie and welcome.
I finished yp buying a Canon 450D with 2 kit lenses, very happy so far and I have used the LiveView a lot so far (love the grid lines for my pen photography)
It came with Digital Photo Professional, which is quite easy to use, but has limits to its' editing functions.
If you are only doing basic edits, have a look at Picasa 3, very easy to use.