Thread: Photoshop and Picasa

Photoshop is aimed at people who work with photos professionally. It supports a number of extra colour models aside from RGB, such as CMYK, which is the colour space used in commercial printing.

It also allows you to specify colours from ink matching systems such as Pantone, as well as being able to undertake other tasks specific to getting ink on paper - such as grey component replacement and under colour removal (for example, if you are going to print a picture on newsprint, you want to make sure that no area of the photo receives more than about 300% ink, otherwise your colours start blocking up).

The more recent versions also give some really nice features for integrating with 3D packages so that you can bring 3D work into Photoshop to blend it with real images.

It also works very well with InDesign, the leading desk top publishing software.

Fair enough MS. You make it sound like the photographic version of desktop publishing software. What I'm specifically wondering is if for some reason unkown to me now I NEED Photoshop. As a person who likes landscape photography and doesn't really want to muck around with photos too much (a bit of a purist attitude), should I be happy with Picasa? When I saw the dodge and burn tool in PS I almost bit the bullet and bought it, but then I was disappointed with the colour of the "burnt"areas and the inability to adjust the burn so that it was light (trying to darken clouds on the distant horizon).

For most people tweaking and organizing photos, like the 4 things you mentioned you most often do, I wouldn't bother to get PS.

PS comes into it's own if you need to really manipulate and combine and blend multiple images within the same image. I've been using PS on and off for about 15 years and I still don't feel I have come to grips with it. Probably the most powerful feature I use in Photoshop that Picasa doesn't have is layers. If you don't work with combining multiple images into the one image then you probably don't need to worry about it.

There is a halfway house between Picasa and the full blown Photoshop.....it is called Photoshop Elements (also by Adobe).

Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 - reviews - Software and Services - Graphics & Publishing - PC World

Basically a cut down version of Photoshop, with about 95% of the capabilities. More than enough for even the keenest amateur, but at a fraction of the full Photoshop price.

I have an older version (Elements 5.0), which I use alongside Picasa.

I'd say only print/photo professionals need anything more than the capabilities of Photoshop Elements.

Master Splinter gave a very good explanation of P/Shop.

I know of one person who knows it inside and out, all he does is P/shop retouching for adland, while the rest of us mere mortals may never know it 100%.

I've often been asked by people who like to shoot landscapes on the digital cameras as a hobby and I agree with Mr Bush, P/Shop Elements is pretty much the guts of what you need, without the $ of P/shop. Unless you have a kid in school/Uni or the like and you can get a student discount, in which case I would buy Adobe CS4 Design Premium.

There's the GIMP - GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program

It's free, and there are add-ins to make it behave very much like PhotoShop.

A Plan B would be to see if there are student editions of PS available.

Cheers,
Andrew

Originally Posted by Rossluck

You make it sound like the photographic version of desktop publishing software. That's exactly what it is - processes that used to be done by a scanner operator (a few years of TAFE and a $60,000 Hell Drum Scanner are nowadays surpassed by a $1000 flatbed scanner and a copy of Photoshop)
When I saw the dodge and burn tool in PS I almost bit the bullet and bought it, but then I was disappointed with the colour of the "burnt"areas and the inability to adjust the burn so that it was light (trying to darken clouds on the distant horizon)

Here's my workflow for that sort of task - Select the area you want to work on (various methods depending on shape and colour differences in the image), copy it, paste it in place, then adjust the level of that layer using the 'Image - Adjustments - Levels' tool.

If you are still not getting the detail, then with something anonymous like clouds, I'd ditch the copied layer, delete the selected area in the original image, and slide a new cloud backdrop from another picture under it and move it around till I liked how it looked.

If I wanted a really specific effect, I'd load up Terragen, load a cloud rendering routine and generate a cloudscape to my requirements.

Attached photos are entirely fake. When nature doesn't cooperate, fake it!!! (from the Terragen image gallery)

Once again we're moving into the area that I have doubts about, montages and so on that deviate from what I see as the ärt"of taking good photographs. I mean, I don't mind other people doing it, and the images look great, but I just want to snap what's actually there, and make minor adjustments to overcome problems such as my brain tilt.

Thanks for the great responses everyone. Much appreciated.

Hi Ross luck,
Yes definatley? Picasa 3 for me, as it can straighten out those crook Photos, takes the blur away to. I use a Canon A 520, & it has to be kept still, as it does not have that Stabiliser Gadget built in. It only has the small screen as well.
I have taken approx. 6500 photos with it & I would have 95% clarity on those Photos.
I could show you some of my Woody Pics, but I'm struggling to get them on the Screen.
Regards,
issatree.

...on the other hand, you can place a polarising filter over the lens, and take a few seconds to orient it to bring out the maximum contrast in the clouds.

...on the gripping hand, another option is to take two identical exposures, one at a recommended exposure and the other underexposed by two stops, then combine them into one (some camera software already lets you merge two pics for a hi-def composite)

Pic from www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/high-dynamic-range