What photo editing software? and a few pics for feedback
- This topic has 25 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated Apr 22, 2009 at 5:16 pm by
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Hey guy, since the birth of my son, my wife and I have both started to work on our photography skills. We have been using picasa and gimp(very little) to edit our photos. We are wanting to move up to a better program, Any idea on what software to go with? Photoshop elements? Here is a few of mine and my wife’s, I would love to get feedback.
I have Lightroom and Photoshop on my PC – the Photoshop is an older version (CS2), and I can’t see myself buying a new copy anytime soon.
I’m in the same boat as you Josh. I downloaded the trial version of Elements 7 this past weekend and played with it. Unless I’m missing something….it will do everything I need. It is also on sale for the next few weeks at $59.
I look forward to the responses.
Lightroom or Apple’s Aperture hands down. Great ways to catalogue and tinker with your photos. I’m pretty sure you can free trials of both so you can try before you decide to buy.
I use photoshop CS3..
If I shot less, Lightroom might work fine, but I don’t like the library system one little bit.
(Don’t get me started ;D)Bridge is good for editing and processing and Photoshop great for post.
I used to use Capture One, but they lost interest in real photography and started pandering to wankers with medium format digital backs and all the time in the world to process up the 19 frames they took over the weekend before they went back to work at the practice. 😉
(Don’t get me started ;D ;D)I think if I only did personal stuff I would build a bridge, and use Lightroom.. 😉
www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
I use Picture Window Pro 5 ( Digital Light and Color) 16 bit per channel in all operations ( which is unusual) – have been using it since V3 for all published images with no complaints from AD’s /Editors or me .
Very Photo based
As a Nikon User, I’ve been quite pleased with Nikon Transfer, View NX and Capture NX, and plan soon to upgrade to the newest versions. Â For post processing, I will sometimes switch over into Photoshop.
Thanks for all the info guys, I just downloaded the lightroom 30day trail, so I have some learning to do.
I have Lightroom and Photoshop on my PC – the Photoshop is an older version (CS2), and I can’t see myself buying a new copy anytime soon. Â Lightroom is the reason for this- it does 99% of what most photographers need photoshop to do, plus it organizes/catalogs your photos.
If I was to start over tomorrow I’d just buy Lightroom and be done with it.
Re; Lightroom – I couldn’t agree more.
I also will add David that I’d love to know why you don’t like LR. I’m assuming by your post that you seem not to like it when you shoot heavy, when in fact I think its ability to handle heavy shoots is one of its many strengths.
Can you expand a bit?
Kendal
The Lightroom library system doesn’t do it for me because it assumes I want to hang onto photos.
The fact is that I can fill my computers in a single shoot and need to edit, process, back-up and then delete stuff very quickly to make room for the next job.
If Lightroom had a simple file browser like bridge It would be great, but the insist you do things their way and their way is set-up for weekend warriors and GWC’s – not burnt out- technophobe -has been guys that yell at their computers.. ;DMaybe the library thing could be made to work for me now that hard drives are so cheap ?
I’m going to re-visit the situation when I update my computers next.
www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
I have a few questions on this topic as well.
What is the difference in CS3 or 4 and lightroom. Why would I need CS4 if light room is soo good?
Do most of you store your images on an external HD? I was keeping them on my C drive but was told it was slowing my PC down so I moved them to an external HD. I didn’t see any improvement to my PC’s speed. ???
The Lightroom library system doesn’t do it for me because it assumes I want to hang onto photos.
The fact is that I can fill my computers in a single shoot and need to edit, process, back-up and then delete stuff very quickly to make room for the next job.
If Lightroom had a simple file browser like bridge It would be great, but the insist you do things their way and their way is set-up for weekend warriors and GWC’s – not burnt out- technophobe -has been guys that yell at their computers.. ;DMaybe the library thing could be made to work for me now that hard drives are so cheap ?
I’m going to re-visit the situation when I update my computers next.
It will work for you amigo.
I have a few questions on this topic as well.
What is the difference in CS3 or 4 and lightroom. Why would I need CS4 if light room is soo good?
Do most of you store your images on an external HD? I was keeping them on my C drive but was told it was slowing my PC down so I moved them to an external HD. I didn’t see any improvement to my PC’s speed. ???
LR will do the basic editing you need – but you can call an external editor (CS3/4, PSP, etc) from inside LR, and it’ll edit a copy with the LR adjustments already applied, and then bring the image edited with the external program back into LR when it’s done.
As for the comments re; computer speed – that’s actually backward. If your photo library exists on an external drive, it’ll almost always be slower to access those files than if they resided on an internal drive, as the bus is slower. Externals are great for backups though.
Kendal
CS3 is pretty much perfect for me.
LR I think might have a slightly better cataloguing system but lacks PS.CS3 or LR though I DETEST their “loupe”. Its such a clumsy and awkard way to view enlarged files when checking for critical sharpness. It’s not uncommon for me to come home with hundreds of files after any given day. My first pass deletes anything I simply don’t like or has obvious problems.
That can leave me with 2, 3 or more shots that are very similiar, where the only difference may be wing position/head turned this/way that…Small minute differences. Thats when I start enlarging photos to begin my second cull. The best one I ever used was RAW Shooter which LR was based off.
Basically Adobe bought what was probably the best RAW converter on the market as they were developing LR, many thought it was to get rid RS before bringing LR to market. Used some of it, and did away with the rest.
What a shame
Hi Kendal – the thing is I don’t want to keep a library at all and would find things filling up fast if I did.
Is it possible to delete everything after an edit – or is it a lot of faffing around ?
(please think IQ similar to dog when explaining computer stuff :D)
www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
Thanks again for all the help. I like lightroom, I still may try a few others, but so far I’m really liking it. Here is a few I have worked on. Please let me know what you think.
I don’t use Lightroom, but I assume the same thing happens there as in Aperture, and that is once the libraries get “Big”, the whole thing begins to slow down significantly? And what I’ve taken to doing is deleting old projects from the library – backed up separately in raw and the vault anyway. Does that make sense for increasing speed? Shannon
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