Best photo editing software?

Nickanoor · Jul 22, 2010

Well, while reading Scott Kelby's Digital Photography, he talks a lot about Adobe Photoshop to sharpen images, add color schemes, etc. If I want a really good editing software, should I go for that or something else? What do you use? Thanks!

bigboi3 · Jul 22, 2010

I use Aperture 3(apple guy) and Adobe Photoshop CS4

JasonLambert · Jul 22, 2010

Photoshop CS2 and Lightroom 3 here. Just about every shot gets a little of each.

Taylor510ce · Jul 22, 2010

Photoshop CS5. Not only is it the best, its the industry standard, so you are going to find much more help online and many more educational sources to help. However, it does take a long time to get up to speed with it. If you want to just do quick adjustments and crops, go with lightroom and save some cash. If you want the most possible control you could have over editing your pictures, go with Photoshop CS5.

Nickanoor · Jul 22, 2010

Cool, so PS is probably a good thing to have right? I'm sure he'll tell me more about it in the book, but what do you mostly need to do with each photo? I know it depends on the photo, I'm just new to this. lol

astroskeptic · Jul 22, 2010

Kelby goes into good detail about the standard PP workflow. For me, it typically consists of exposure adjustment, color balancing, cropping, and maybe some sharpening.

By the way, if you're a student see if you can buy PS at academic pricing. It's way cheaper than the standard rate and for future reference, buy when the new version is coming out. I was able to buy CS4 at 30% off the already cheap academic rate and get a free upgrade to CS5, and yes, I got separate licenses for each!

vtf · Jul 22, 2010

PS has a pretty good sized learning curve. My suggestion is download a trial of each and try them out. Gimp, PS, PSE (PSE is the downsized version of PS.), Lightroom etc. Don't take just a few suggestions, do a lot of research. Some of these are expensive and some are free that give similiar results.

pbelarge · Jul 22, 2010

Google Photoshop and/or photoshop tutorials...hold on to your computer.
Then afte weeks of reading/viewing videos come-on back...:mrgreen:

here you go, 35,600,000 hits
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source...WhgS18_XODAAAAKoEBU_QJ2AC&fp=82f809093a86c193

Nickanoor · Jul 22, 2010

Alright, I'll see what I can do with all of this. Thank everyone for your help!

sovietdoc · Jul 22, 2010

On PC I use Lightroom 3, Photoshop CS5 and OnOne Tools for CS5. For basic editing it's all you'll ever need. Technically if I could name one that's the most important, it's definitely photoshop. It has CameraRAW to import your unprocessed RAW's, all the same color calibration and etc tools as LR, plus huge amount of tools LR doesn't have. And onone is just whole bunch of presets really.

But yeah, PS is a must have.

Taylor510ce · Jul 22, 2010

Yeah, I use OnOne phototools 2 with CS5 also, although I typically only use it on portraits and sometimes for quick frame effects, but it definately comes in very handy.

Typically you would just be adjusting color,contrast,exposure, cropping and sharpening, but the sky is really the limit. Its harder to learn photoshop, but its also the best tool. So unless you do not do alot of Post Processing to your photos, you will eventually find yourself wanting photoshop over say lightroom, or Elements. Think of Elements and Lightroom as a chefs knife and photoshop CS5 as a scalpel. They both cut, but one is more of a precision instrument. One also isn't for the Novice. You can download a trial of all of them as recommended, but CS5 is going to take more than a few days to dig into, so don't write it off just because you didn't spend enough time on it during the trial. Lightroom and Elements is obviously aimed at beginners so the trials may seem much better to you because you will be able to do more faster. I started with Corel Paintshop Pro and dumped it in less than a week after reading up on some photoshop tutorials. I don't think I would still be doing photography if I still had paintshop Pro. Photoshop allowed me to get above average work from subpar photos ( while thats not how you want to work, as a beginner this can really help keep your confidence and motivation up ). Now I am just as interested in Post Processing whether its helping others, or doing my own photos, as I am with actually shooting.

Essentially it all boils down to money, if you can afford photoshop and have the time and patience to learn it ( the basics shouldn't take too long if you atleast are computer literate ) then why settle for something less.

BuS_RiDeR · Jul 22, 2010

Gimp is a free photo editing software that should be included in your decision process... Photoshop is way more popular and WAY more expensive... But Gimp has a similar feature set to PS cs#, for $0. A GREAT value.

Worth looking at anyway...

mrpenguin · Jul 22, 2010

I use GIMP, 100% free with tons of plugins that makes it work almost exactly like Photoshop, only problem is there is not many books you can buy on it but the internet is full of tutorials

Vinny · Jul 22, 2010

No doubt about it Photoshop is THE name in PC photo editing software, but there are others as well. Whether they do the same may be questionable but they also don't cost $1000 retail but I guess if you can get the student version for $199 it may be a steal. I believe Adobe has other products with less features and Corel makes a photo editor. I have been playing around with a product from Serif that seems to mimic what Photoshop can do - it seems that Photoshop techniques work on the Serif product, it also handles RAW output.

As was mentioned, there are free programs as well. Google's Picassa, Gimp and Photoscape are ones I have tried - Gimp being the most difficult to use out of these 3. But Gimp only does most of it's editing in 8 bit for now.

My suggestion would be if you are new to digital photography to learn one thing at a time. Trying to learn what the camera can do and trying to learn what the program can do can be a little overwhelming, at least it is to me. I am still trying to learn the camera in what it can do which is a lot more than my film SLR and post processing has me scratching my head at times.