Photo Editing Programs

[floatingby]

I would look at Corel, either Paintshop pro or Aftershot pro depending on what you meant by "editing". Aftershot is more centered around a photographic, RAW workflow while Paintshop leans more toward graphic design. At the current price, you can even get a perpetual license for both for less than the cost of 1 year rental of Adobe equivalent, and they're just as capable programs, in some ways more capable(AS for instance support layers).

 

[floatingby]

I used Photoshop for 18 years...since I got Lightroom, I BARELY ever open Photoshop...

Here too, heck, last time I formatted my HD I never even installed either Photoshop or Elements, and I don't miss 'em at all.

 

[soufiej]

What is a good program to buy and use for photo editing? Something that is easy to use for a beginner, but yet has awesome tools to use.

GAWD!!! Don't we all luuuuuuuv "Awesome Tools"????!!!!

D'ja ever have a friend who fancied themself an auto mechanic? Bought the vintage '63 Caddy convertible that has already been a project car for five other owners. Added on to the garage and had the pit installed so he could stand up to change oil. Ordered the 5,ooo pack of nitrile gloves and shop towels. Yada yada then capped it off with the top o' the line:

72" 17 Drawer Professional Triple Bank Roller Cabinet

72" Triple Bank Roller Tool Cabinet Provides Many Storage Options

This 72-inch black 17 drawer triple tool bank gives you a massive amount of storage room for all your tools and equipment. The drawers offer double steel wall construction for greater strength and stability. The drawer back panel is designed for rigidity to hold more weight and prevent sagging. The drawers are fully extendable with heavy-duty ball-bearing glides, and are strong enough to load with tools and still get smooth opening and closing movement.

The 72" triple bank roller tool cabinet is made of 11-gauge steel with a strong box frame. It moves on six heavy-duty casters (four locking swivels, two fixed) that together can support up to 950 lbs. The cabinet comes with high-density foam drawer liners to help keep your gear in place. There is a separate locking safety drawer to stash valuables when your tool cabinet is open for the work day. Built to last, this unit is protected from corrosion by a high gloss powder coat finish that's scratch, chemical and stain resistant.

• This 72-inch black 17 drawer triple tool bank provides ample room for all your tools
• 11-gauge steel construction
• Double steel wall drawer construction
• Fully extendable drawers with ball-bearing slides can hold from 300 up to 600 lbs.
• Separate locking drawer to keep valuables secure when the tool cabinet is unlocked
• 1 Drawer 50" x 28-1/8" x 4-3/4"
• 1 Drawers 50" x 28-1/8" x 2"
• 5 Drawers 13-3/4" x 28-1/8" x 2"
• 3 Drawers 13-3/4" x 28-1/8" x 4-3/4"
• 2 Drawers 13-3/4" x 28-1/8" x 10-1/5"
• 2 Drawers 32-3/4" x 28-1/8" x 2"
• 3 Drawers 32-3/4" x 28-1/8" x 4-3/4"
• Handle fits either end of cabinet
• Extra long and two extra-deep drawers for hard-to-fit tools
• Comes with a 304 grade 16-gauge stainless top work surface
• Modular design allows drawer configuration to be rotated
• Double channel spot-welded support brackets
• High gloss powder coat AKZO paint finish
• Cylinder lock for quick access

Wowsers!!!

That's Photoshop.

 

[soufiej]

I doubt anyone here would suggest a "beginner" is best served by owning a $6-10k camera kit. I would guess everyone here would rightly suggest a student of photography would be best served with a high value camera that is comprehensible and understandable.

That is not what you get with PS.

There are several very workable editors out there that actually cost nothing. A simple search engine will give you at least three or four suggestions for freeware editors which are similar in their results and in their operation to what any beginner would need from Photoshop.

One that seldom gets mentioned but IMO deserves a look is LightZone; A quick review of the LightZone Photo Editor Digital Photography Review

IMO you really only need an editor that is capable of opening Raw files, has a high (16) bit count for its operating system, non-destructive editing and a history file for referencing what you've done to the image.

Now, I admit I am not a fanatic about editing tools and don't actually care that much about sitting at the computer diddling with an image. Possibly those more experienced users and those who feel your requirements are more comprehensive than what I've listed will chime in with more must haves for a basic image editor. That's where I think you will benefit, not a specific recommendation but a more complete list of what you will actually need and use as a student of photography.

Take that list and find some freeware which will serve your purpose now yet not limit your choices for future editing of an older image. You are though, rather likely to toss out many of your student level images so you need a system that can grow with your expertise.

When you finally feel it is the software that is your limiting factor, then you move forward with a more extensive system. By then you will have your own ideas about what you need rather than just having the 72" roller tool chest.

The same advice would apply to your student level camera gear, until you feel your camera is your real limitation, you don't need more than "X" and anything more than that is likely to get in your way more than assist you.

Hopefully, not every shot you take will require "awesome tools". Make it simple on yourself.

 

[Bryston3bsst]

What is a good program to buy and use for photo editing? Something that is easy to use for a beginner, but yet has awesome tools to use.

Confused yet?

Photoshop Elements. Powerful, relatively easy to learn with tutorials and inexpensive. 99% of what you'll ever need to do to a photo you can do with Elements. That is, unless you're a graphic artist. Don't let the 'Creative Cloud' crowd convince you otherwise. There are those that believe that if you're not shooting with $6000 worth of hardware and editing with the Creative Cloud then you are merely a snapshot taker. To that I would say bull shyt.

You're probably going to see a lot of 'disagrees' on this. That would be the 'Creative Cloud' crowd.

 

[TCampbell]

There's a huge difference between Lightroom and Photoshop. BTW, when you buy the Adobe $10/month subscription, you get both. You get both... because they are very different.

If you are a "photographer" and not a "digital artist" then most of the time what you want to do with your images is "adjust" them... that's not the same as "editing" them.

Lightroom is designed to help you manage huge numbers of images (rather than opening one image at a time, you open a library with all your images and can easily move from image to image.)

Lightroom is also designed to help by simplifying image adjustments. Usually we want to adjust things like white balance, maybe tweak the exposure, deal with highlights & shadows, work on color, sharpening, cropping, etc. We might even touch out a blemish or scratch. But what you would NOT do with Lightroom is build a composite image... you wouldn't decide to take an element that wasn't even in the photo and add it.

One other nice thing about Lightroom is it's ability to work with RAW files without first having to convert them. It's also a non-destructive tool by nature (it really loads the base image and then applies the adjustments ONLY on your screen (the original RAW file is unchanged.) When you export a image that you'd like to print or share then it produces a version which is based on that master image plus all the adjustments you made. You can also remove (or change) any adjustment you made at any time. Nothing is ever permanent due to the nature of how Lightroom works.

Another nice advantage is the ability to apply global changes to entire shoots. If I took several images in the same location and with the same lighting then they probably all need the same white balance adjustment (and there may be a number of other adjustments that they all need). You can "sync" adjustments from one image to a whole range of other images. This really speeds things along.

That's Lightroom.

Every "adjustment" you make it Lightroom could also be made in Photoshop... but it would take you a lot longer to do it in Photoshop. Also, Photoshop is NOT a non-destructive editor, although it has tools that allow you to use it in a non-destructive way. It doesn't natively work on RAW images... nor any other image format than the .PSD file. It "imports" your images into a PSD and you get a main background "layer". Photoshop is then layer-based. If you make a change in that main background layer, then that change is actually a "destructive" change. Sure you can do an "undo" if you accidentally apply something unintentionally... but that has limits and once you "save" it's permanent. Normally you care a new "layer" in front of the background layer and make changes in those layers. If you are careful to do this by adding a layer for each adjustment, then you can "undo" something by removing that layer (or disabling it).

The mainstay of Photoshop is to learn to do "selections". In Photoshop you select a part of an image and then you perform some manipulation on that selection. Learning all the different ways to create selections is a big part of the tool. You can then creatively perform manipulations and be very artistic about it. The manipulations go far beyond what is possible by merely adjusting exposure or color or the sorts of changes one might make in a darkroom. This is why I refer to it as a tool for digital artists.

Photoshop has a much steeper learning curve. BUT... for hard-core editing, it is the most popular tool on the market. There are a huge assortment of 3rd party add-ons, books, tutorials, and other support for it.... primarily because of it's popularity.

That's Photoshop.

There are many other tools that can do quite a bit of what you can do in Photoshop. Adobe is getting away from "selling" software licensing and now you "rent" it by getting a subscription. The base subscription for photographers is $10/month (but it's a 1 year commitment so it may be better to think of it as $120/year instead of $10/month). In theory you can buy the traditional perpetual license, but they make this hard to find (so hard to find that I thought they decided to do away with it... then ultimately found out you could do it... then they changed it and the option disappeared again... and while I think it still might be out there, it's a bit of a hide-and-seek game they keep playing. They do enough so they can get away with saying it's an option, but it's very clear when you use their website that what they REALLY want you to do is get the subscription.

Photoshop Elements is an entry-level version of Photoshop. It does much of what Photoshop does and it works pretty much the same way. But it doesn't do everything. Much of what it does NOT do are things that most regular users would never miss. If you are a publisher and you're creating a mailing or catalog, then you need a way to do CMYK separations for the printing presses. Photoshop Elements can't do CMYK separations. But as a home user, you'd NEVER miss that feature. But since Elements works pretty much the same way as the full version of Photoshop (with selections and layers, etc.) then once you learn your way around Elements, making the jump to the full version of Photoshop is easy because it's already familiar.

 

[nerwin]

For photography I use Lightroom most of the time and sometimes I'll bring the photo into Photoshop if I need to use content aware or need to fix something that was unavoidable when shooting. Also use photoshop for doing panoramas and Brenizer Method and it does it very, very well. Photoshop is a very powerful tool if you know how to use it. I took photoshop classes in school which help out a lot. But there is still so much more that I don't know. I use photoshop for non photography things as well..usually for web design.

I think Lightroom + Photoshop go together like two peas in a pod. Its worth every penny.

Before Lightroom, I used Irfanview! Ahh good times.

 

[unpopular]

I used Photoshop for 18 years...since I got Lightroom, I BARELY ever open Photoshop...

Here too, heck, last time I formatted my HD I never even installed either Photoshop or Elements, and I don't miss 'em at all.

LR feels very, very weak to me. I'd like to get Silky, but $$.

I wouldn't recommend Silky to a beginner though.

 

[chuasam]

I used Photoshop for 18 years...since I got Lightroom, I BARELY ever open Photoshop...

Here too, heck, last time I formatted my HD I never even installed either Photoshop or Elements, and I don't miss 'em at all.

I have both open all the time. Lightroom is really for image asset management. If you're doing any serious amount of retouching, Photoshop is the way to go.

 

[raventepes]

I've been a Photoshop user for a long time now, but I'll also use Corel Paint Shop and Aftershot from time to time if I need something within either of the programs. I've tried Lightroom, and it's a great program, but ultimately found it's not to my liking.

I'm self taught. I agree that there's a very steep curve there, and I've spent a LONG time pouring over books that helped me along my path, many which were written by Scott Kelby. I don't regret a second of it. In my experience, "Easy" and "Good" don't always belong in the same sentence. Yes. Learning how to use Photoshop was a lot of hard work, but in the end, I prefer it that way. There are no good shortcuts in photography.

 

[AlanKlein]

Buy Lightroom or Photoshop Elements. Don't lease CC. It's overkill. The regular Photoshop is also overkill for a beginner. If you buy Elements and you also shoot video once in a while, you could get a package that includes Photoshop Premiere Elements for video as well as Photoshop Elements for stills. That will let you combine stills and videos clips into a DVD show that can be played on your HDTV, computer, YouTube, Facebook, etc. Of course that's all in addition to photo editing. Good luck on whatever you decide. They're all good programs.

 

[xgriffin_o2]

For basic editing I usually use Faststone Image Viewer, it allows you to edit levels, lighting, colors and curves. It also has a crop board and different filters you can use.

If you're interested in putting watermarks on your pictures Faststone Image Viewer can do that (but if you want to put a watermark on multiple images I recommend Faststone Image Resizer, another good program).

Both are free and very straight-forward and easy to use if you aren't doing anything fancy.

 

[TCampbell]

Incidentally I noticed that Adobe announced today that Adobe Camera RAW 9.1.1 will be the last version of Camera RAW for Photoshop CS6. Beyond that, they only intend to provide camera RAW updates for Creative Cloud.

 

[beagle100]

What is a good program to buy and use for photo editing? Something that is easy to use for a beginner, but yet has awesome tools to use.

start with the basics, the free one with the camera (Canon DPP) is pretty good

 

[philsphoto]

Adobe Lightroom is hands down, the best program to use for; your photo library, picture editing, and publishing. Lightroom has wonderful presets to use on your pictures. Editing is easy, no where near as complicated as Photoshop.


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