Newb - Editing Question

Katie_B · Oct 4, 2010

Sooo... I'm pretty new to photography... or the professional aspect of it at least. I've never done editing on photos before other than the usual cropping, color correction, or blemish corrections in a very VERY old program I'd rather not even mention. :blushing:

Wondering what would be an ideal editing program to use for someone doing primarily maternity, newborn, and infant portraits? For example, Is there a program in particular that is better at evening out skin tones than others? (for a PC)

I'm getting confused looking at all these options - Aperture is for Macs only (i think?) Photoshop - Which one? I saw CS5, Lightroom, and Elements. What the snuggly fug is the difference? Is CS5 a standard program and Lightroom and Elements are add-ons or upgrades to the original? Or are they programs that can run on their own?

Big Mike · Oct 4, 2010

Check out Adobe. They are the makers of Photoshop, Lightroom and many other programs.

Photoshop is probably the 'best' program, as it can do just about anything that you could ever want from an image editing software...and a whole lot more. But it is a very expensive piece of software. You can get a great deal on it, if you are a student or teacher in a qualified class or program though.

Photoshop Elements could be called 'Photoshop Lite'. It's a more basic version of Photoshop that does have most of the things that you would want, and at a much more reasonable price. It's not an add-on, it's a completely different program.

Lightroom is also not an add-on, it's a separate program, but it can (and often is) be used in conjunction with Photoshop. It does several things, all of which can be done in Photoshop, but it's geared toward a smooth workflow for photographers. Since I started working with Lightroom, a few years ago, I use Photoshop much less...and my workflow is faster that it was before....but I still need Photoshop.

For example, Is there a program in particular that is better at evening out skin tones than others? (for a PC)

Photoshop can do that type of thing (if you know how), and I think that most of the Photoshop tools used, can be found in Elements as well. There are also many 'add-ons' that are specifically for working on skin...some of which may or may not work for Elements.