photo software....?

Devananda · Mar 28, 2007

ok now that I have my camera for a fews weeks i need a good photo software.
what does every one use? I was thinking photo shop....
what else is good?
thanks
Deva

Big Mike · Mar 28, 2007

Photoshop is the king of photo editing...but it's expensive. Photoshop Elements is like a lite version of photoshop, it will do most of the same things and is much less expensive.

GIMP, is a free download. I don't use it but many people do.

If you shoot a lot of images, especially if you shoot at lot of RAW images...then you may want a 'workflow' software. Adobe Lightroom and Apple's Aperture are two of the leading packages. You can do many of the same things that you can do in Photoshop and it's set up to be more streamlined for processing a large number of files. Not really a replacement for Photoshop though.

Devananda · Mar 28, 2007

big mike thanks for all the help you give...
yea I was just looking at photo shop online and wow is it a lot of $$.
I must say that I am a little disappointed with the Nikon software that came with my camera ......I can't even resize my pics so I can share them

i'll look at the PS Elements

BAB · Mar 28, 2007

The Nikon software that comes with the camera's is pretty lame, but Nikon FX, available as a separate purchase is from what I am told, fairly robust and a good program. If you are new to digital, Adobe Lightroom or for MAC, Aperture may be all that you need or at least for a while. Both offer most of the major photography tools in a streamlined configuration. It is possible to take an image from download to final form with either of these programs at a fraction of Photo Shop's cost. If however you do or interested in doing, extensive retouching and image enhancement, Photoshop is a better choice. If price is an issue Photoshop Elements, PS's little brother is a good alternative.

firemedic0135 · Mar 28, 2007

I never resize my photos on my puter,rather I just upload them to photobucket and set it to resize them when it uploads them and saves me a step.
However if you want to resize them you can in your paint program that is stadard on windows.
I use Paint shop Pro and it seems to work well but the problem I have as a newbie is that most all tutorials and help for post proccessing are geared towards adobe and therefore of limited help to me.

RVsForFun · Mar 28, 2007

...PhotoImpact. It's $99 and available for a 30-day free trial. Go to www.Ulead.com for the information.

opus · Mar 29, 2007

I have yet to shoot raw with my very recently acquired Nikon D-200, and am uncertain as which Raw processing softwar to buy, the Nikon Capture NX or the Adobe Lightroom software. I have already have Photoshop Elements 5. Some of the pros use Capture 1, which is supposed to be the number one Raw processing software.

Devananda · Mar 29, 2007

"I have already have Photoshop Elements 5."
opus do you like it. can you tell me more about it.....I can find much info on want it does.
thanks

droyz2000 · Mar 29, 2007

I would get Lightroom. I have NX and while some features are nice, the program as a whole is kind of crappy. It is not very pretty and it really is not that intuitive. Also, if you are just starting out, there are not really any tutorials for NX while there are for Lightroom.

Iron Flatline · Mar 29, 2007

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is very good, but still somewhat expensive. Adobe Photoshop Elements is a very good software, I think you will be quite happy with it. There are great tutorial books out there as well.

JD in Socal · Mar 29, 2007

opus said:
I have yet to shoot raw with my very recently acquired Nikon D-200, and am uncertain as which Raw processing softwar to buy, the Nikon Capture NX or the Adobe Lightroom software. I have already have Photoshop Elements 5. Some of the pros use Capture 1, which is supposed to be the number one Raw processing software.

You already have Elements, and it handles raw just fine. I use that program and shoot only in raw.

JD

JD in Socal · Mar 29, 2007

Devananda said:
ok now that I have my camera for a fews weeks i need a good photo software.
what does every one use? I was thinking photo shop....
what else is good?
thanks
Deva

My vote is for PS Elements 5. Its cheap ($80 or so usd), handles raw and does most of what the full PS does. It even includes a very good organizer / catalog program. Another big reason to use it, in my book, is that there is a huge amount of help and info available. PS is the industry standard and there are PS articles and discussions everywhere. Much of that information applies to Elements, with very little translation.

JD