Photoshop or Lens?

[stormbind]

I have about $400 that I will be putting into the hobby and am looking at getting a new lens or Photoshop CS3.

Currently I have a Canon 350D with kit lens and have been using Canon’s software. What would you do?

 

[moliver]

Personally, I'd get a lens, but I'm sort of crazy.

I only shoot film (but I do get them scanned to CD when I have them developed) and for some reason I feel incredibly proud when a picture comes back looking very cool. I know in my head I could touch it up very nicely in Photoshop, but in my crazy world there is some kind of pride in knowing that you made the picture at the moment you clicked the shutter, rather than later on in a software package...

 

[stormbind]

I should add...if lens which lens? Or if software...but not Photoshop then what?

Right now I am leaning more to the lens side as well.

 

[JamesD]

If it were me, I'd go with something like a prime near 35mm.

 

[kundalini]

Where would you prefer to spend more of your time? Behind the camera or in front of a monitor?

My aim is to use post processing as a tweak rather than a fix-my-mistake. Therefore, I would definetly go for a lens. I can't offer a suggestion for Canon lenses, but I can say that good glass ain't cheap. I'm thinking for your money, you should be able to get a couple of good primes.

Your decision should be based on your preferences. There's plenty of this kind of discussion within TPF, just do a search and a lot of answers are given.

 

[Patrolman Pat]

I'd go the lens too. You can usually acquire software cheaply or for free from friends who have updated, lenses are harder to acquire.
If you buy the lens now and you take better pics as a result you can always store them until you do get the software to enhance them at a later date.
I'm still learning my photo-editing program but I still feel it's cheating a little bit to do more than basic cropping and minor adjutments. I'd rather concentrate on taking better shots in the first place.

 

[Deadeye008]

I just picked up a Tamron 17-50 2.8 and I love it. I would recomend getting that lens which runs about $350 and then getting Photoshop Elements 5.0 which you can pick up for about $50. Photoshop Elements 5.0 is a great program for what you pay for it.

 

[Garbz]

Photoshop is not required to take a good picture. In fact there are free alternatives available. Or cheaper more photography suited alternatives.

 

[Mo's Photos]

As Deadeye says, go with the Tamron. It gets very good reviews and is much less than the Canon alternative. Yet you will be amazed at the difference in the quality of the pictures vs. your kit lens. Another great alternative is the 50mm prime. The 1.4 is tack sharp, and from what I hear the 1.8 is as well. Yet is less than $100. Elements is a good alternative to PS, or you might want to look into Lightroom as well. Version 1.2 just came out and you can try it for free for 30 days.

 

[itoncool]

CS3 is an excellent software, but too expensive for now. Maybe you could go for the previous version, CS2, great software. Other option is to get Lightroom or Element that's more than enough to do some post processing and not expensive.

I'm using Picasa, free, it's enough for me because I don't do much retouching. I prefer to have more excellent Lenses.

 

[Chris of Arabia]

I just picked up a Tamron 17-50 2.8 and I love it. I would recomend getting that lens which runs about $350 and then getting Photoshop Elements 5.0 which you can pick up for about $50. Photoshop Elements 5.0 is a great program for what you pay for it.

I like this suggestion - best of both worlds

I'm still using PS 6.0 and getting more than competent results - my skill set is the limiting factor not the software. You shouldn't yet be anywhere near a position where you can't get what you want because you didn't have CS3 (as nice as it might be).

 

[TCimages]

You can't take good pictures with software. Why spend all that money on software to make a few adjustments. With DPP, you can already, make great adjustments, resize, crop, and even fix small imperfections. I use DPP for my RAW and it allows you to make non-destructive changes with a very high quality jpg/tiff output.

If you want to add frames and watermarks (and ofcourse many other things) then you'll need other software, but before you spend hundreds of dollars, consider what you'll really do with it.

I use Paintshop Pro as my workhorse to add frames, watermarks and touch-ups to my final image.

 

[Alex_B]

I agree with most above... the lens is more important. you can always go back to images you took years ago and apply better post processing to them once you bought new software. but most of the time you cannot go back to the scenes and retake the images with a better lens. hence, having the right lens comes first.

I come from slide-photography, and there was almost no chance in postprocessing. Still we managed to get decent images occasionally

 

[usayit]

Lens!!!

Photoshop elements will do almost everything a photographer needs and is relatively inexpensive.

 

[selmerdave]

I think it's simply a matter of what you need based on what you have, and with only the kit lens I would agree with most of the above that you need a better lens more than PS. If you had a few good lenses it would be a different story.

Dave