Anyone got any kids who have done this? My daughter has just started and as if the purchase of a DSLR camera wasn’t enough, she’s now telling me the school are saying she needs Photoshop too – though typically no specifics given on the version.

Anyone with recent experience? I’ve got a copy of Elements 10 on my laptop that I should be able to also use on hers, will that be good enough?

They do discounts for students, still f’ing pricy though at £15/month.

http://www.adobe.com/uk/education/students/how-to-buy-eligibility.edu.html?

You could always just download GIMP (it is actually a program!) for her, basically a free program that has the same (mostly) functions as photoshop but is not packaged as nicely… Or download a torrent and keygen for photoshop CS5 or 6 which were not subscribe versions.

The photography only plan is £8.57 a month so a little cheaper still. Worth getting the college to confirm the exact requirements.

Also, no reason to buy a new DSLR for A-level, plenty of excellent 2nd stuff at knock down prices as every year they bring out new models, which depreciates the previous year’s models etc.

Elements 10 will be more than enough, I bet all the students that buy into photoshop only use 5% of the options anyway.

as above, in fact I got a 600D that I am wanting to sell

I use GIMP for stuff in work. Its pretty good but a bit of a clunky interface. Works well though.

I taught A level photography for a short while. The 6th form college I worked at suggested a DSLR as ideal but were willing to allow the used of a good quality compact as long as it had fully manual settings and could generate RAW files, something like a Canon G16.

We did not insist on the students purchasing Photoshop for home use-most of the image manipulation was done in class on the college computers which had Lightroom and Photoshop.

Elements would be fine for most of the work that the students would be expected to do in their own time if she is following a similar specification. It is the setting up and capture of the initial image that was more important than the post capture manipulation in our departments view, although clearly a good understanding of the processes involved in image manipulation is essential.

the old chestnut about polishing was oft used- if the initial photo is no good, no amount of tweaking was going to improve it

Daughter has just completed her A level.
We purchased her a entry DSLR (Cannon as that is what the school had so she could borrow lenses and the control were similar).

She got this as her Christmas present in the 1st year. The school actually had loads of equipment she could borrow but we figured it would help.

She did all her editing at the school on their macs so never even had a laptop at home. Don’t think this impacted her result

Oldest daughter did A-level photography, finished a year ago. Youngest is starting it now.

A second hand DSLR will be fine, and they can usually borrow specialist lenses from college if needed (check what brand the college stocks and get a body to match). I just got the youngest a 2nd hand Nikon D3100 with kit lense for £80, its far more than she’ll need.

You won’t need Photoshop & Lightroom at home as they will be able to use college computers between lectures surely? Mine asked if she could have a macbook and Photoshop/lightroom of her own – as if 🙄 College said not necessary.

At the end of the day its an art course – the amount of technical stuff they do is limited. They’ve even dropped film/darkroom work completely now.

Thanks all, the DSLR we got was second hand – she’s smashed enough phones, I’d be nuts to buy a new one!

I’ll just put elements 10 on, it sounds like it’ll be good enough and not cost me anymore!

You could try darktable(see what they did there?) pretty much identical to Lightroom, inc the UI.

With an eye for composition and decent contextual knowledge/research skills, you could easily get successfully through A level Photography with a decent phone camera and Snapseed. No amount of gear or processing will get you by if you can’t compose an interesting image in the first place…

(A level Art & Photography teacher)

Back in the day I had an old Fujica 35mm SLR with no light meter and a 50mm f2.0 prime with a massive scratch on the front element…. A bit of Ilford HP4, some Ilford Multigrade paper and filters… saw me through nicely 😉

You could get a copy of Lightroom on the home PC – see if there is any old-stock standalone left as that would be ample and cheap. I only use Photoshop for the final polish now, for which elements would be more than good enough.

I think elements 10 would drive me nuts if had Photoshop at College

But I’d be amazed if she needs access at home. If you told that she can’t find a computer then tell her to work off peak.

I get this all the time. Yes some times all the computers are in use at 12:00. Trust me at 9:00 we have hundreds unused