So family member is looking at getting into using photoshop for collage projects. Apple Macs and photoshop are standard on the course.

We have a fairly basic family pc, Pentium 4 type with a massive external hard drive, and 2meg ram upgrade. Can I just buy photoshop elements and will it work well enough?

Images will be scanned A4 at 300dpi, I don’t envisage much bigger or anything other than simple editing.

What is the crack with buying software, can you pick up second hand stuff cheap? (does that even work, is it dodgy?).

General advice here appreciated.

collage or college?

interesting typo (if it is), since both are valid in the post 🙂

I only ask, since if all you want to do are collages, you could use something a lot cheaper than photoshop.

Dave

2 Mb RAM? Family member is going to HATE Photoshopping on that.

I’d be tempted to spend the money on (a lot) more RAM, and then use GIMP instead of Photoshop. It’s free, almost as good, and whatever skills are learned in PS at college are easy to transfer over to GIMP and vice versa.

+1 GIMP

Also check out Inkscape for creating vector-based stuff – it’s free as well.

2 meg or 2 gig?

I’d stick to Photoshop if that’s what you’re being taught at college. It’s counterproductive trying to learn two similar but different programs at the same time, once you’ve learnt the skills then transfer them across.

That applies to Photoshop Elements too – there’s enough difference between that and grown up Photoshop to make it a problem. I HATE using Elements.

Adobe have trials of all their software on their website, so your best bet is to download one of those and see how well it runs on your machine, and take it from there.

You can download a 30-day trial. Give it a go.

Should be able to get proper Photoshop at a student price somewhere.

I use photoshop quite a lot on a 6 year-old PC with 2Gb RAM (max it’ll take). Works fine, no hassles at all. Video, on the other hand…

I did also use GIMP until I managed to get hold of PhotoShop CS3. As above, GIMP is excellent, but PhotoShop is undeniably better, more user-friendly and a LOT better documented when you need to figure out how to do something!

Thanks for the tips.

I don’t want to get used to gimp or similar for reasons as above.

I can get grown up photoshop for £169 with student discount. However, we have as above, a rubbish pc and I am tempted by a Mac at some stage. If I buy the pc version as above I would need to pay out again on the MAC version if we get a Mac.

30 day trial is the easy option. I will see how it runs? I do just have the minimum spec for the current full photo shop so we shall see.

if you’re interested in some of the basics & theory behind pixel art. note these tips were written before layers were introduced but the theory behind is good to know.

Kai’s Power Tips & Tricks for Adobe Photoshop

I use Elements on a 2007-era 2GHz, 3GB RAM mac mini with no bother at all. It sometimes churns a bit when doing complicated stuff, the more memory the better, but it’s not a big deal. Your PC will be fine.

The box I’ve got came with both mac and windows versions in, I don’t know if this is normal or not but it would make it a bit more futureproof…

can get grown up photoshop for £169 with student discount. However, we have as above, a rubbish pc and I am tempted by a Mac at some stage. If I buy the pc version as above I would need to pay out again on the MAC version if we get a Mac.

Check the licence. With DXO (for example) you get a licence for both a PC and a Mac.

I have a feeling with photoshop you can install on a desktop and a laptop with the same licence. Not sure if that’s cross-platform too.

The box I’ve got came with both mac and windows versions in, I don’t know if this is normal or not but it would make it a bit more futureproof…

That is why i am drawn to an older version as i understand the new ones would be one version or the other. Any reason why i shouldnt buy an older copy of ebay that has both mac and pc version in one box?

you can cross migrate from one platform to the other.
ram is totally dependent on the file sizes you are working on. small files need less ram. if you switch the info box to show efficiency and scratch sizes this will give you some indication of what will slow the system down.
if efficiency is always 100% then no swap files will be being written to disk and ram is being used as scratch, the info box will also give you scratch disk sizes. less than 100% then read/write swap files to disk is what’s slowing the system down. it’s better to have a separate disk for scratch.

FWIW i have a fast macbook with 8gb ram and a seprate SSD scratch disk which is fairly speedy but i would like the 16gb ram when it becomes more affordable. i am working on 16bit 250meg tiffs with multiple layers though so big files compared to most users.

You can now lease the Adobe suite products which works out reasonably cost effective, especially if you tend to upgrade regularly, or change platforms.

Adobe Leasing

Pushing my (secondary school) students more and more towards using the free http://www.pixlr.com for basic digital image manipulation work if they don’t have access to potatoshop. Runs in your browser so accessible from whatever machine you’re at. Looks and feels enough like the real (elements) thing for skills to be transferrable.

If you don’t need anything complex it should do pretty much all you need.

slainte 💡 rob