[Closed] Photo editing software, which one?

What computer, mac or pc?

Rachel

pc

It's hardly professional but i've been monkeying around with picasa lately... quite slick 🙂

[url= http://www.irfanview.com/ ]http://www.irfanview.com/[/url]
[url= http://www.faststone.org/ ]http://www.faststone.org/[/url]
[url= http://www.gimp.org/ ]http://www.gimp.org/[/url]

[url= http://www.getpaint.net/ ]paint.net[/url] does a lot for free.

Actually, don simon might have something there with the GIMP - It has a bit of a learning curve and you actually need to know how to make effects as few are built-in but it is worth the effort to learn...

On the Mac, however, I would definitely say get Pixelmator from the App Store - it is AMAZING value!!

Rachel

If using a PC I'd strongly recommend you look at [url= http://tryit.adobe.com/uk/lightroom/tw1/standard.html ]Lightroom[/url]. Not free and not as easy as some to learn but easily the best of many that I've tried. It's both a cataloguer and editor.

Or Photoshop elements of course which isn't as slick as lightroom but is dramatically cheaper, especially from amazon, and it does a wider range of editing. They both have free trials

Yeah, if you're willing to part with a few quid then Elements is the puppy.

Gimp, free, a lot to learn though but it will pretty much do everything that a full version of photoshop will. It will also take many photoshop plugins.

For most basic retouching and editing,Picasa is pretty damn good and free.

I use a 64 bit version of photshop CS5 and that is bloody brilliant, but not at all cheap,but lets me composite HDR images.

people actually pay for their software? new one on me! get photoshop and be done with it! the rest are piss poor imitations..

Picasa and PhotoshopCS5

people actually pay for their software? new one on me! get photoshop and be done with it! the rest are piss poor imitations..

mentalists!

Lightroom definitely if you want to store and play with your photos.

Aperture if you were on the Mac

For free, there's no better than GIMP, which is basically free Adobe Photoshop. Yes, there are any things in the new Photoshop that are wonderous and magical and not possible in GIMP, but in GIMP's defense: £free vs £hundreds.
Everything else (other than Photoshop) does bits of what GIMP can do, but you pay money to make it slightly easier to use.

Photoshop and Aperture (both Mac) are my tools of choice. Never found anything I prefer. For a free program GIMP is rather good though.

But photoshop elements isn't hundreds, it's about 60 squid. It works well, if you are trying to do something you don't know how to do and you google it the instructions are almost always for photoshop and so are likely to work in elements as well.

If I was stuck for cash I would go with GIMP. If I'm stuck for time (which I am) then Elements wins. If I was taking, tuning and storing hundreds of pictures a month then it would be Lightroom

Sorry to ram raid, but what would the suggestions be for a mac, for RAW images mainly

"Picasa and PhotoshopCS5"

Yup, I sometimes use Gimp, but mostly ps cs5 and picasa.

I've taught Photoshop, and Elements is worth every penny. It's very intuitive to use, and actually very powerful.

One thing might be to buy a basic graphics tablet and pen, which is much better than just using a mouse, and some come with Elements bundled 'free'. The Wacom Bamboo range has a version which comes with Elements, think it's around £90, but well worth it.

Sorry to ram raid, but what would the suggestions be for a mac, for RAW images mainly

Elements FTW. Well worth 70 quid.

Whilst we're on the subject, is it worth upgrading from 8 to 9?

Lightroom v Elements
If you shoot RAW (and if you're a photographer you probably will) then Lightroom takes care of that much better than the version of Elements that I used.
Lightroom also just stores the original version of the image. As you edit/tweak a pic Lightroom just stores those alterations in its database. You can see as many versions of it as you have made (black & white and colour for example) but there is still only one copy of the file on your hard drive. I've no idea if other programmes now do this but with Elements I used to find I had multiple of copies of the same picture.
Elements is an awful lot cheaper though.

Lightroom is by far the best and I've tried pretty much all of the above. I have Photoshop but very rarely need to open it for editing pictures. The workflow on LR is so fast as well.

Student/teacher/charity discount brings the price down to around the same as elements btw.

I really need to work on understanding noise reduction and getting the hang of it*

* because I shoot Olympus!

I really need to work on understanding noise reduction and getting the hang of it*

out of the box stuff is generally crap for noise reduction

At the risk of sounding like an evangelist, not on Lightroom 3 - the built in stuff is amazing and works super fast.

Check this out:

[img] [/img]

into

[img] [/img]

(not my pic - original thread here - http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=262800&page=34 )

people actually pay for their software? new one on me! get photoshop and be done with it! the rest are piss poor imitations..

Yeah, some people buy mountainbikes rather than nick them too.

I take a copy of somebody else's mountain bike but leave the original where it is

out of the box stuff is generally crap for noise reduction

Using Elements RAW plugin.. I don't mind buying stuff but I am not spending 300 on LR (or whatever it is).

Right so Neatimage - it's going to make it easy for me to selectively reduce noise from noisy images easily, more quickly and with better results than the RAW plugin - yes? (finger hovering over the 'buy' button)

people actually pay for their software?

Yep. That way, the companies can afford to write more cool software, and we get to use it.

Yep. That way, the companies can afford to write more cool software, and we get to use it.

plus anyhow, photoshop is a professional level bit of software. companies buy it, the general populace shouldn't imo.

Right so Neatimage - it's going to make it easy for me to selectively reduce noise from noisy images easily, more quickly and with better results than the RAW plugin - yes? (finger hovering over the 'buy'

At the risk of sounding like an evangelist, not on Lightroom 3 - the built in stuff is amazing and works super fast

plus anyhow, photoshop is a professional level bit of software. companies buy it, the general populace shouldn't imo

Yes - I'd have used a dodgy Photoshop since there's no way I'm spending 400 on software, it's just not happening, so they've lost nowt.

However nowadays you get reduced price versions for home users which I think it excellent and entirely reasonable, like MS Office home, PS Elements and whatever the home version of Cubase is called. All of which I own.

[img] [/img]

here's the pic ran through neatimage only, on the automatic setting. Nothing else done to it(sharpening or levels etc.).

Yes - I'd have used a dodgy Photoshop since there's no way I'm spending 400 on software, it's just not happening, so they've lost nowt.

However nowadays you get reduced price versions for home users which I think it excellent and entirely reasonable, like MS Office home, PS Elements and whatever the home version of Cubase is called. All of which I own

DXO is one of the leaders at raw NR. Here'e an ISO 6400 image:

[img] [/img]

I'm impressed.

I'd like to see the same images processed with defaults on Neatimage and DXO...

Depends what you mean by photo editing?

Photo manipulation, removing a shadow, replacing someones head .. photoshop has been the standard for many years. You don't need the latest version anything cs is fine.

For grading photos, changing their colour, correcting exposure Lightroom is very good.

Although Lightroom is technically better and faster I have used photoshop for over 15 years I always end up going back to it.

Crop from the full size original image (note this used only the default minimal NR):
[img] [/img]

Crop from an the same raw processed in Elements using "Auto" with no NR:
[img] [/img]

Holy cow.

It's a bit pricey tho but not out of the question... I wonder if Neatimage can be that good also.

(Gorgeous photo btw, absolutely love it.. top stuff. Is it just a guest snap? I assume no flash also...?)

[img] [/img]
default(auto profiling) again, needs a bit of tweaking compared to the nnr by the looks of it, still fairly decent.