MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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I want to get my wife photoshop for Mac for her Birthday but after looking at the various options available with prices ranging from £55 - £700! I have no idea what i should be buying. Currently she just uses Aperture which isn't anything special and I know she finds the limitations of it frustrating.
She wouldn't want pro standard commercial software, but something that will give a greater range of editing and creative options etc.
pixelmator and/or GIMP should do the trick depending on her skill level.
I think with Adobe its subscription model only now which is £^lots!!!
Gimp
It is free too.
Damn...beaten to it!
Photoshop Elements would do the trick or if she shoots in RAW a lot then Lightroom 5 (currently £72 direct from Adobe) does almost everything the Elements can and also has the much better RAW capabilities.
Alternatively full fat Photoshop and Lightroom 5 together can be had for £8.78 p/m on a subscription basis. After 12 months you either stop using it or continue on the normal rate of around £18 p/m.
GIMP is free but a pig to use and personally I never got on with it.
Lightroom for general photography workflow, then you could probably get away with a free or very cheap app for cloning/transforming/masking/selective colouring/etc.
If Gimp does all this, then it sounds fine - there's apparently a version which tries to mirror Photoshop tool layout.
As it's free at least you haven't lost anything other than time, by giving it a go.
Should have provided a linky:
http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/special-offers.html
All Adobe offers on there including the LR5 one...
Either Photoshop Elements or Lightroom. Elements is the cut down version of Photoshop (but it's only slightly cut down) so more aimed at editing, and Lightroom is aimed at processing batches of photos efficiently.
Elements comes with a powerful photo organiser, which you may or may not find useful. So if you want to just shoot, store your photos, then occasionally edit something ie cut out a background, tweak noise etc then that's good. LR is more about sitting down after your day out and processing the lot, like developing a film I suppose.
[url= http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/psa-photo-effects-8-is-free-windows-or-mac ]This thread may help too[/url]. Not quite photoshop but goes beyond Aperture and integrates well with, and builds upon, lightroom. Has cloning, layers and content aware functions. Have just downloaded so free offer still works!
Another option would be Lightroom 5 with the NikEffex plug ins. Should come to less than £200.
I know many photographers who no longer use photoshop as LR with a few plugins pretty much does it all now. If you absolutely must have that single function then use GIMP but for the most part photoshop is overkill and overly complicated. If you really want to do major image manipulation (i.e. creating new, involved, composite ones, not just developing photographs) then photoshop is the way to go.
@Shackleton - Skip Nik altogether and get the free Photo Effects 8 for free - see my PSA thread...
dannybgoode - the link in my post above is to your thread! I've just downloaded it and it looks really good although have yet to have a proper play. Cheers!
What aspects of Aperture does she find limiting? To be honest I don't think any other programme this side of Photoshop will do much more. Lightroom and Capture One probably have some more functionality but not enormously so.
Aperture, Lightroom and Darktable (free!) are excellent photo developing applications. None are intended for photo editing, that would be the job of something like Photoshop.
Though the lines blur, editing and developing are not really the same thing.
Graphic converter does a good job and has layer support.
Lightroom 5
Gets my vote over anything on mac
Cheap enuff realy good workflow does a decent job especialy if you n3ed a batch done non destructive
How ever if you doent own lighgtroom then that photographers deal that adobes doing seams good value if you need photoshop cc as well
God i hated aperture ,iphoto absolutely non intuitivand for once theres loads of good tutorials for lightroom by yer woman. Julieanne kost ..top marks to her...
Gimp was far to buggy for me
My photos have never been so well organised even back up hardd drives
Opps excuse me rambles..
Slight thread resurrection but if you want other photo editing related ideas has your wife got a tablet?
I have just set my Intuos 4 back up and forgot just how much easier it made photo work.
Something like this would be an ideal starting point:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wacom-Intuos-Pen-Graphics-Tablet/dp/B00EO0R2IU/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t
I had a Wacom Bamboo as my first tablet and this is the (much) newer version of and for general work it should be more than sufficient.
This and Lightroom and your wife is away...
Serious question - did those suggesting Lightroom not read the OP, or does it actually do more than Aperture? If so, please enlighten me!
Happy with aperture here, what's she trying to do that it won't do it?
If I need to actually dick about with a pic, then Gimp, or Pixelmator.