MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Without spending hundreds on Photoshop - what else is recommended?
Paint.Net for free is very good and better than the hideous interface of the otherwise powerful Gimp.
If you want free, Gimp is very full featured (not quite as good as photoshop, but not stuff most digital photography types will miss). Paint.net is quite easy to use.
Paintshop Pro used to be quite good and easy to use, you have to pay for it, but it is cheap. I dunno what the current version is like.
Photoshop Elements is a cut down Photoshop, which is useful if you think you're likely to end up working in a professional environment where they have Photoshop at a later date.
Joe
elements seemed to be consensus last time this came up
I use paint.net for basic stuff like resizing and red eye. Very easy to use
I have no experience with Paint Shop, but GIMP is a very good bit of software, and it's free!
PS Elements is probbly a good buy, if you think you would like to progress to Full-Fat Photoshop. It is a pretty powerful bit of software, and will give you many of the best features of it's big brother.
Photoshop is the budgie's knickers, though, fo' sho!
Have a look on ebay for older versions; perfectly functional, and legal!
Hooky versions could contain bugs and viruses, which could **** your computer, or they may be copies of beta versions, which may have bugs that hinder it's ful use.
what about lightroom?
Either Photoshop Elements (current one is version 7) or Paintshop Pro (current one is called Ultimate X2). Both about £70-80, can buy from Amazon. Both extremely powerful set-ups with far nore features than the average photographer will ever use. Sure you can go the whole hog and buy CS4 but unless you're a professional publishing house it's not necessary at all.
FWIW I've got Paintshop Ultimate X2 on this computer but I've used Elements 6 and Photoshop 7 before. It just depends which interface you prefer. Richpips off here uses Elements 6 for all his work and he's semi-pro. I think STW's other prolific photographer 'simonfbarnes' uses PaintShop Pro version 12.
Your camera manufacturers software?
I use [url= http://www.capturenx.com ]Nikon's Capture NX[/url] for almost all my photo editing, despite having Photoshop installed.
Lots of good advice there, chers fellas - the camera I have is only an Olympus compact, its nowhere near what I'm guessing you use, but its one of those shockproof/waterproof things so handy when I'm out on the bike.
Downloaded paint.net last night, but as I was in a rush to get to the pub I've only spent about an hour playing, seems very good though. Gonna have a play with that for a bit longer and will also try out Gimp. Depending on how much I get into it, I'll decide whether its worth splashing the cash on Elements or Paintshop. Been buttering up Mrs. Yosh for a while now re. a DSLR......we'll see how that goes.