What PP do you suggest?

SusieQue

I have recently gotten more & more involved in my photography and now want to develop my PP skills... ie. I don't really have any. I use DPP for conversion from RAW & to adjust brightness, contrast etc & then I have used picnik to do whatever other pp I like. While I have been happy enough with it so far, I want to do more... photomerging, layers, taking a sky from one image to use in another, different things like that.
What would yee suggest is the best to do this?
I have downloaded paint.net for free but most tutorials etc available here or elsewhere are for photoshop so would I be better using photoshop? I know it probably depends ho wmuch I want to do.. but I guess the answer to that is as much as is needed and as much as possible..
Lately i've been concentrating on portraits & macro images..

Thanks in advance,
Susie:D

oshead

Hi Susie
The answer to that is easy really. Use Photoshop.

You may get others on here who will recommend Gimp. Stating that it's free etc. But if you want to do this photography thing professionally, you should use professional tools. For PP, you can't get any better than Photoshop.

SusieQue

oshead wrote: »

Hi Susie
The answer to that is easy really. Use Photoshop.

You may get others on here who will recommend Gimp. Stating that it's free etc. But if you want to do this photography thing professionally, you should use professional tools. For PP, you can't get any better than Photoshop.

Thank you kindly for your advice.. Much appreciated.. One for thing? Is there much difference between CS & Elements?

Thanks again,
Susie:D

oshead

Elements is basically a dumbed down version of Photoshop CSx. It has a lot of good features no doubt. But I wouldn't bother with it. Why not download the trial version of Photoshop CS5 from the Adobe website and play around with it a bit. You have a month to evaluate so don't buy until you try. Another feature of Photoshop that will take the place of DPP is a program called Adobe Bridge. It comes part and parcel with Photoshop and is installed automatically with it. It's usually used to do PP on RAW files but can be used for most other image file types. You may find it easier to use than DPP too.

And of course there is always Adobe Lightroom. Does the job of Adobe Bridge and more.

So i'd suggest you develop a workflow that suits you using these products while you have them on a trial basis. If they 'fit in' with your scheme of things then maybe you could look to purchase.

SusieQue

oshead wrote: »

Why not download the trial version of Photoshop CS5 from the Adobe website and play around with it a bit. You have a month to evaluate so don't buy until you try.

So i'd suggest you develop a workflow that suits you using these products while you have them on a trial basis. If they 'fit in' with your scheme of things then maybe you could look to purchase.

I'll download this and give it a try Thanks again for all your help! LOVE the new shot of Jessica! Stunning!

Heebie

I use Lightroom for the majority of my PP, and Photoshop if I want to do anything heavy-duty to an image. (I sometimes use GIMP if I'm on my linux machine rather than my Mac.. but that's generally quickie stuff for the web.. not serious photography work.)

Lightroom speeds up a lot of PP work a great deal, and doesn't alter the originals.. it just makes notes about the changes you make so it can reproduce them if you export the photos for another medium.. so it saves a crapload of HD space to use it as well.

SusieQue

Heebie wrote: »

so it saves a crapload of HD space to use it as well.

Definitely something I need to take into consideration too!! Thank you very much for replying, much appreciated

Thecageyone

To quote Tom Mackie, in the latest edition of Digital SLR photography - "Lightroom has got to be the best software out there for photographers" - And I agree. Photoshop is great, I use both, but you'll only ever use about 5% of it's capabilities if it's just Post-processing for photos.

You can get the Lightroom 3 beta free on the Adobe site. I'm not sure how long is left on that trial period though. I use LR2.

SusieQue

Thecageyone wrote: »

Photoshop is great, I use both, but you'll only ever use about 5% of it's capabilities if it's just Post-processing for photos.

So does that not mean it takes up alot of memory for something I won't get full use out of Keith?

Thecageyone

It does for most people who use it. There's just so much you could possibly do with PS, it's a very vast ranging program. We actually use very, very little of it for photography, but what we do use is brilliant. Lightroom is aimed more directly at photographers. It's much easier use too.

Heebie

Lightroom lets you very quickly go through whole catalogs of photos, tag them with metadata, edit the color, do spotting, and cropping, along with some basic adjustments for lens correction and a few other things.

Photoshop is for editing photos.. which is much more in-depth than simple PP, really... although they can both be part of PP.

If you want to copy a person out of one photo & drop them into another.. Lightroom just isn't going to cut it..that's not it's job.

Using them both lets you control your workflow, and they're tightly integrated. You just tell Lightroom that you want to edit an image in photoshop.. it opens it in photoshop..and when you close photoshop & save the image, the edited version drops right into your open catalog next to the original.

Lightroom is designed around quickly doing the bits that you would have to repeat with every image from a photoshoot. You used to have to open each one, do your adjustments, then save. Here you open the whole catalog, do your adjustments on #1, then hit the right-arrow button and do the next one, and keep going until you're done.

I would give both LR and PS a good looking over.. you might find that you only need LR. (I doubt anyone would ONLY need PS.. but a lot of people would be fine with just LR.)

squareballoon

I have used photoshop for 15 years for various things ranging from drawing, to making textures for 3d models, to designing and now for photography. I would say that I still have never used some of the tools on it. It's a massive programme.
I now use only lightroom for my outdoor shots and find I like it more and more. For studio stuff and close ups I would still use photoshop and couldn't be without it. I use CS2 which is an old version but still entirely adequate for what I need it for.

shanona

I'm also a LR2 user. I find that with presets, much of the time i can do the same effect as with Photoshop actions and it is non-destructive editing, which is excellent. If i need to do anything extensive, I'll definitely move it over to photoshop for a little tweak/edit/whatevs.
I know plenty of people who use Elements for editing though, because it's less expensive than CS5

best of luck!

SusieQue

Thank you all so kindly for replying and telling me what works for you. Very much appreciated