Happy Friday! And Happy Thanksgiving weekend!
As you are reading this I’m probably stripping the outlet stores of all of their goods. And maybe even going to Target! I love Target.
I’m going to stray from my usual formatting because the emails/comments/questions all seem to be regarding photo editing.
To be honest? I’m pretty clueless. But blogging is about community, so maybe in this little community here we can work together and share what we all know about photo editing programs.
My background is pretty basic. Here’s the lowdown (In list form. Of course.)
- I started out last year using Picasa. It’s free and does a lot of basic editing. It has a good red-eye reduction tool, as well as cropping, changing the effects (black and white, etc.) and lighting options. I had no complaints, really.
- Whilst looking through the billion computer program CD’s that we have in the office, I noticed that I had a CD for Adobe Elements. Not sure how it got there, but I was excited. Especially since the post inspired by Graham’s love of toothbrushes required use of a photo editing program that allowed me to crop my boys’ heads and place them on top of toothbrush and Listerine costumes.
- At Christy’s encouragement I downloaded the trial for Adobe Lightroom. Lightroom is fun! And easy to use! I’ll show you.
In Lightroom, they have a bunch of “Presets” on the left-hand side such as Aged Photo, Black and White (High and Low Contrast), Sepia, etc. You choose a “preset” and then on the right-hand side you play with the contrast, exposure, etcetera.
I took this photo of Nathan a few weeks ago. I made a few tweaks with the contrast, etc. and it’s even better than the original.
On to the photo of Miss Emily I took on Monday. The original made me happy because I truly felt it finally captured her feminine side. Her captivating beauty.
Except for the crusty boogers under her nose.
I thought that I would import it into Lightroom and play a bit. I started with the “Aged Photo” preset and then played with all of the items on the right-hand side (contrast, exposure, etc.) until I got to a place where when I looked at her?
I was breathless.
I know a lot of my Internet buddies use Photoshop and it also has a free 30-day trial. I haven’t downloaded it (yet) because I’m afraid that either a) It will overwhelm me with all that it does or b) I will love it so much and want to buy it. Except? It’s $649. Ouch.
Anyone reading this use Photoshop? Is it a must-have? Or only for web-designers and such?
My 30-day trial for Lightroom only has 25 days remaining. It’s not cheap either at $299, but I always get Christmas money from parents/inlaws/husbands (Husbands? Um. I only have one.) I could use my blogging ad revenue, but they have been set aside for a much bigger cause. Amanda and I have a date to be at BlogHer ’08, and San Francisco isn’t going to be cheap.
Back to photo editing.
I think I will be sad if I no longer have access to Lightroom. I have been having a lot of fun with it.
What about you guys? What do you use, and why? Is there a program that is similar to Lightroom but less expensive? Is there another photo editing program that is similar to Adobe but won’t cost you your first born child?
Let’s share what we know and all be the better for it. Or at least have better photos.
Have a great weekend everyone! We have a plethora of activities going on. I’ll be sure to take photographic evidence.
Happy Thanksgiving!
What the Anne Heche? Am I the first to comment? I may be wrong.
I’ve been using Corel Paint Shop Pro. It’s under $100 and it’s WONDERFUL. I love it. And you can do all those fancy things with it as well, such as take out an old shoe that you don’t want in your picture!
Thanks for that, hey?
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Hey! I was the first! Woo hoo!
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I have photoshop and don’t use it. It is WAY too confusing for me. I use it once in a while to take out zits etc, but it is just too difficult for me to change the colours etc. So I am going to ask for lightroom for Christmas as well. I used Picasa for a while too, but thought it changed the quality of my photos and they looked grainy after editing. So my advice is not to bother with photoshop.
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I use Adobe Photoshop CS2 and it has been a godsend. Unless you need it for work, I would direct you to Photoshop Elements. Linda at SundryBuzz had a great review here (http://www.sundrybuzz.com/2006/09/29/adobe-photoshop-elements/).
Thanks for that! Elements is what I have, and I think I just need to learn it better
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I also use Coerl PSP and I downloaded the free trial to give me lots of time to figure it out. After the trial, I was emailed with an offer to buy the program online for $60.00. Pretty darn great. I would never buy a program for $600.00- but that’s just me, because if the novelty of using it wears off, I would kick myself. I love PSP and it is so easy to get to know as there are tons of tutorials online, even depth of field, time machine (photo aging from all time periods) and tons more.
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We use Adobe Bridge to edit in and it is VERY user friendly on a PC or Mac. It sounds similar to Lightroom and Aperature. As far as Photoshop, my husband uses it to do very technical edits that are far far far out of my range…but he went to school for it. So if he wants to put grass somewhere, take out an Exit sign, take out crows feet, paint the sky blue, endless amounts of effects ….then yeah, get it. I think you really really have to know what you are doing or be willing to sit through tutorials. ryan keeps telling me to “play” but I just don’t know what the terms are in all the menus to even know what I am doing. I have 20 hours worth of tutorials on disk that walk you through everything, but I have not taken the time to try yet. I think for the editing that you want to do, especially as you are getting much more savvy with your camera settings, Lightroom is a perfect fit. If you really want to go to the next mile…go Photoshop. Of course then you can do graphic design too…so the options are endless. hope that helps.
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I use Picasa and PhotoStudio. They work for me!!
I have the basic free Adobe Photoshop viewer thingie, but even that confuses me so there’s no way I’m going to try Photoshop without taking some heavy-duty tutorials on how to use it! Which I don’t have time for. So that settles it! Ha!
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I use Photoshop Elements. It was free. Yes, all those expensive programs will do more and better jobs of certain things than the basic programs, but ask yourself what exactly it is that you want to do. All I need to do is adjust some sharpness, color, and contrast every once in a while, add some borders, and turn images into web-friendly jpgs. To me, full Photoshop seems like a tool for people who actually know how to use it, and I don’t have the time or inclination or need (or money!) for that.
Me neither. Thanks, you
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I use Picasa as well, and Microsoft Paint. I’ve found that the “Tuning” and “Effects” tabs in Picasa can handle most of my needs, and Paint is good for fixing small things (zits, misplaced hairs, etc.). I have access to Photoshop CS3 through my school, and have never had any success with it. There are so many options and it’s non-intuitive. I’m sure if I knew how to use it properly, I’d love it, but I certainly wouldn’t spend any money on it at this point.
I hope you’re finding all kinds of wonderful things at the outlet stores! =)
I did! I bought more for the kids than for myself, but I always seem to do that.
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I recently downloaded the trial for Lightroom and have been loving it! I have used picassa but didnt like it, picnik is an online editing site that can be fun. I too was curious about photoshop so it was great to read people’s comments. Thanks!
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I have been using Paint Shop Pro for nine years…wow, has it been that long? Yikes. Anyway, I’ve been using it forever and I love it. It used to have a free-trial shareware version, and it might still, but the newer versions cost less than $100. I just played around with it a lot, reading the help as necessary, to figure out how to make it do what I wanted it to do. I think it’s a PC-only program, though.
There is also picnik.com, which lets you edit photos in an online browser, and is very user-friendly! You can link it up to your Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, and one more I can’t think of, and it can import your photos and then send the edited versions as replacements.
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Oh! And have fun at Target! When we lived in Canada for two years, that was one of the big things I missed most: being able to shop at Target.
Of course, now that I’m back in the States I miss Tim Hortons.
Timmy’s is starting to infiltrate the US!
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I use Photoshop CS2 for all of my photo editing, but have recently started trying Lightroom more. It’s been hard for me to get used to though, I need to just jump in and use it more.
And just so you know (and others as well) Pink Ink Studios has AWESOME presets for Lightroom and actions for Photoshop… as well as overlays and masks.
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Another program you might look into is GIMP. It has many of the same features as Photoshop, but is free! You can get it at http://www.gimp.org/ – there are Unix, Windows, and Mac versions. =)
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Now that I have my camera, I have to start playing with the pictures! I’ll have to start exploring all these different programs! I love that aged look you give the pictures!
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I.would.die.without.photoshop.
Seriously, and I am a camera dork. I love watching my photographer friends edit, I LOVE THE CLONE TOOL (Crusty boogers, be gone. IF you want).
I’m getting better and don’t play with everything…Usually the basic editing tools are fine. But DANG…I LOVE IT.
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I use photoshop only because I was able to learn it at work because it is part of the Creative Suites package software that I use constantly and the commands are similar through each of the programs. True that it seems over whelming but once I got my head around the basic commands (which took about a week) I loved it. I think though that Lightroom looks like a great option for a home pc.
Also wanted to mention that if you are planning on working on your photos on your pc you might want to shoot your pictures in RAW format if you are not doing that already. The difference is that RAW files allow for greater manipulation of exposure, contrast, white balance on your pc while jpegs are versions of RAW but compressed into jpegs while in your camera. The manipulation abilities are less. Keep in mind though that RAW files are much bigger as they are not compressed so if you are planning to shoot all day you might run out of card space.
Thanks, Teej! I know about RAW, but I tend to just take in Large JPEG mode so I don’t run out of card space. I should experiment a bit, though
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I have Paint Shop Pro and it is inexpensive and probably will do what you need….I haven’t even investigated or used it to its full potential, but I would recommend it. And if you have found it doesn’t do all that you need it to do (which I don’t think will be the case) then you’ve only spent $70 or whatever..
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I use iPhoto (Apple’s program) for little adjustments but have just gotten (is that a word?) my hands on Elements so I think now I can kiss my free time goodbye! : )
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Wow. That pic of Nathan is absolutely AMAZING. As always you take some great shots Angella!
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