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Photoshop
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Hi All
How important is it to have photoshop for editing/improving my photos?
I seem to be constantly reading about it in all the photography magazines and online. (Any tutorials online involve photoshop and free CD’s in the mags feauture photoshop as well!)
I’m using the Canon software i got free with my camera which is basic enough.Thanks
DerekPhotoshop has become such a standard name for all photo editing…
Personally, I don’t use it and I use another piece of software called PhotoImpact. There are so many products out there that can do photo editing etc., Photoshop just happens to be the most common. It has a lot of features and thousands of extras created for it by the public, which is problably why it’s so popular, but also because it was around before a lot of other software, so it’s name has carried on through and become a generic term for photo editing.
In answer to your question; unless you are doing high levels of editing etc, there is a lot of software that you can use to touch up and edit your photos… Gimp is one of them… it has some handy tutorials on its website too including:
Color2BW – Converting Color Images to B&W.
Selective Colorization – Convert images to black and white and restore color selectively.
Reducing CCD Noise – Learn how to reduce the CCD Noise in photos.
CCD Noise removal – Use selective Gaussian blur to remove CCD Noise in photos.
Contrast Mask – Decrease problem contrast in photos.
Sepia Toning – Create a nice sepia photo from color images.
Gaussian Blur Overlays – Increase saturation and add a “dreamy” feel to your photos.
GIMP Surgery – “patch” blown out hightlights in your photos.
Blending Exposures – Increase dynamic range by combining different exposures of the same scene.
“Smart” Sharpening – Sharpen images without making noise more noticable.There’s more than one way to ‘Photoshop’ a picture… ;)
Thanks for the info Jay,
The tutorials you mention on Gimp are exactly the type of stuff i’m looking to learn more on. I dont seem to have the option of doing some of those editing/touch up steps with my present software.
Thanks again
You might also like to take a look at Picture Window Pro They had layer support when working with 16-bit images long before it ever became a feature of Photoshop. There are some excellent tutorials at the site as well. Picture Window Pro does take a little getting used to, but it’s worth persevering with it. It’s relatively inexpensive too, at just under $90.00 for the full version.
You might also want to check out Photoshop Elements, it’s a fraction of the price of the full Photoshop. It’s got probably 95+% (on the basis you can get a plugin to add layer masks) of the tools you’d ever use in the full version, and most of the remaining 5% can be worked around if needs be. That said GIMP does do a fine job and you can’t argue with the price!
Layer mask is in Photoshop Elements 5, or at least it is in the index. Haven’t used it yet. :oops:
Have you considered Paint Shop Pro Photo XI? I got an OEM copy for ?40 on Ebay with full suport from Corel. It has all the features I need and I find the tutorials on magazines for Photoshop can be adapted very easily for PSP XI. I tried GIMP but found it unstable on my PC. I’ve upgraded to a new Dell with Vista and PSP XI has downloadable support software to work with this platform too.
Yes, you can get GIMP for free with a huge arsenal of Plug-ins but these are also compatable with PSP. I find that EVERY forum, tutorial & reference to post photo work is to Photoshop – I don’t get it! Unless you’re a professional or you’ve plenty of free time you probably won’t use most of what Photoshop has to offer.
p&s wrote:
Layer mask is in Photoshop Elements 5, or at least it is in the index. Haven’t used it yet. :oops:
It supports layer masks alright. If you open a PSD file that contains them already, they work perfectly well. I couldn’t find any out of the box means of adding one (aside from some sort of a workaround using and adjustment layer). I found an action here that works a treat however
irishwonkafan wrote:
I find that EVERY forum, tutorial & reference to post photo work is to Photoshop – I don’t get it! Unless you’re a professional or you’ve plenty of free time you probably won’t use most of what Photoshop has to offer.
Most tutorials will work quite well in Elements as well, but it’s a bit odd alright. I wonder is it a tacit acknowledgement of the number of non-legit copies of the full photoshop out there? I think its the most pirated piece of software worldwide (maybe after Windows)
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