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Hello All
I would like some advice on image processing software please. I currently only use the free processor with canon and have nothing else. I'm not looking at investing £600 in photoshop but would like the thoughts of everyone. There seem to be alot out there eg elements, coral, lightroom etc
Thanks in advance
Edd
Lightroom, with a book to guide is IMO easiest programme i have learned.
Photoshop is overkill if your new to the game. The free program that comes with the camera will do enough until you figure out what you need. Having said that, I do like Lightroom with a few plugins.
I agree, the program that comes with your camera is great until you figure out what you find as its shortcomings for what you want to do with your photos.
I would suggest trying a few free trials to see what will work best for you. Many people love and swear by Lightroom as being the best for them. I purchased Lightroom 3 but could never quite get the hang of it and didn't move on to Lightroom 4. I mostly use photoshop and camera RAW with a number of plug-ins (OnOne, NIK). I don't do any major batch processing and it works great for my style of processing.
A couple of free trials that I would suggest that are inexpensive if you decide to purchase is DxO Optics Pro 8 which is on sale right now until the end of the month. I only have version 7 but it looks like they made some very nice improvements with the newer version.
Also, OnOne has a fantastic Suite 7 that I use and their customer support is fantastic! It comes as a standalone program or as a plugin.
Again, work with DPP for awhile, find out what your style and workflow of processing is and try a few freebies that are out there before purchasing.
Good Luck!
Denise
Gimp is a great free alternative to Photoshop for advanced photo editing. It doesn't have some of the capabilities of the newest PS versions, and it isn't quite as user friendly, but it certainly isn't bad.
Hi, as already suggested - Lightroom. It's capable of most editing I do and it's also great for organizing your photos. And since the introduction of version 4 it's also attractively priced. I simply can't see any reason not to get it.
I picked up Elements 10 for $49, on sale, back when Lightroom was $300. It made sense considering the pricing back then. But now, Lightroom makes much more sense.
The Elements RAW converter is intentionally limited.
Elements itself is intentionally limited.
Elements Camera RAW support lasts 6 months (so no new lenses or camera supported without shelling out more).
That brings us to Elements has no upgrade path, only yearly re-purchases at full price.
Also, product quality. The latest RAW converter for Elements 10 is horribly broken, and will never be fixed. That wouldn't fly in Lightroom.
Another vote for lightroom. But I like Denise's advice to use a couple of different free trial periods to evaluate different software. I compared lightroom 3 to dxo 7 about a year ago using that method, selected lightroom and have sinced moved to lightroom 4. The free DPP that canon gives you is very good, but the money for lightroom is worth it to me.
I have been using Lightroom for a few years now and have recently upgraded to Lightroom 4. I found it easy to learn - I did buy a book. I also use Photoshop Elements for the rare occasions when I want some further retouching. For 95% of what I have wanted to do Lightroom fits my needs.
Apple Aperture 3 ($79.99 from Apple), if you own a Mac, or Adobe Lightroom 4 ($119.31 from Amazon) if you own a PC. These are primarily advanced image management programs that allow you to manage a large libraries of photos. They also have fairly powerful retouching tools, so with them you won't have to spend very much time in dedicated photo editing programs. Both Aperture and Lightroom are fully compatible with external photo editors such as Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, GIMP, etc.
I use Aperture for virtually all image selection, white balance and color correction, noise reduction, sharpening, and light retouching. Only if a photo requires more than a little clone stamping, building composts, etc. do I ever open a dedicated photo editing program.
I believe Photoshop Elements 11 ($71.37 from Amazon) is king among the low cost photo editing software. There's surprisingly little that you can do with the full version of Photoshop that you can't do with Elements. Elements is perfect for someone on a budget or someone just dipping their toe in the deep end of the pool.
Alternative to Elements, if you are a techie and a masochist, you might want to use GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) a try. GIMP (which is free) is powerful, rivaling full Photoshop in capability, although about a generation behind in features. It is an Open Source project and the interface sucks despite recent improvements. (Regarding interfaces of photo editing software: Apple = good, Adobe Photoshop and Elements = middling to crap, GIMP = really bad.)
Aperture + Elements: $151.36
Lightroom + Elements: $190.68
I like Aperture 3, so if you have a Mac, download a month trial. if you own PC, download a month trial of Lightroom
Can I change my vote?
I said Lightroom should be the no-brainer option over Elements when comparing their current suggested retail prices... but I had still yet to actually try Lightroom. After giving my suggestion I figured I really should get around to trying Lightroom. So I did.
My recent Doberman puppy shots were a good test candidate, as they really pushed the requirements of post processing, being underexposed, noisy high-ISO shots of a black dog. Actually the first few were exposed correctly, but within minutes the shots started getting under exposed as the light faded, the fog thickened, and I'm sure the clouds probably got denser too. I couldn't change settings to expose correctly because the shutter speed was already as low as I could reasonably go (1/80s for a puppy is slow!), and the ISO was already as high as I could go on the 1Ds2 (1600... 3200 looks abysmal). Shots at the edge of shootable, on the edge of usable. This was my test case.
For elements, once I knew the settings from one photo to use it was a matter of repeating (with slight variations) on each image. It wasn't anything major, or much different from my usual flow, aside from some extra fill light, some extra noise reduction, and some extra slight USM after doing my super-secret-magic-sharpening (see my post processing forum Moose Peterson Sharpening post, and replace the blending mode with 'overlay', and leave the high-pass slider at 1.9, 95% of the time... actually I'm going to update that post with my latest knowledge).
Given my first half hour with the Lightroom 4.3 trial, the differences between Lightroom's RAW options and Elements' RAW options aren't as huge as I had believed. What I was lacking however was the ability to do any of the processing I normally do AFTER camera raw. Parts of what I normally did afterwards, such as curves (using a plugin, the built in Elements curves tool is useless), are available as part of RAW processing in Lightroom. But other forms of noise reduction or sharpening just aren't there... and these tools were critical for these images.
The bottom line is that it seems I get more control and options in Elements after RAW conversion, and can make the images substantially nicer. As a hobbyist, where I'm not shooting several hundred shots per event (usually... I *have*, but not often) I'd rather have the ability to edit my photos to perfection with Elements than all the wonderful batch-editing and batch-processing Lightroom can give you.
Anything you'd want to do with layers, like Denise's texture work, or the awesome frames she puts on some of her images, you'd need to do elsewhere, outside of Lightroom, so you'd still need Elements (or GIMP) anyway.
In addition, Elements has some of it's CS big brothers' features, in cut down ways. You don't have the full content-aware suite of tools, but you've got content aware healing brushes, recompose tools, and a few others. I rarely use content aware healing, but I'd probably use it more than batch processing.
I'd always looked at Lightroom as the holy-grail package everyone wants to be using, but having tried it, I preferred what I already had.
Many people use both - do most editing in a tool like Lightroom or Aperture, and then if needed, you can open the images that need special treatment or anything involving layers in Photoshop, directly from Lightroom.
That's kind of an "edge" case though. As a starting point though, LR will do most of the heavy lifting. It's mainly to replace Bridge and ACR, and be more user friendly to photographers. I do see what you are saying with curves and layers (those plugins can be bought separate for Lightroom until the new version releases which might include them). I still stick with Lightroom/DDP as the starting point.
Another program that sounds like it might be pretty good (although I have yet to try it), is MuseMage. I don't know if anyone here has used it by either purchasing or the free trial but for $49, it doesn't seem like it would be too bad.
My daughter is in the middle of building me a new computer and I just received a free product key for MuseMage with my graphics card that came today. If anyone here has used it, I'd be curious to hear your opinion of the program. I had never heard of it until receiving this.
David, lightroom4.3 uses the same raw processing power as whats in elements 11(camera raw 7.2/3), so images will look the same in theory.Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidEccleston
With LR you do need to know the little keyboard buttons such as holding down the alt button(PC) and using the sliders in the develop module.
Watch the adobe tv videos and get a good book on LR and your opinion will change
My problem wasn't with the Lightroom RAW conversion, but that I have steps I do AFTER I convert from RAW that Lightroom just doesn't support.
Lightroom gets you fast bulk processing, but is missing some finishing touches I tend to apply to almost every image. If you shoot hundreds of shots at events regularly, by all means, use Lightroom. Elements and Shop aren't geared towards bulk editing, but give you more control after RAW conversion. Since I don't need fast bulk processing, but do want post-RAW conversion editing, and don't have the cash for full blown Shop, I'm fine with just Elements.
My vote is for Lightroom if you want to pay just once but also consider Adobe Creative Cloud. It includes Lightroom and all other software (including Photoshop) from Adobe and they have some good discounts on the monthly fee from time to time. Also if you can get the Student & Teacher Edition (as I have) that is significantly cheaper.
I have used gimp, elements, photomatix (for HDR), PTGUI, Aperture, iphoto, Canon DPP etc etc etc and I always come back to the Lightroom 4 + Photoshop CS6 combo. Lightroom is much more powerful than it seems at first glance and it integrates seamlessly with photoshop. I tried aperture for some time when I first started using a MAC but it doesn't have the functionality of Lightroom.
So my suggestion would be to use DPP for the moment but have a go at a trial version on Lightroom 4, if you like it then definitely purchase it. I love it.