Do I need Photoshop?

[Celebration]

Okay, seriously, what does it do that Paint plus HP Image Zone doesn't do?

I do think you can probably overlay textures, which would be interesting, and merge pictures. I'm not sure I would use that enough to justify getting Photoshop.

Can you choose a part of a picture and then change saturations, or, brightness, for instance on one part of the picture and not another? That might save a lot of time. I could do it with Paint and HP Image Zone combo but it is a little unwieldy. Honestly, I just got reacquainted with Image Zone. HP seems to have abandoned that for another photo editing software that doesn't seem to do as much. When I had to reinstall my hard drive I got it back again. It will do slight changes in rotations, for instance, when I happen to hold my pocket camera at the wrong angle. The new HP software won't do that.

Using Paint, I have realized something. JPEG is just a little off using it with Windows, or SOMETHING. Paint reformats the BMPs much more cleanly than the JPEGs. I have to say this is highly annoying to me. I'm not sure how this all pans out. Generally I use Paint only to make diagrams that I use, and not to do anything special with pictures. I have learned to save and adjust diagrams in Paint in BMP form until I need the final one in JPEG. HP Image Zone I use to tweak my pictures.

Does Photoshop work better than Paint using JPEGs, or is this a Windows thing in general?

Oh, the software that comes with the Kodak is sort of a joke, except I do like the "cartoon" and "coloring book" sometimes. I just got a Canon and I guess I will take a look at that too.

I'm sure there is a ton I don't know about photo editing software. I still find it very fun fooling around with it.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

1. Give Gimp a try

:hi: It's free and does a lot of stuff.
http://www.gimp.org/windows/

[NashVegas]

4. I Find Gimp Adequate

For freeware it's great, I'm just not fond of all the fussing about in menus. YMMV.

[alfredo]

15. When PS 7 broke in Leopard (10.5) I went with GIMP. I'm starting to

get the hang of it. It still isn't PS, but it works fine for my level of expertise.

Colorit! for Mac is pretty good.

http://www.digimagearts.com/

[mth44sc]

2. If I was to spend that kinda money

I'd look at this one first. Especially if you ever consider shooting RAW images

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/

[Blue_In_AK]

3. Celebration, I use Paint Shop Pro (Corel's photo editing program) --

I believe it does almost everything that PhotoShop does - at least the more normal uses - and costs a fraction as much. You can probably pick it up for less than $100.

I've never been a Microsoft fan particularly, so I was happy to add this program to my Word Perfect and other Corel lines.

[Johnny Noshoes]

11. I love Paint Shop Pro..

I still us Jasc's version 8 and I've also got Corel's version X2. The Corel version has some nice features but version 8 is still useful.

[Blue_In_AK]

12. I started with version 8.

I'm up to 10 now, I think, or 11. To me it's much more user friendly than Photoshop (or maybe I'm just dense. :shrug: )

[Johnny Noshoes]

13. You're NOT dense

it is a lot more user friendly. I've tried Photoshop and its a great piece of software but way more than I need. On a side note...wow I've actually reached 800 posts.

[Blue_In_AK]

14. Congratulations.

It took you a while, I see. :rofl: You joined three days after me, and I have 22,875 more posts than you. I feel like a real motor-mouth.

[Johnny Noshoes]

16. Thanks...

Oh I read a lot of threads but some of the hotter topics are ones I DON"T want to jump into because I'm liable to get really ticked off at someone and get myself tombstoned and I don't think I'd like the old granite pizza.

[ManiacJoe]

20. The older Jasc versions of PSP are good ones.

I started out with version 4 or 5 because they were dirt cheap. I still have version 9.x because it came free with a memory card and was the last version before Corel started tinkering with it. I have Corel's version 12. It has some good features; I like the UI better than Photoshop. Unfortunately both the newer PSP and Photoshop will discard EXIF data that it does not understand. Jasc's version of PSP would preserve the EXIF data even if it was not understood.

[ManiacJoe]

5. Microsoft's Paint is NOT the way to go.

If you are looking for a heavy duty graphics editor, Photoshop is the gold standard (with its prices in gold). As Blue points out Paint Shop Pro is an excellent alternative at a much lower price. I have both and use PSP 90% of the time.

If you don't need something that big, Light Room has already been mentioned. Technically Light Room is a digital asset manager (DAM) with some editing capabilities. However, the last few versions have pushed the "some editing capabilities" into the realm of "more editing capabilities than most people need 90% of the time". I don't use it, but lots of folks I work with love it as both a DAM and editor combo.

If you are looking for something free and way simple to use, Paint.Net is a option that is far superior to Windows Paint.

[Celebration]

6. Thanks everyone!!

I think I'll try GIMP first--free is always best, and then compare it with what I am already using.

I don't think I really need heavy duty graphics.

I did try paint.net once, but that is on my old hard drive. Maybe I will try it again. I was just more used to the Paint commands. One thing I was really annoyed with Paint about was the fonts, which I thought were awful and boring. Guess what? I figured out that *most* of the time you could do any font you want by doing it first in Word, and then copying and pasting into Paint, using the option of seeing through to the background. It took me forever to figure that out, and I am wondering if that is why people don't like it.

I kind of like all the crazy fonts in Word. I made some slideshows just in MPEG-1 format for the personalized meditation slideshows I do. Here is an example of a slide that I made using a Word font in Paint.



Hey, I just needed an excuse to use a "sky" picture.

[dbmk]

7. By definition BMPs are cleaner than JPGs

I might state the obvious here, but just to cover the bases:
BMP is a non-compressing lossless format. It saves what you see. Which leads to large files.
When you save a JPG it uses a compression algorithm to reduce the size(mb size, not resolution ofc. :) )
That will lead to a loss of data because it basically becomes an approximation of the original content - and is why you will relatively quickly see artifacts in jpgs that are saved at medium to low quality.

PNG is the way to go for lossless compression. It will reduce the file size(as much as possible), but not lose any data.

A new JPEG standard has been published, JPEG-2000, that is better than JPEG and will allow you to pick lossless compression as well. But not all browsers or applications support it, so has not seen much use. And PNG is still better for lossless compression.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_ (remove the _ at the end. The forum software thinks the link is a picture if it ends with JPEG)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP_file_format

[Celebration]

9. Thanks for the explanation

I was wondering what in the world was going on.........really, there are some very basic things I don't know. I guess you have figured that out!

[Trocadero]

8. see this review at amazon for some interesting info

http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-65026616-Photoshop-Elements-7/dp/B001DMBWXS/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1235252855&sr=8-1


246 of 251 people found the following review helpful:
A serious photo editing program, November 25, 2008
By Michael McKee "mystic cowboy" (Port Townsend, WA United States) - See all my reviews

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I like Photoshop Elements. I've always considered it a good option for photographers who haven't spent the many, many hours needed to learn the full version of Photoshop. That's not to mention the extra $560 the full version will set you back.

I've taught Photoshop at a local college since 2000 and use it in my graphic design business. There are real advantages to having the pro version, for pros. However, there are some real disadvantages, too. I see person after person come into my classes having paid the full price for the full version. With very, very few exceptions these people don't push their program hard enough to exceed Element's limitations and probably never will. There seems to be the mind set that because these people have spend a bundle on their cameras and lenses they "need" the "better" version of Photoshop. They don't. Elements can handle a huge percentage of photo editing and design jobs. You may have to use a different tool than what you're used to but can usually achieve identical results. A better camera can produce better photos. Photoshop CS- whatever isn't a better photo editing program. The underlying graphics engine is identical in both programs. Elements just has a simpler interface. If you think that Photosho Elements is complicated, try learning CS4.

To prove my point to a professional photographer friend I had him come up with a dozen photos. He edited them in CS3 and I used Elements 7. Our results were different on a couple of the images but that wasn't due to Elements but that my interpretation was different from his. Even he agreed.

That said my recommendation is that if you are getting serious about editing your photos, start with Elements. It will save you a ton of scratch and the vast majority of what you learn will be easily transferable to the full program. If you find that you outgrow Elements some day you haven't lost anything. Chances are that Photoshop will have a new version out and even the upgrade for Photoshop is half again as expensive as Elements at full retail.

As to the value of this version of Elements. Some people have written that they find it slower than previous ones. Maybe they had an earlier version of Elements. I haven't found that to be the case on my pretty middle of the road computer. Are the new tools worth the cost? That's a tougher question. If you have version 4 or earlier, absolutely. Version 5, I'd say yes. Version 6? Probably. I usually skip a version when upgrading.

There are some new tools that are nice. The Adobe Photoshop.com isn't too compelling. I've been on Flickr for years and don't plan to move off. Adobe's site doesn't offer an real advantages for me.

The Scene Cleaner and Smart Brush are both very useful tools. The Action Player lets me run pre-recorded Photoshop actions in Elements. That's not quite like making my own, but there are hundreds, possibly thousands of pre-recorded Photoshop actions available for download. Actions can perform automated changes to your images and can be quite useful

Other tools, like the Blue Sky brush have limited functionality. Painting a blue sky over water is easy and cool. Doing so over trees or any complicated horizon is a total pain. The Whiter Teeth brush is handy, though that wasn't that hard to accomplish before. But keeping with Elements' philosophy of simplifying photo editing, I can see that it is an obvious inclusion. And the Surface Blur tool, well don't get too excited about it.

Adobe's Photo Organizer is still an excellent tool, though I would have liked to see Adobe include Bridge instead, as they did in the Mac version of Elements.

Adobe includes some guided activities like creating holiday cards and scrapbooks with Elements. If that appeals to you, there are wizards that guide you through the activities. The results aren't quite professional looking but probably better than most people could achieve on their own.


http://www.amazon.com/review/R2H4BJXPGQTBOS/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

[Celebration]

10. Thanks

It was indeed Photoshop Elements that I was considering--not the uber expensive Photoshop.

[Fumesucker]

17. 10 free alternatives to Photoshop..

Try out some of these before you jump into spending hard earned lucre..

http://www.lifeclever.com/10-free-web-based-alternatives-to-photoshop/

[Stevenmarc]

18. I've been using a combo of Lightroom & Elements 7

Personally Lightroom handles about 80% of my needs and Elements handles the rest.

Now that said, Adobe recently had an offer for Elements users to purchase the full blown Photoshop for $299 and it was an offer I really could not refuse. I know it's total overkill at the moment but I look forward to experimenting and probably will take some classes.

[priller]

19. I use LightRoom for almost everything

If LightRoom had perspective tools and lens correction, I would probably never need Photoshop.