What phot software should I use?

I am am fairly new with photography and have purchased a Nikon D80. I'm confused on what type of software I should use. The Camera came with free software called Picture Project, but I know That Nikon sells other programs, and I have also heard about Adobe. What is the benefit to these others, or is what I have sufficient?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Here's four for you to consider:

Adobe Photoshop CS3: top of the line, top of the price scale. If all you're going to do is edit photos, it's probably overkill, but anything you've ever imagined doing with your photos is probably best accomplished with CS3.

Adobe Lightroom: quickly gaining popularity with photographers. It combines photo editing with common sense workflow and organization.

Paint Shop Pro X: essentially a paint program, it also offers decent photo editing capabilities.

Adobe Photoshop Elements V: Elements is a watered-down version of Adobe's popular editing program. It provides the most often used tools at a fraction of the price of the full-blown program.

I'm sure there are other capable applications out there, but in my opinion, these are the top four. I would suggest researching each of them to see which one best suits your needs.

Hope this helps.

- Joe U.

Nikon PictureProject is extraordinarily Basic. Don't even bother.

There are two Nikon programs that are likely to be of interest. The first is Nikon Capture NX. It costs about $150, the interface is a bit clunky, but it has a ton of advanced features, reads your in-camera parameters, offers a step by step history that you can activate and deactivate steps in, has the *best* output image quality for Nikon DSLRs, does great with High ISO shots, and has the very cool u-point technology.

The second program isn't out yet. When NX was announced they also announced Nikon view Pro, however it kept slipping deadlines and was eventualy canceled, in favor of a new program that would do the same thing, but be free.

What kind of system are you running?

I Have a Dell Inspiron I6400
Intel (R) Core (TM) Duo CPU T2250 @1.73GHz
2046MB
32-bit Operating system
Windows Vista Home Premium

There are several very good programs out there at different price levels. Two questions you should ask yourself first... What are you looking to do with the program? Just basic editing, full blown editing, photo cataloging, etc? Second, and maybe most important, what is your budget?

Aaron

Thanks, I would like to stay in the range of $200 if at all posible. Just basic editing and the ability to store my pics. Also, I know Picture project also captures details on the photo as to shutter speed and ISO, etc. For a beginer I think that's a nice to have so I can see what I did when the pics turned out right or wrong. Picture project also has a feature where I can email pics and it shrinks them so they can be sent, I would assume the higher end products would have this feature as well right?

The information you refer to is EXIF data. This is stored in all digital photos and can be read with virtually any editor or there are several free programs on the web for reading it such as Opanda. If you are looking to stay under $200 I would say Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 at $99.99. If you want to spend a little more, there's Adobe Lightroom at $299. If you click on the links, you can download 30 day demos. Let us know what you end up deciding.

Aaron

BTW- Welcome to PR. I look forward to seeing some of your pics :)

Thanks for your help Xia_Ke. I'm new to all of this and hope to get some good pics out soon.

It's all good. Still new myself :) Lots of good people here that are always willing to help. So don't be afraid to jump right in ;)

Happy Shooting,
Aaron

From what I've heard, Elements is good for your basic photo editing, and more.

Lightroom, while costing more was pretty much Made for Photographers.

Check out prices on sites that aren't Adobe though, Cause I know a guy who says he bought Lightroom for 100.

Where was he able to get Lightroom for $100? Was it an academic version or something? Adobe had an introductory price of $199 which I ended up purchasing mine at. I've seen some listed on Ebay for around $250 which I'm assuming is people that purchased at the $199 price to resell.

PS - NewD80User, Lightroom is worth EVERY penny, even at full price of $299.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tel

From what I've heard, Elements is good for your basic photo editing, and more.

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I have an older version of Elements that I picked up on Ebay for under $40 and it does everything I need it to do. Besides the basics, you can use layers, play with levels, add fill flash, get rid of noise, utilize the unsharp mask and many more things I will probably never try. Actually, I really don't know what else I would want it to do.

Thanks for all the ideas, I will be sure to look around.

NewD80User, I would opt for the latest version of Photoshop Elements. I use it and it is more software and has more capabilities than I will ever use. The more industrial strength versions are really for professionals - I will never be a professional, but PSE gives me more capabilities than I will ever need as an amateur (as I just said). HTH

Cheers,

WesternGuy

P.S. Buy a good book, or take a course, or both, to get the full elements. Books, anything by Scott Kelby I find very good.

I have to throw in for The Gimp. It's free and it's pretty powerful. Granted, it's not as user friendly as Photoshop but I don't think anyone can tell someone who's never used PS that PS is user friendly.