Need photo enhancement software

[evan_david]

Hi all,
I have a color lab and I am already using some software for photo editing but I am suffering so many problems so I decided to purchase latest software that fulfills my all requirements. Actually I want great enhancement and optimization for digital images.
Advice will be appreciated.
Thanks,

[DEvianT]

If you want the best Photoshop CS3 is what you'd go for. Very expensive but it can do anything you can imagine.

Below that Paint Shop Pro is very capable also and not anywhere near eas expensive.

Both the above have a very steep learning curve. PS CS3 more so than PSP as it does more.

Photoshop Elements 5 is cheaper still and very easy to use.

If you just want to develope and enhance the contrast colour etc... and do general optimisation of photographs but are processing a lot then I'd go for Adobe Lightroom as this has a superb workflow and is easy to use.

If you want RAW processing software then Capture One LE or Pro are the best though the Lightroom RAW conversion and ACR in CS3 are now very good indeed.

Beyond that there's always the GIMP which is free but a tad flakey. Not a bad image editor though in my humble opinion has a long way to go (especially in colour management). But it free so I am not really complaining.

[AlbertHurwood]

Well I can't really afford Photoshop, so over the years have tried out a vast selection of free and cheap software.
I use NeatImage which is an INCREDIBLE piece of software which is the best I've ever used to reduce noise (and the FREE version suits me fine!)
I have used Serif PhotoPlus for years am now now using PhotoPlus 9( which I got on special offer for £12.00!
I also use XAT.com Image Optimizer which can reduce the file size of Jpegs without affecting the fine detail.
I use Helicon Filter for sharpening, because it offers more sharpening facilities than most other software including the ability to suppress halos, and selectively sharpen different colours etc.
It also has a noise reducer and the ability to alter gamma, contrast colour , crop, reduce distortion, resize etc.
I use a Canon EOS350D and use the bundled RAW (which I always shoot in) to convert to Jpegs.
I find that the above software offers me virtually all I need.
To see what you can achieve with this fairly cheap software check these two pics out:



The one above is the original shot taken at 1600 ISO at about 9.30pm at night at 1/100 at f6.3.

The shot below is the result of using the above software to process it, and shows what is possible using relatively cheap software.



NOTE:These are screenshots so the quality is much reduced.

[DEvianT]

Well I can't really afford Photoshop, so over the years have tried out a vast selection of free and cheap software.

Mmmm well the poster is running a colour lab so going with a mish mash of freebies with no colour management in sight would be rather poor.

Agree that neatimage is a nice peice of software though. In a lab I'd recommend noiseware pro though to cope with Adobe 1998 16bit colourspace images without trashing their colour profile.
D