What program should I use?

A friend keeps telling me "get CS5" Well I am sure I would love it but... My husband is military and I am a stay at home mom, so we dont exactly have hundreds of dollars laying around for photo editing software. But I want a good program for the pictures I take for my family and friends. Currently I have Photoshop Elements 6, would it be even worth it to upgrade to PSE 8? Or is there another program I am just not thinking of that would be good but cheaper than CS5?

Personally I would get Lightroom. I use Lightroom to do most of my work, but I still use PS to clone things. You could get an older version of PS. I used PS7 for years before I got CS4. I still go back to PS7 just because I am familiar with the lay out.

Although I recently made the switch to Cs4, and I'm getting the hang of it pretty well now,; the truth is, I will probably never use all the tools it contains. If cost is a consideration, I would look very seriously at Corel's Paint Shop Pro X2 or X3 - it will do more than you want at a fraction of the cost and includes a lot of features that lightroom does, like adjustment brushes and batch processing. Going from Elements to PSP may be frustrating at first, but give it a week or two and you'll find it much more intuitive and faster to move around in.

Lightroom is another option worth looking at, especially with the $100 discount currently being offered, which puts it in the same price range as Elements & PSP.

Both of these offer 30 trials so take them out for a test drive and see which you like better :)

Hi amorton - I mostly use Corel Photo Paint and love it, but it is not as capable as Photoshop and is probably about the level as Elements. The issues with PS are the learning curve - you will have to dedicate some time to that if you go that route - and espense. Are you a student? Student price is ~ 1/3 of normal and I believe it's completely enabled.

Another issue with getting PS is that you said you just want a program to edit pix you take of family and friends. I think PS may be overkill for such, where Elements is perfect. Your friend may do much deeper, sophisticated graphical-art editing than you plan on doing

GIMP is another photo editing program and is *free.*

Let us know what you decide.

G

It all depends on what you want or need to do. Is there anything that you need to do that elements isn't capable of? I'm sure we would all love to have cs5, but I know I can say that I barely scratch the surface of cs4's capabilities I'm sure. Paint.net is another freeware program that is very good in my opinion. There are obviously a lot of can'ts compared to cs4, but for freeware...it's awesome. You may want to check that out to see if it fills any of the gaps you may have with pse.

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Originally Posted by amorton1437

A friend keeps telling me "get CS5" Well I am sure I would love it but... My husband is military and I am a stay at home mom, so we dont exactly have hundreds of dollars laying around for photo editing software. But I want a good program for the pictures I take for my family and friends. Currently I have Photoshop Elements 6, would it be even worth it to upgrade to PSE 8? Or is there another program I am just not thinking of that would be good but cheaper than CS5?

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What do you need or want to do that PSE 6 won't do is probably the first question to answer? Supplementing Elements with a drawing program such as Illustrator or a Corel package might be one option.

Upgrading to PSE8 (on sale for about $80 at this time) will add a variety of tools and features. The Adobe website has a version comparison link:

http://www.adobe.com/products/photos.../?view=compare

Side by side features for PSE 6,7, & 8 are compared. See if any of them interest you.

Remember trial versions of software. ADOBE and other makers will give you 15-30 days to test a program and see if it is worth the money.

An even less expensive option is to look for free tutorials on the Web. A manual of Photoshop techniques might also be the ticket to discovering what would be your next step in upgrading or for new photo manipulation/editing/management software.

Paint Shop Pro. It costs about the same as Elements but it does about the same things as the full Photoshop version.

Of course it doesn't do things quite the same way as Photoshop so when I attend a class and the demonstration is in Photoshop I have to figure out for myself how to do it in PSP. Often PSP has a quick-and-dirty way of doing things (example : skin smoothing) that in Photoshop you do with more sophisticated methods

I have CS5 and its very easy to use.

Doesn't matter as long as you're happy with it.
Paint.NET is free, and a simple introduction to layers and editing. There are some good free add-ins for it.
Photoshop Elements or Corel Paint Shop Pro are relatively cheap, and do more than most people want.
Photoshop CS5 is probably overkill for most beginners, and about 5x the cost of Elements.

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Originally Posted by amorton1437

A friend keeps telling me "get CS5" Well I am sure I would love it but... My husband is military and I am a stay at home mom, so we dont exactly have hundreds of dollars laying around for photo editing software. But I want a good program for the pictures I take for my family and friends. Currently I have Photoshop Elements 6, would it be even worth it to upgrade to PSE 8? Or is there another program I am just not thinking of that would be good but cheaper than CS5?

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amorton, if all you do is "pictures of family and friends", then PSE6 will probably suffice and the upgrade to PSE8 is relatively cheap - you can actually download it and use it for 30 days before deciding. Lightroom will cost you about 3 to 4 times what Elements will and the full blown version of Photoshop, which I believe is now CS5, will cost at least twice what Lightroom costs. A lot depends on what else you do with it (Elements) and the volume of images that you keep in your catalog. I have used both PSE6 and PSE8 and and PSE8 just gives me more flexibility in my editing. :thumbsup:

One thing to be aware of is that if you upgrade your computer and/or Operating system to run Windows 7 64-bit, PSE8 is the only version that Adobe will support or, in their words, guarantee will run properly (whatever that means) in a Windows 7 64-bit environment. I am not sure if this helps you with your decision, but I believe in the old saying that if it works don't fix it. Lightroom is a whole different animal in a lot of respects, and there is a learning curve, Photoshop CS5 is probably more than you will ever use and even for me now, having been shooting digital as a "amateur" for about 6 years, it is still overkill - I still see it as mainly a tool for professionals who need the tools that it gives them to edit photos that they can sell as stock images. :)

One analogy I have seen is that Photoshop CS5 is like going to the hardware store and buying one of every tool in the store, coming home and tossing them in a box, figuratively speaking, then trying to find the right tool for the job, whereas Photoshop Elements, takes you through the hardware store and gives you pretty well all the tools that you will probably need for "family and friend" type photography. I have recently upgraded to Lightroom 3 for the Library module, but I still keep PSE8 handy, and can move back and forth, for editing certain of my images that cannot be done in Lightroom. Also, there are a lot of "plug-ins" available for PSE that give you some of the capabilities found in full Photoshop, e.g. layer masks, tone curves and a number of others. A lot of these plug-ins are free for the taking and installation and others are very nominal in cost. I don't know if this helps, but I would be interested to know what type of editing you currently do in PSE6 and whether an upgrade to PSE 8 or full Photoshop would add value to your workflow, because, after all, that is what you might think about - do these "upgrades/new products" add value for you to your workflow.. Hope this helps a bit. Here is a forum dedicated to Photoshop Elements where you can go and ask more questions. HTH.

http://http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/

Cheers,

WesternGuy

Why dont you try some free online photo editing apps? They are def no photoshop but they have a lot of the basic features.

There is photocat, picmonkey, photomania, etc

Unless you plan on upgrading your PC's operating system, I really wouldn't change your editing software just because somebody says you should get CS5, especially if money is tight. For "family and friends" photos, Elements is fine to do simple cropping and editing.

You guys realize, don't you, that the original question was 2-1/2 years ago, right? And the poster hasn't been online in almost 2 years.

Hello

This is my first post.
I have looked at all the topics and this is the most relevant I can find with respect to my question.

I realise there's nothing better than a great original photo.
I am just experimenting how to touch up photographs and am using the steps image as an example of something I'd like to understand.
Is it possible to clean up the dirty steps other than wash them before taking the picture ;)

What software would be best and can anyone provide a video link of a demonstration of a method of a similar clean up touch up

Any advice is very much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Attachment 91273

The thing about photography is that it's best to show things as they are. If you want to clean things up too much, you shouldn't photograph them. I would leave the steps as they are.

I also recomment Paintshop Pro. I'm on version 5, the latest. It includes full raw support, hdr support and many wonderful features for about $70.

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Originally Posted by wfooshee

You guys realize, don't you, that the original question was 2-1/2 years ago, right? And the poster hasn't been online in almost 2 years.

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lol



____________________
Chuck Dee - AKA Chris
"My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain." - Helmut Newton

Hello Don Schaeffer

Thanks for the comments.
Paintshop Pro sound goods, I've just had a quick look it.
Oh, are you referring to Paintshop Pro 5 or ..... Pro X5 ?

What particular features do you really like that you don't get in other applications?

Don, I agree it's best to take the picture and leave as is.
Please humor me though :D, it's all a learning curve for me and this question interests me. If I was to try clean up the steps, how would you go about doing that in Paintshop Pro?

Hi,

I guess a duplicate photo finder software be useful.
I use Similar Image Finder.

It finds similar images on your drive even if they are not exactly the same. Fast, accurate and free.

Use Corel PaintShop Pro Corel PaintShop Pro, TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award winning software provides the average photo editor with a much more user-friendly alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It is high functioning photo editing…