Adobe Photoshop and CS

[jann1033]

that worked great! thanks again

 

[coreyjune12]

If you saw this thread and are thinking to yourself "What in the world is Gimp" you should check it out for yourself. Gimp is a free open source alternative to Photoshop. Gimp and Photoshop have two things in common, they are hard to figure out at first and they edit photos. I personally have all the things I need from Photoshop on Gimp. So try out Gimp for yourself and you could save $50.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

GIMP is great for a free photo editor. It's not a replacement for full blown Photoshop but it easily could be for Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro, etc. The downside is that far, far fewer people use it, so you won't find nearly as much information on how to use it.

 

[ukcatfan]

The thing that holds Gimp back for me is batch processing. I believe that there is a way to do some custom scripts that act like a batch, but I have not taken the time to figure out how to do it.

Kevin

 

[MarkBarbieri]

The thing that holds Gimp back for me is batch processing. I believe that there is a way to do some custom scripts that act like a batch, but I have not taken the time to figure out how to do it.

Kevin

In addition to the support for actions, the big factors for me include:

1) Ability to handle 16-bit files
2) All the Photoshop plug-ins and actions that I use
3) A gazillion tutorials online assume you are using PS
4) Much better color space management
5) Soft proofing
6) LAB colorspace

Aside from the big feature issues, I find Photoshop to be much more efficient. Given the amount of time I spent in LR/PS, the cost for efficiency equation makes them very attractive even with their high prices.

If you don't use a photo editor much of you've got more time than money, GIMP really is a pretty cool tool. It's just not what so many of it's booster try to sell it as - a serious Photoshop alternative.

 

[MICKEY88]

GIMP is great for a free photo editor. It's not a replacement for full blown Photoshop but it easily could be for Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro, etc. The downside is that far, far fewer people use it, so you won't find nearly as much information on how to use it.

what will photo shop do, that paint shop pro photo x2 won't do..??

the big difference with photo shop is the graphics end, which is why they can charge so freakin much...

for photo editing I think PSP will give it a run for it's money at a fraction of the cost..

 

[cosine4]

In addition to the support for actions, the big factors for me include:

1) Ability to handle 16-bit files
2) All the Photoshop plug-ins and actions that I use
3) A gazillion tutorials online assume you are using PS
4) Much better color space management
5) Soft proofing
6) LAB colorspace

Aside from the big feature issues, I find Photoshop to be much more efficient. Given the amount of time I spent in LR/PS, the cost for efficiency equation makes them very attractive even with their high prices.

If you don't use a photo editor much of you've got more time than money, GIMP really is a pretty cool tool. It's just not what so many of it's booster try to sell it as - a serious Photoshop alternative.

In regards to number 2 and 3 above:
You can use most all Photoshop filters/plugins with Gimp. There is a discription how to do this at www.gimptalk.com .

If you prefer everything to be laid out like Photoshop so that the tutorials work, there is another build of Gimp called Gimpshop that is supposed to be able to use Photoshop tutorials pretty well (I haven't used that version so I am just going by what I have heard).

In my experience I haven't found anything that I couldn't do with Gimp that I could with Photoshop, but I am just a casual user.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

what will photo shop do, that paint shop pro photo x2 won't do..??

the big difference with photo shop is the graphics end, which is why they can charge so freakin much...

for photo editing I think PSP will give it a run for it's money at a fraction of the cost..

I don't know much about PSP, so I honestly couldn't say. Should I assume from your comment that it does everything I listed above?

PSP is priced inline with PSE. PSE does almost everything that PS does at a fraction of the cost. The trick Adobe does is to make the few things that PSE doesn't do or doesn't do well the sort of things that less cost sensitive customers will find very important and willing to pay several hundred extra dollars for. That's certainly why I got PS instead of PSE.

If I put together a checklist of the functions I wanted, PS and PSE (and presumably PSP and GIMP) would all do 90%. It was the remaining 10% that I decided was worth the extra money.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

In regards to number 2 and 3 above:
You can use most all Photoshop filters/plugins with Gimp. There is a discription how to do this at www.gimptalk.com .

If you prefer everything to be laid out like Photoshop so that the tutorials work, there is another build of Gimp called Gimpshop that is supposed to be able to use Photoshop tutorials pretty well (I haven't used that version so I am just going by what I have heard).

In my experience I haven't found anything that I couldn't do with Gimp that I could with Photoshop, but I am just a casual user.

Just to be clear, I think well of GIMP and GNU in general. In fact, I'm a big GAWK user.

Assuming your correct, I could probably make some or all of my plugins work. I could probably work my way through tutorials and examples using Gimpshop. The question is, at what point does the extra work in making things work become more costly than the price difference. The answer is different for different people.

Photoshop is definitely not the only appropriate photo editing tool. It's costly. It has a steep learning curve. It's resource intensive. Years ago, it was essentially free to home users because it was one of the most pirated pieces of software on the planet. I use to regularly tell people to through away their pirated copy of PS and get something simpler because for a casual user, Photoshop just plain sucks. For someone really hardcore into professional digital photo manipulating and printing, there is nothing better or more widely used. Few people here will fall into either extreme.

 

[Groucho]

My understanding is that it can't do any more than mere 8-bit, which would mean losing a good bit of Raw's advantage right off the bat. But the new one should, theoretically.

I haven't tried Gimp in a long time but I did give it a few shots in the past, and the user interface at the time was absolutely inscrutable. This was at a time when Photoshop's interface was hardly a model of clarity either!

 

[MarkBarbieri]

My understanding is that it can't do any more than mere 8-bit, which would mean losing a good bit of Raw's advantage right off the bat. But the new one should, theoretically.

I haven't tried Gimp in a long time but I did give it a few shots in the past, and the user interface at the time was absolutely inscrutable. This was at a time when Photoshop's interface was hardly a model of clarity either!

I've been told that GIMP's interface has been substantially improved. I haven't tried it to confirm that.

Photoshop's interface is still anything but clear. It's strength is that once you learn the tricks, there are very efficient ways of doing lots of things. It's weakness is that there is nothing coherent about it, so it takes lots of use to learn to use it. That's why I think it is a disasterously bad tool choice for people that aren't going to use it much.

 

[MICKEY88]

I've been told that GIMP's interface has been substantially improved. I haven't tried it to confirm that.

Photoshop's interface is still anything but clear. It's strength is that once you learn the tricks, there are very efficient ways of doing lots of things. It's weakness is that there is nothing coherent about it, so it takes lots of use to learn to use it. That's why I think it is a disasterously bad tool choice for people that aren't going to use it much.

that's why I think PAint SHop Pro Photo X2 is better for the average person , much easier learning curve, a lot of built in actions, which do what a lot of photo shop plug ins do... and once you learn how to use it and want to have more control, you can do things manually instead of using the actions..

 

[jann1033]

alright since you brought it up exactly what are actions..i am guessing you can basically save something you do repeatedly..ie i usually sharpen with glaussian blur, 20/60 to remove any digital haze( although i am not really sure it's necessary since i usually don't see much difference...) so when i open the sharpen tool, it's set for that...so how would an action be different? would one click do sharpen, color anything else? but how often do you use that since most of my stuff if i tweak it it's cause i want a particular look that i probably don't want for everything?

 

[Nikel]

alright since you brought it up exactly what are actions..i am guessing you can basically save something you do repeatedly..ie i usually sharpen with glaussian blur, 20/60 to remove any digital haze( although i am not really sure it's necessary since i usually don't see much difference...) so when i open the sharpen tool, it's set for that...so how would an action be different? would one click do sharpen, color anything else? but how often do you use that since most of my stuff if i tweak it it's cause i want a particular look that i probably don't want for everything?

I use actions for things that I do frequently but that have lots of steps, like the urban cross process I use on senior portraits, which I just counted and has 31 steps. They can still be set up to prompt for adjustments, but it automates the in between stuff, plus the adjustment prompts pop right up rather than me having to click each individual step. It also good for batch stuff. If I design an album for a client as a 10x10, but they decide to order a 7x7, I can resize the entire folder using an action rather than resizing each page individually.

 

[Groucho]

Photoshop's interface is still anything but clear. It's strength is that once you learn the tricks, there are very efficient ways of doing lots of things. It's weakness is that there is nothing coherent about it, so it takes lots of use to learn to use it. That's why I think it is a disasterously bad tool choice for people that aren't going to use it much.

I agree with you, I think that Adobe is somewhat caught by their own success. Photoshop CS3 is still just an evolution of an interface that was designed back in the Windows 3.1 era, and enough pros have invested time in learning that interface that they really can't just redesign it from scratch to be easier to use - hence, Photoshop Elements gets the more user-friendly interface. Lightroom is certainly aimed at pros in the same way that Photoshop is, but has a vastly improved and modern interface (though still not perfect).

I have no doubt that they could give you the power of Photoshop with the ease of use of Photoshop Elements, but in the process they'd alienate all the old-time PS users.

I think a few big pieces of business software are the same way... Occasionally I fire up AutoCAD at work (very occasionally), and man, if you think Photoshop's user interface is confusing, it's got nothing on AutoCAD.

 

[MICKEY88]

alright since you brought it up exactly what are actions..i am guessing you can basically save something you do repeatedly..ie i usually sharpen with glaussian blur, 20/60 to remove any digital haze( although i am not really sure it's necessary since i usually don't see much difference...) so when i open the sharpen tool, it's set for that...so how would an action be different? would one click do sharpen, color anything else? but how often do you use that since most of my stuff if i tweak it it's cause i want a particular look that i probably don't want for everything?

PSP has built in actions {actually called scripts}, such as changing a pic to a b&W pencil drawing, or a watercolor...etc...

you can creat your own, you simply open a pic, click on record script, then do the editing that you want, when finished with all of your steps, you click save script recording , then name it,,,

I have some complicated scripts as well as simple ones,

a simple one would be resize 25%, I use this a lot for model shoots, I give the model a disk with all pics full size and 25% for web posting,

this script allows me to batch process the pics which are usually 500-1000 pics from a model shoot..

I can start the script and work on other stuff while it runs,

when you start the script it asks where you want to save the files, so I make a subfolder of the folder the pics are coming from.. saves a lot of time

 

[scottishduffy]

My husband and I just got a new computer, which came with photoshop. Great! I have lots of photos and would love to edit some of them. Only problem is I have *no idea* how to use photoshop. Are there any good tutorials out there on the web? I did a search and came up with hundreds but had no idea where to start. Plus, many of them seemed quite advanced and dealt with web design.

All i want to do is adjust my photos to look their best and maybe get to where I can add graphics to them. Anyone know of a good site for this? Thankx.

Duff

 

[Gdad]

Scott Kelby has some good books on it. You can search Amazon.

 

[ukcatfan]

It also depends on what version came on it. With the ~$500 pricetag for full PS, most PCs do not come with that version. If it is Elements, it is the consumer grade product and a little more user friendly.

Kevin

 

[jann1033]

about .com has a bunch of tutorials( www.graphicssoft.about.com) for elements and the big version.( check out the left column) also links to other places and freebie add ons plugins etc.......for elements the book i like = "the missing manual", by barbara brundage. it's great for beginning and also has tons of info to use for more advanced...it covers pretty much everything i have ever needed, i just forget to look in it