Photoshopping

[Socratesabroad]

Well, there's something document-wise I need to, ahem, improve.

Anyway, I've always heard about the wonders of Photoshop, but if there's another app out there that's better at the same thing, I'd be glad to hear about it.

The desired end result is a high-quality pdf/image - without any hint of malfeasance - I can forward on to others. Sadly, I'm not too experienced in this field, so I'd be grateful for any advice/tips.

[IkemenTommy]

Never tried it personally, but maybe it's worth checking out Gimp. It's free. I used to like using Corel but they seemed to be butchered by Photoshop. Paintshop Pro is just plain crap. Good luck.

[FG Lurker]

Never tried it personally, but maybe it's worth checking out Gimp. It's free. I used to like using Corel but they seemed to be butchered by Photoshop. Paintshop Pro is just plain crap. Good luck.

You seem mighty confused... Paint Shop Pro is now owned by Corel. I don't think you have used a recent version either cause since about 7.0 and definitely 8.0 (current is 10) it no longer falls into the "crap" category.

[IkemenTommy]

Never tried it personally, but maybe it's worth checking out Gimp. It's free. I used to like using Corel but they seemed to be butchered by Photoshop. Paintshop Pro is just plain crap. Good luck.

You seem mighty confused... Paint Shop Pro is now owned by Corel. ]
Nope, I try to stick with one program now, which is Adobe that doesn't drastically change the interface and the features after every new release. Adobe is THE industry standard and there are lots of free tutorials and resources on the web. There are always plenty of filters available for Photoshop as well. Paint Shop Pros were usually bundled with new PCs and they were very lacklustering if you wanted to do anything advanced. Maybe PSP finally got its shit straight hooking up with Corel. I don't know.. it's been many years.

[FG Lurker]

Never tried it personally, but maybe it's worth checking out Gimp. It's free. I used to like using Corel but they seemed to be butchered by Photoshop. Paintshop Pro is just plain crap. Good luck.

You seem mighty confused... Paint Shop Pro is now owned by Corel. ]
Nope, I try to stick with one program now, which is Adobe that doesn't drastically change the interface and the features after every new release. Adobe is THE industry standard and there are lots of free tutorials and resources on the web. There are always plenty of filters available for Photoshop as well. Paint Shop Pros were usually bundled with new PCs and they were very lacklustering if you wanted to do anything advanced. Maybe PSP finally got its shit straight hooking up with Corel. I don't know.. it's been many years.

It doesn't surprise me that it has been many years. PSP has not majorly changed it's interface since about 7.0, and there are now few things that you can do in PS that you can not do in PSP. Further, since some really early version of PSP (5? Can't remember) 99% of Photoshop filters work perfectly inside PSP.

PSP does some things that Photoshop does not do well. For example, if you cut a chunk of an digital camera photo and paste it as a new image in PSP, it automatically takes all the EXIF information too. It is also easier to save to a certain filesize in PSP than PS. PSP also follows Windows' interface guidlines more closely than PS does.

PSP is not perfect of course... If I want to open a couple hundred 8-megapixel JPEGs at one time then I use PSCS, it handles virtual memory much more efficiently. PSCS also handles RAW images better than PSP does, but I use Capture One PRO for RAW work anyway, so that doesn't matter too much to me.

I use both PSP and PSCS depending on what I need at a given time. Both are great tools in their own rights.

(The Corel purchase was quite recent, version 10 is the first version released under the Corel name.)

[IkemenTommy]

I'll be damned... you're right. Painshop Pro X.. what is up with everyone naming their products with X? Mac OS X, Toyota Crown Mark X, etc..
I first learned and got into graphics design with Corel. Was it Draw? I forgot which one.. it was almost 7 or 8 years ago. I think the school had some kind of groupware hook up and was too cheap to buy Photoshop.

Surely, Adobe is not perfect as it has it's flaws. One of my peaves is that it's a HUGE system resource hog, and every new release seem to be worse than the previous. The program could easily eat up over 500 mb of ram if you have a bunch of pictures open simultaneously. If you have Premiere Pro open, fuggedabouit. It would kill my system faster than lightning.

[FG Lurker]

I'll be damned... you're right. Painshop Pro X.. what is up with everyone naming their products with X? Mac OS X, Toyota Crown Mark X, etc..
I first learned and got into graphics design with Corel. Was it Draw? I forgot which one.. it was almost 7 or 8 years ago. I think the school had some kind of groupware hook up and was too cheap to buy Photoshop.

Surely, Adobe is not perfect as it has it's flaws. One of my peaves is that it's a HUGE system resource hog, and every new release seem to be worse than the previous. The program could easily eat up over 500 mb of ram if you have a bunch of pictures open simultaneously. If you have Premiere Pro open, fuggedabouit. It would kill my system faster than lightning.

Yeah, the X version stuff is odd, for sure.

All graphics programs are memory hogs I think... I've got 2GB in this box and I still get low sometimes. And 400GB of HDD storage has long since started to feel small but I can't be bothered to upgrade.

Corel originally had Draw and Paint I think. Adobe already controlled the market and Corel never did a good enough job to really break in. PSP really is good these days though, it makes some things a lot easier than they are in PSCS. With Capture One PRO though I find myself doing less and less work inside either PSCS or PSP. I can do any curves etc adjustments before the JPG is made, and even cropping is possible if needed. I'm definitely a RAW convert, even though it means more memory cards.

[IkemenTommy]

Yeah, the X version stuff is odd, for sure.

All graphics programs are memory hogs I think... I've got 2GB in this box and I still get low sometimes. And 400GB of HDD storage has long since started to feel small but I can't be bothered to upgrade.

Corel originally had Draw and Paint I think. Adobe already controlled the market and Corel never did a good enough job to really break in. PSP really is good these days though, it makes some things a lot easier than they are in PSCS. With Capture One PRO though I find myself doing less and less work inside either PSCS or PSP. I can do any curves etc adjustments before the JPG is made, and even cropping is possible if needed. I'm definitely a RAW convert, even though it means more memory cards.

It might have been Paint. It was very easy to use and cropping used to be very easy. I still have a hard time cropping with Photoshop.

Don't get me started with huge system resource wasting programs. In fact, I got tired of playing the upgrade-your-system-every-3-months game just to catch up with the latest software demand. Though I did an entire system rehalt 6 months ago just to play the latest game.. namely Doom 3. I bought that game thinking it was the greatest thing but I must admit I probably played it once or twice on the net and quickly got bored of it.

How good is RAW in terms of loss and color depth?

[FG Lurker]

How good RAW is depends somewhat on which camera you are using I would guess.

Overall though RAW is better than JPEG as you get the data as it was when it came off the sensor. You can adjust exposure, levels, curves, white balance...all *before* the image gets compressed into a JPG file. You also get the full bit-depth of the image instead of a 24-bit JPG. If you camera shoots 16bit (rare still) you have all 16 (48) bits. 12 bits and you get all 36bits to work with.

Another advantage of RAW is the processing power of your PC. The new cameras have a lot of power, but I highly doubt they will come near the power in a PC! The PC can also take more time per image to get things right than the camera can. The result is a better overall image.

As an extension to the processing power point above, using RAW means that as processing algorithms improve you can (if you want and need) reprocess some of your images to get even better quality. You can't do that with JPG because all you have is the image post-process. This could lead to lower noise, for example.

One downside is the size of a RAW file. CR2 files from my EOS 20D are about 8MB. Large/Fine JPGs are 3 to 4MB. The camera buffer also holds fewer images when you shoot in RAW so if you are shooting action it can be limiting. Another downside is that when shooting RAW you have to run them through a RAW converter before you get your JPGs. If you just want to shoot some quick photos for email or web then RAW is probably overkill and will just add work...

Okay, 2:30 here, time for bed!! I have to get up and start packing tomorrow... Moving on Friday!

[IkemenTommy]

Yeah it's late for sure. Maybe you can respond again in the morning. I should be off to bed soon.. as soon as my temp roommate stops spinning records. Oh well, it's nice to have some live music, but I hate waking up around 5pm hearing the "yuyake koyake" tune :P

JPEG was originally designed as a compressed file format. It's still good for what its worth but not if you're doing professional photography and such. I am not really hard core and into digital photography as my attention span is very short like that of a fly.

Where ya moving to?

[emperor]

http://www.gimp.org/screenshots

its just like Photoshop, but opensource and therefore its FREE

[Charles]

http://www.gimp.org/screenshots

its just like Photoshop, but opensource and therefore its FREE

It's just like Photoshop but without features and usability.

[emperor]

http://www.gimp.org/screenshots

its just like Photoshop, but opensource and therefore its FREE

It's just like Photoshop but without features and usability.

Well Im just goin on hearsay and my own observations from several minutes use... I use Photoshop CS myself - but I wouldnt shell out such ludacris amounts of money for a legit version tho

[FG Lurker]

JPEG was originally designed as a compressed file format. It's still good for what its worth but not if you're doing professional photography and such.

I do know a thing or two about JPG too, not only RAW. ]Where ya moving to?[/quote]
Almost exactly 1km from where I live now. Built a house.

[ketchupkatsu]

If you've used photoshop before, this flavor of gimp might be easier to use.

It is also open source, and thus free. This version of Gimp has some cosmetic changes to resemble Photoshop. All the button and the look of icons should be where you expect to find them in Photoshop.

Don't know what OS you're running, but I think they have it ported to winXP and Linux.

link....

[Grumblebum]

Paint .Net is a free one which I think is pretty good.

Available here - http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/

[IkemenTommy]

I think MS was going to come out with something soon too. What was the name of it?

[Socratesabroad]

Thanks everyone for the advice.

I use both PSP and PSCS depending on what I need at a given time. Both are great tools in their own rights.

Despite being a novice, I went with using PSP v9 and Photoshop CS since I had both on hand. Despite having both, this was the first time I actually used either.

It's just like Photoshop but without features and usability.

Funnily enough, the background I was working on was actually viewed best in Microsoft Paint, so I ended switching between it and PSP/Photoshop.

Hopefully I'm finished with my 'improvements' for now.

[sludge]

Post the picture (B4 and after) and let us take a look!