Photography Software

[andrewsugi]

Dear friends,

What photography softwares do you think that a photographer must have in their computer or gadget, especially for a newbie?

[rpcrowe]

There are several completely free editing programs but, from my own experience, I would personally recommend Photoshop Elements which is a full service editing program at a reasonable price. I would add NIK Software to Photoshop Elements. NIK is a free plug-in that I use every day...

https://www.google.com/nikcollection/?

There "MAY" be other programs beside the Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Lightroom that can host NIK software. I am sure that other members may help you with these programs. The only free host program listed on the NIK website is Snapseed.

http://download.cnet.com/Snapseed/30...-75677719.html

However, I know absolutely nothing about that program except that it is brought out bt Google which brings you NIK!

[Manfred M]

Andrew - this is a tough question to answer as there are so many different products out there.

As Richard has mentioned, the gorilla in the room is Adobe with its Photoshop Elements, Lightroom and Photoshop products. They are the best known software supplier and virtually every professionally done image one sees has been processed in Photoshop.

There are a number of other good commercial software packages out there, Corel Paint Shop Pro and ACDSee products are two other higher end products that have a good reputation. There are numerous other products out there that have their fans.

When it comes to free / shareware products, the best known one (and most powerful one) is probably Gimp. But like the full version of Photoshop, it has a long learning curve.

Online editors built into software like Google Photo or Flickr are also a decent option if you are just getting started. These have quite limited capabilities and require you to upload the images to the websites, where the edits are done.

[andrewsugi]

There are several completely free editing programs but, from my own experience, I would personally recommend Photoshop Elements which is a full service editing program at a reasonable price. I would add NIK Software to Photoshop Elements. NIK is a free plug-in that I use every day...

https://www.google.com/nikcollection/?

There "MAY" be other programs beside the Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Lightroom that can host NIK software. I am sure that other members may help you with these programs. The only free host program listed on the NIK website is Snapseed.

http://download.cnet.com/Snapseed/30...-75677719.html

However, I know absolutely nothing about that program except that it is brought out bt Google which brings you NIK!

I don't really understand with these NIK plug-ins. What does it do?

[Manfred M]

I don't really understand with these NIK plug-ins. What does it do?

Mostly special effects and other tools like B&W conversion, noise reduction, etc.

[Geoff F]

I wouldn't worry about plug ins at this stage, Andrew.

Your starting point may depend on exactly what you want to do in the way of editing and how you expect to progress in the future.

Serif Affinity is on special offer now and there is a version for Windows computers which has just been released. I haven't tried this one but it gets good reviews and at one time I used Serif Photo Plus software which I always found to be user friendly and reasonably effective. Now I am with Adobe CC which is quite a bit more expensive than the Serif offer and I don't use all the available options, but there is no doubting the quality of CC if you want to go to that level.

A little while ago I had a play with Gimp and found it reasonably effective although I wouldn't exactly call it user friendly to begin with. But I expect once you get used to their way of working everything will become easier.

At the same time I also had a play with Photoshop Elements but quickly discarded it because I found it far too basic and simplistic; however, a lot of people use it.

[JohnRostron]

Serif Affinity is on special offer now and there is a version for Windows computers which has just been released. I haven't tried this one but it gets good reviews and at one time I used Serif Photo Plus software which I always found to be user friendly and reasonably effective. Now I am with Adobe CC which is quite a bit more expensive than the Serif offer and I don't use all the available options, but there is no doubting the quality of CC if you want to go to that level.

I'll give a plus to Serif Affinity. I have been using it ever since it came out on Windows and have never looked back. It does everything I want to do. Maybe Photoshop has some more things, but nothing that I would want. It also runs most PS plugins that use the standard PS interface (such as most of NIK, Topaz etc). It also has its own Focus stacking, HDR and Sack merging.

John

The current price is about £40.

[John R Sims]

Dear friends,

What photography softwares do you think that a photographer must have in their computer or gadget, especially for a newbie?

Hi Andrew,
I own Lightroom 6, but primarily use Capture One Pro (from Phase One), and find it superior to Lightroom in most respects (much better masking and local adjustments IMO). If you use Sony cameras, as I do, the price is quite reasonable (US$50.00 - I think). I also own Affinity (was on "special" for US$39.00), and think it is a very good alternative to Photoshop/Lightroom. It offers "Personas" that mimic Lightroom and Photoshop, as well as offering Focus Stacking, Merge to HDR and Panorama, (and perhaps more?). However, in my experience, the software is just not yet quite as effective/mature as the Adobe products (for instance Lightroom/Photoshop will merge to Panorama without artifacts, while with Affinity you may notice the boundary between images in the panorama). Given time to mature I "guess" it will catch up with Adobe, and the price is certainly far more attractive.
My suggestion for a newbie is to pick one solution, and stick with it for a while. All S/W has a learning curve, and trying to learn multiple applications may prove frustrating. If it were me I would pick Capture One or Affinity. Affinity offers a more expansive set of tools, but you may never need them. If later on you find you need the functions of Photoshop your experience with either of these programs will help you transition to Photoshop. For me it is rare that I feel the need to access Photoshop (CS4 for me), and guess that as these other programs grow in functionality you will not likely ever need to use it.
Trial versions of most S/W applications are available (free), and there are many tutorials available for review. These can be good assets to consider before deciding on which direction you want to go.

[selig1656]

A lot of good info , it also comes down to your objective and what you primarily shoot. Pixlarr is another free one and has many tools Good luck and test out the free ones you have nothing to loose , make sure you have the ability to edit RAW

[rpcrowe]

I don't really understand with these NIK plug-ins. What does it do?

NIK Software is used in collaboration with editing programs from Adobe (Lightroom, Photoshop, and Photoshop Elements) as well as other software programs.

NIK automates many of the features that can be accomplished with the editing program alone but, makes the use of those features far easier, I use NIK in conjunction with my Photoshop CC in editing almost every image.

Here is some information about NIK Software... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gikVjBnpTRQ

[Manfred M]

Hi Andrew,
I own Lightroom 6, but primarily use Capture One Pro (from Phase One), and find it superior to Lightroom in most respects (much better masking and local adjustments IMO). If you use Sony cameras, as I do, the price is quite reasonable (US$50.00 - I think). I also own Affinity (was on "special" for US$39.00), and think it is a very good alternative to Photoshop/Lightroom. It offers "Personas" that mimic Lightroom and Photoshop, as well as offering Focus Stacking, Merge to HDR and Panorama, (and perhaps more?). However, in my experience, the software is just not yet quite as effective/mature as the Adobe products (for instance Lightroom/Photoshop will merge to Panorama without artifacts, while with Affinity you may notice the boundary between images in the panorama). Given time to mature I "guess" it will catch up with Adobe, and the price is certainly far more attractive.
My suggestion for a newbie is to pick one solution, and stick with it for a while. All S/W has a learning curve, and trying to learn multiple applications may prove frustrating. If it were me I would pick Capture One or Affinity. Affinity offers a more expansive set of tools, but you may never need them. If later on you find you need the functions of Photoshop your experience with either of these programs will help you transition to Photoshop. For me it is rare that I feel the need to access Photoshop (CS4 for me), and guess that as these other programs grow in functionality you will not likely ever need to use it.
Trial versions of most S/W applications are available (free), and there are many tutorials available for review. These can be good assets to consider before deciding on which direction you want to go.

What you have written makes sense if you look at it in isolation, but while I use both Capture One and DxO Optics Pro for some special cases, Adobe Camera Raw (ACR)offers one significant advantage over these other two raw converters, if you are using Photoshop; SmartObjects.

When one uses SmartObjects, any changes made with Photoshop filters become non-destructive (i.e. you can go back and make changes to them at any time). If you set Camera Raw to export the file you are working on as a SmartObject, you have access to the original raw file and you can make parametric edits to that data including White Balance (WB). This means you can go and make tweaks to the raw data at any time in your edit, if you are following a non-destructive workflow. Any of the other converters will bake in the WB and export to a raster image so any edits are purely incremental to what the raw converter created.

To me this is something that lets me overlook the small issues I sometimes have with ACR as the advantages of using SmartObjects outweighs these.

[John R Sims]

What you have written makes sense if you look at it in isolation, but while I use both Capture One and DxO Optics Pro for some special cases, Adobe Camera Raw (ACR)offers one significant advantage over these other two raw converters, if you are using Photoshop; SmartObjects.

When one uses SmartObjects, any changes made with Photoshop filters become non-destructive (i.e. you can go back and make changes to them at any time). If you set Camera Raw to export the file you are working on as a SmartObject, you have access to the original raw file and you can make parametric edits to that data including White Balance (WB). This means you can go and make tweaks to the raw data at any time in your edit, if you are following a non-destructive workflow. Any of the other converters will bake in the WB and export to a raster image so any edits are purely incremental to what the raw converter created.

To me this is something that lets me overlook the small issues I sometimes have with ACR as the advantages of using SmartObjects outweighs these.

Hi Manfred,

I must confess to not knowing much (anything) about SmartObjects, so I’m not really “synced” with what you are saying. Having said that, I do not think that Lightroom supports that feature, so I do not see that as germane to this topic unless you are suggesting that Andrew consider Photoshop as his first photo editing application. Really?

Could you elaborate on this issue of other converters “baking in the WB and exporting to a raster image”? Are you saying that in either Lightroom or Capture One adjustments are not made on the RAW data?

John

[Manfred M]

Hi Manfred,

I must confess to not knowing much (anything) about SmartObjects, so I’m not really “synced” with what you are saying. Having said that, I do not think that Lightroom supports that feature, so I do not see that as germane to this topic unless you are suggesting that Andrew consider Photoshop as his first photo editing application. Really?

Photoshop was my first photo editor. I started with Photoshop CS back in 2003. What's wrong with that? It's a bit like saying Microsoft Word was my first word processor. If you want to learn something, going with the "industry standard" is not a bad thing. Lightroom did not exist back then, by the way.

The first college course I took in photography the professor assumed everyone had a working knowledge of Photoshop. It was somewhat of a surprise to me that most people did. Back then Photoshop was not nearly as affordable is it is today.

Could you elaborate on this issue of other converters “baking in the WB and exporting to a raster image”? Are you saying that in either Lightroom or Capture One adjustments are not made on the RAW data?

John

I did not say that at all. What I did say is that without using SmartObjects, everything done in the raw processor is a one-way street. One does the parametric edits and they are turned into raster data that can be edited in Photoshop. If you want to tweak any of the parameters you set in the raw convertor, you can't. Any changes you make would be incremental to what you did in the raw converter. If you wanted / needed to make changes to your original raw edits, you would have to go back and start all over again in the raw editor, re-import into Photoshop and redo your edits.

This is the advantage of SmartObjects, as you have access to the original raw with the edits that have been done to it. The changes you make are to your original raw data. And yes, you can do this in Lightroom as well as Camera Raw. Here are the menu selections in Lightroom that let you do this.



To me this is huge and has been part of my workflow for the past few years. Unfortunately, only Adobe seems to have this built into their raw convertor.

[MatildaM]

I can't imagine my phone without Photoshop Express: https://theappsdepot.com/apps/photog...toshop-express, even in mobile version it still the best app for photo editing. And the important thing is that it has gone free, and all premium features are available.
This app should be on any phone with a good camera if you want to take and upload pictures from your phone directly. Of course if you have time to edit your photo on PC nothing can replace the original Photoshop.

[purplehaze]

I have just discovered Adobe Capture and am quite excited about its potential for creating textures and layers and colour themes for use in Photoshop.


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