Advice on Software Package

M
Posted By
mark-wade
Jul 14, 2004
Views
409
Replies
8
Status
Closed
Thanks in advance for any and all help. I am looking to buy a photo editing software package do to home type work (non professional.) I am looking for a good software package to fine tune pictures to add them into picture shows such as Ulead, or Photodex. I am looking to be able to turn color pictures into black and while photos, along with the ability to take that black and while photo and add some color (i.e. add color to a persons eyes, or flowers they are holding while the picture is still black and white.) I think that is the called using layers. I am also interested in touching up photos, removing unwanted objects from a pictues, removing red eye, etc, etc. I think you get the drift of what I am looking for.

I am pretty good with computers, so I don’t need a novice tool, but I do know that Photoshop (6 atleast) is not very intuative. The products I have been looking at are Jasc Photo Shop Pro, Adobe’s Elements (2.0 I think), and Microsoft’s Digital Image 9.0.

Please let me know what you think and provide any advice.

Thanks,

Mark

How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop

Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.

DM
Dawid Michalczyk
Jul 15, 2004
Mark wrote:
Thanks in advance for any and all help. I am looking to buy a photo editing software package do to home type work (non professional.) I

Try Gimp. It is a free and very capable photo editing tool. Sounds like it would easily satisfy your needs. I use it myself quite often.

http://www.gimp.org/
comp.graphics.apps.gimp


Dawid Michalczyk – Art and Illustration
http://www.art.eonworks.com
H
Hecate
Jul 15, 2004
On 14 Jul 2004 10:35:59 -0700, (Mark) wrote:

I am pretty good with computers, so I don’t need a novice tool, but I do know that Photoshop (6 atleast) is not very intuative. The products I have been looking at are Jasc Photo Shop Pro, Adobe’s Elements (2.0 I think), and Microsoft’s Digital Image 9.0.
Of those, given what you want to do, Elements would suit you best. It allows you more control than the MS app and isn’t as complicated as PSP.



Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui
JK
JP Kabala
Jul 16, 2004
Never buy anything having to do with graphics
from Microsoft. They have never, in the history
of the company, produced a graphic design or photo editing product that wasn’t more trouble than it is worth.
Isn’t it DIP that has no flood fill tool?

I use Photoshop and like it… but it is pricey and may be more horsepower than you need or want.
PSP is more powerful than Elements, and more versatile,
but if you are primarily a photographer, Elements
has a few nice features. I like PSP better– but I’m
primarily an illustrator who takes photos sometimes.
And with PSP’s power comes complexity.
There is a learning curve. Not as steep as Photoshop’s
but not insignificant

Other apps to look at

–Corel Essentials– similar price point to Elements and PSP –Ulead Photo Impact– it’s a little too cute for my taste, but some folks like it.
R
Roberto
Jul 16, 2004
Ulead photo editing software seem to pack a lot of power (not too much, tho) under a ridiculous interface.

It couldn’t retouch a photo last time I used it (was a long time ago) but it’s ease of use and features were surprising.

"JP Kabala" wrote in message
[sic]

–Ulead Photo Impact– it’s a little too cute for my taste, but some folks like it.

JK
JP Kabala
Jul 16, 2004
"Branko Vukelic" wrote in message
Ulead photo editing software seem to pack a lot of power (not too much,
tho)
under a ridiculous interface.

It couldn’t retouch a photo last time I used it (was a long time ago) but it’s ease of use and features were surprising.

I hate candy-coated interfaces with a passion– one of the reasons I so rarely use my AutoFx pludins is that the interface truly bugs me– the tools are there in the Ulead product, but you have to dig past so much gingerbread and nonsense to find them that it annoys me mightily. And the non-standard terminology is just dumb. Call a layer a layer, for heaven’s sake.

IME, it also tends to choke a bit on large images.

"JP Kabala" wrote in message
[sic]

–Ulead Photo Impact– it’s a little too cute for my taste, but some
folks
like it.

WD
Walter Donavan
Jul 16, 2004
It depends on what you want to do. I use PhotoDraw 2, Photoshop 7, PhotoPro
2.0 (old), PictureIt 7, PhotoFiltre, Paint Shop Pro 6(old), Corel
Photo-Paint 10, the GIMP, Image Composer 1.5 (very old), and PhotoPlus 6.0 (old). All can do a respectable job of minor retouching, but it’s hard to beat the Unsharp Mask tool and many of the above do not have it.

PhotoPlus 6 (free) works just like Photoshop–same concepts, same keyboard shortcuts–just less horsepower. I love it.

Another program worthy of honorable mention is Oriens Enhancer Gold. A piece of crap when it first came out, it is gradually becoming a good program, and it is still free. I like some of its effects.

For quick retouching, Photoshop and PhotoPro are about equal. PhotoPro’s Fix Flaw tool is easier and more effective than Photoshop’s cloning tools.

For heavy duty retouching, you usually can’t beat the 800-pound gorilla, Photoshop itself.

Corel Photo-Paint 10 is in some ways superior to Photoshop (and in some ways worse). I use it mainly for its truly cool effects.

For batch retouching (crop a border off 100 photos), PictureIt does well.

For a tiny learning curve and excellent documentation, PhotoPlus 6 (they’re up to Version 9 now) is hard to beat. They give you good deals if you act reluctant to buy or if you somehow score an older copy and qualify for an upgrade. www.serif.com nice folks too.

I use PSP 6 only for its paint tubes. Why bother with its complexity when I have Photoshop, and PSP is not simple like PictureIt or PhotoPro? PSP 8 trial didn’t impress me.

PhotoFiltre (free) moved up in my eyes when I built a freeware-open source system, with Windows 2000 the only piece of paid software on it. (Linux, without the heartburn of Linux.) My first challenge was to crop and "de-blemish" an image using only free software. I chose PhotoFiltre, and the job was done in under a minute (Crop, Clone). PhotoFiltre is also part of a tiny freeware system that includes an excellent icon browser (Scrutico), a tool that adds an animated reflection to an image (Reflet), and a decent image viewer (Visioimg). It also has a ton of free downloads–tutorials, plugins and such. Part of the documentation is in French.

The GIMP has always been a challenge for me. I don’t think like it does. But it has some cool filters and gradients.

PhotoDraw 2 remains my all-time favorite (blush) because it is so powerful and so easy to use. A power retouching tool it is not, but I defy you to name anything that can turn out original business graphics (usually incorporating clipart) any better or faster. It is also one of the better drawing tools (Edit Nodes, anyone?). I usually try to use it rather than Visio 2000. Anything (PhotoDraw) that comes on three CDs and is easy to use can’t be all bad.

The only thing I use from Image Composer 1.5 is the clipart and the Impressionist plugin. Both are unique.

I’ll close by mentioning CleanSkinFX, a freeware skin-smoother from www.mediachance.com . It does a nice job of smoothing the zits without being too obvious about it. The nice thing is you can zap every zit at once instead of one at a time. I know, Photoshop can do the same thing. But without a single mouse click?

I have some 30 other graphics programs and tools, but those are the highlights. I omitted the drawing programs, since this is an image editing group.

Have a nice day, y’all.

"You can never have too many graphics programs."–Walter Donavan, July 2004

"JP Kabala" wrote in message
Never buy anything having to do with graphics
from Microsoft. They have never, in the history
of the company, produced a graphic design or photo editing product that wasn’t more trouble than it is worth.
Isn’t it DIP that has no flood fill tool?

I use Photoshop and like it… but it is pricey and may be more horsepower than you need or want.
PSP is more powerful than Elements, and more versatile,
but if you are primarily a photographer, Elements
has a few nice features. I like PSP better– but I’m
primarily an illustrator who takes photos sometimes.
And with PSP’s power comes complexity.
There is a learning curve. Not as steep as Photoshop’s
but not insignificant

Other apps to look at

–Corel Essentials– similar price point to Elements and PSP –Ulead Photo Impact– it’s a little too cute for my taste, but some folks like it.

R
RSD99
Jul 16, 2004
Don’t forget Picture Window Plus by Digital Light and Color.

http://www.dl-c.com/Temp/

To quote:
Picture Window Pro is a powerful photo editing tool designed for serious photographers with demanding creative and quality standards. It provides a comprehensive set of photo manipulation and retouching tools which allow you to control and shape every aspect of your images and to create high quality prints, page layouts, multimedia electronic slide shows and other forms of output.

I’ve tried the Demo, and ordered the full package. It does work well with 48 bit images, and offers some of the capabilities that I’ve been looking for in PhotoShop, but not (yet) found.

= = = = =

PS – I totally agree with "JP Kabala" who posted

"…
Never buy anything having to do with graphics
from Microsoft. They have never, in the history
of the company, produced a graphic design or photo editing product that wasn’t more trouble than it is worth.
…."

That includes anything to do with "page layout" … including (but not limited to) typography and "Word Processing!"

Micro$loth, as a "company," *or* as a "culture," does **NOT** understand graphics. They
understand Operating Systems, Database storage and retrieval, and things like that … but THEY DO **NOT** UNDERSTAND ANYTHING ABOUT GRAPHICS!
J
jmoorets
Jul 16, 2004
Walter Donavon wrote a very nice survey of popular image editors starting with:

It depends on what you want to do. I use PhotoDraw 2, Photoshop 7, PhotoPro
2.0 (old), PictureIt 7, PhotoFiltre, Paint Shop Pro 6(old), Corel
Photo-Paint 10, the GIMP, Image Composer 1.5 (very old), and PhotoPlus 6.0

Walter,

Kudos to you for taking the time to give such an excellent answer!

John Moore

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer 🔥🔥🔥

Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections