www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

As a user of Elements, Adobe are offering me the full version of Photoshop for half price. As a novice user of this software is this a good deal or will I never use the extra bits and pieces. I have a copy of Canon Digital Professional but am still getting to grips with it. Also, what is Bridge and Lightroom and do they come with the full verion of Photoshop.

Good questions. I await the replies from "them in the know"
I struggle with this aspect too.

Denise

I am thinking of gettin photoshop, would be a good addition for my hundreds of photos. For your Bridge and Lightroom, would this help any: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/faq/ is the photoshop lightroom FAQ

Hi Tom,
Like many things the decision depends on a lot of other factors. I'll try and give you a short answer. If photography is a by-product of your interest in butterflies then I think that buying Photoshop would be a waste of money. If, on the other hand, your main interest is photography then the expense will probably be worthwhile.

Most of my work on butterfly photos consist of adjusting exposure, sharpening and cropping. All this can be done with Elements. Bridge goes along with Photoshop and is basically a posh browser. I don't think much of it.

If like me you can sometimes take hundreds of photos in a day's outing then Lightroom is the product you need. It is designed to quickly sort out your best shots and do the basic editing described above. I use it all the time and very rarely use Photoshop. About the only thing I have used Photoshop for in the last 12 months is to "cut out" butterfly and moth images so that I can put them in a Flash display I have on the website that I maintain.
Hope that helps,
Robin

I agree with Robin that if you're only taking photos of butterflies, then these expensive packages may not be good value for money. I find that the Canon DPP software does everything I think I need, i.e. quick review, a bit of sharpening, occasional cropping and options for converting to jpeg at varying quality (and file size) levels.

But I'm not remotely expert on the technical issues of photography and it's entirely possible I'm missing out on something good.

Hi,

I have used both Elements 7 Photoshop 7 and CS3 at the moment! To be fair, there was never that much difference between Elements and Photoshop, certainly when it comes to editing my pictures, I never use any of the fancy CS3 features. However as a graphics student last year, the more advanced things (like I believe 3D layers and things are not in Elements (they could be now)) certianly helped. However the year before that, I was using Elements on a separate laptop from my peers who were using Photoshop 7, and I was producing things at the same level as they were, and I had no problems. In fact, there were so similar, I could do something in Elements - then tell the others the exact steps I took.

Is this CS3 you are planning on getting? It's probably half price because CS4 is out now, though I am not going to upgrade.

I ditto what Robin said about Bridge, I never use it either. I have already ordered my pictures in my folders, I don't need to do it there as well!

I haven't used Lightroom as I don't have it, but I have heard it's pretty good!

Others have also said, like Roger, value for money....

I hope this helps
Em

Hope I get this right.

IMO Photoshop (all versions including Elements) is designed for graphic artists, people who want to exploit their pictures in some sort of commercial setting. The software can do all that you will ever want or need to do to a photograph, but they include many other features which are designed to help exploit the photo, which you may never use.

Lightroom is purely designed for the processing, viewing, sorting etc of photographs. Includes all the tools that you probably would use in Photoshop without the graphical manipulation element.

FastStone is a free sorter/viewer that can cope with Canon RAW and do basic image manipulations like resize, crop, brightness etc.

Between FastStone, DPP, and Elements I can do all I want with my photos, in fact since I got DPP, Elements will only get used to auto stitch together multiple panorama shots.

HTH

Cheers

Bill

I'm with Robin on this - who provided an excellent summary.

I'd be even more "bullish" and say that "if you're a photographer - you don't need Photoshop". The logic being that you're a photographer and not a graphic artist. As such, you only ever perform relatively-minor mods to images. As such, Elements is fine.

I personally use Lightroom - but only because I shoot RAW, and this is a much better tool for RAW processing. And this then allows you to perform all of basic functions needed.

Cheers,

- Pete

Thanks for all the comments, it has made interesting reading. I will save my money and get to grips with Canon Digital Professional.

Once again I am impressed by the speed and quality of responses on this forum.

Thanks again

Elements say that it will do most things most photographers want to do. I agree. I use Elements 4 and nobody complains at my slide shows. I was also in a photography club and they all go for the expensive systems, but then my photographs are for a purpose and not as an end in themselves. Bunked off ,the word Anoraks comes to mind.

Tom,

You may or may not know that V3.6 of Canon's DPP is available see http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=137986

I've downloaded it using the serial no given in the thread and it works fine. Advantages over 3.5 is that is now has highlight and shadow adjustment in RAW.

I must admit I use DPP for most of my workflow using the quickcheck tool to checkmark to review for postprocessing or deletion and then the toolpalette to adjust and then the crop tool. The only things I do in photoshop (I have V6) is selective noise control and sharpening using masks and then cloning. Never did get the knack of DPP's cloning tool. I did have CS2 for a while and did like the shadow/highlight adjustment in this but V3.6 of DPP compensates for this.

Colin

I agree with most of the sentiments expressed above. I have used Photoshop 7; then a trial of CS3 and now my fiancee has just got a student copy of CS4 which I will use.
Why get CS4? I can use ViewNX to do basic manipulation on my RAW files (CS3 does not read D300 Camera RAW - D200 - fine..!!). But for other stuff (particularly regaining detail in bright or over-exposed areas for instance) then the layering and other tools do come into play and CS4 is the dog's danglies! (And no matter what one's personal feelings on Photoshop, preparing for a Camera Club competition, use is inevitable where you need to present "clean" images. Judges will mark you down if you HAVEN'T used Photoshop (or similar) to clone-out distracting leaves and branches, etc; not that I necessarily agree, but that's another story...)
I am also thinking of printing, rather than simply dispalying on the Web, and Photoshop comes with all the tools to support the printers and papers I may use....
...or I'm just a sheep following the masses ...?
Whatever works for you
Nick

I just downloaded key generators for photoshop (CS2 ) and Lightroom (2.3) so I have them for nothing

Having used Elements and Photoshop I much prefer the tools Photoshop has on offer than Elements. I use Elements at work but never touch it at home.

If you don't shoot Raw then there's not much point in having Lightroom. If you do however it's excellent and I much prefer it to Photoshop and Capture One for the initial conversion of the RAW. I do also have DPP but use it very little. In the days of my 10D it was pretty rubbish, Did try the version supplied with my 50D as I had read on forums it was better at processing out Noise in the Raws however initial results to me looked rubbish so I never loaded it up since!

[quote="FISHiEE"]I just downloaded key generators for photoshop (CS2 ) and Lightroom (2.3) so I have them for nothing [quote]
..just wait til I send the details to Adobe.....

Hi

Just reading the thread above as I too am assessing what software is recommended.

I have an old edition of Photoshop (CS) and use the very basic features - crop, unsharp mask etc but really don't know how to use the features, nor do i have time to try and learn them as they are far too complicated for a photographer.

I have tried to use the DPP but haven't got to grips with it - and assumed it isn't brilliant since it has a drop down inviting me to send files to PS in the first place? Then I can also claim that Ive a lot to learn. My 400D is currently set to create both a RAW .CR2 file and a Jpeg. Invariably I'm only editing Jpegs as I dont get RAW (yet). Ive had a play in DPP but worried that if i tamper with RAW files and do something wrong Ill ruin the file. When i edit Jpegs I automatically create a seconf copy to work on before i touch it. I need to get to grips with workflow!

I need to manage the increasing number of RAW and Jpeg files too. Ive seen some say lightroom is good for file management but also, heard that Expression Media (formerly iView till Microsoft got there hands on it) is good.

Instead of trying to upgrade PS CS to lateset version, Im thinking of buying latest version of Elements instead
along with either lightroom or Expression Media. Id also like to creat my own web page so I can show my efforts there - but no idea how to do this - I assume this could be set up via Lightroom?

What do people recommend?

Hi Mark,
I'll just mention a few of my thoughts before I dash off,

Elements it what I will probably get after my license for CS3 is over, (I have it installed through my school), as for photo stuff, I don't use all the features for it. However when I was doing full graphics editing I used everything. It is fairly simple to use, the best way is to play about with the features first...

As for creating a website, I use Dreamweaver (also CS3) and will probably only access it in school because it is so expensive (talking around £400 here last time I checked), though if you have Microsoft Office Front page, you may be able to do something like that with it... I have just been doing web design on my course for a bit, so if you need a bit of help or whatever and I am able to help you out... I will!

Hope that helps
Em

Cheers Em. Didnt recognise you at first as your names changed on here,

Hope all is well

bugmadmark wrote:What do people recommend?

I only have experience with Lightroom - and highly recommend it for both RAW and JPEG.

Cheers,

- Pete

Hi