Hi everyone,
I wonder if you people out there with Photoshop could tell me what version you use, and what you find it good for, I've been looking on e.bay and was surprised at all the different versions that there are, and I'm totally lost.
Hi BBB
By Photoshop I'm assuming you mean Photoshop Elements. The full Photoshop CS package costs many hundreds of pounds and is really for professionals.
I currently use Photoshop Elements 7 (PSE7). There is version 8 currently but I decided not to upgrade because the changes/improvements didn't seem worthwhile.
PSE7 is really two almost separate applications which are linked.
Firstly, there is the Organiser which catalogues and organises all your images. Here you can do things like viewing your photos, adding captions and tags so you can find them again. In other words general management. You can also do a limited amount of editing of the photos from within the Organizer.
Secondly, there is the Editor. This is where you can adjust individual images. This includes the basics like cropping, changing the resolution, adjusting the lighting (eg lightening the shadows, changing the contrast etc) and sharpening the image. It also has a whole range of tools to do some quite sophisticated things like extracting part of an image to use elsewhere, creating special effects using filters, removing objects that you don't want to appear in your photo. There's also a Create section where do things like creating collages, photobooks, greeting cards and CD covers etc and a Share section for online albums, emailing etc.
Mostly, I use it for enhancing images which I haven't exposed properly and I think it's good for these type of adjustments. Occasionally, I use it for manipulating images and creating special effects. For example, I don't know whether you saw that spoof where I superimposed a photo of a Kiskadee that I photographed in Trinidad on a feeder in one of Sparrow's posts.
I've waffled on a bit and you are probably thoroughly confused. What I will say is that it's a very powerful and sophisticated package. If all you want to do is make simple adjustments to photos it's probably a bit of overkill although it has plenty of quick fixes to automate them. If you've got the time and inclination to get into it more deeply then it can be quite good fun but be warned there is quite a steep learning curve.
I suggest you you look at this link to the Adobe website which has a series of video tutorials to show what can be achieved then you can see if it is for you.
http://www.adobe.com/uk/digitalimag/explore/?explore=photo
Good luck
TJ