Photoshop

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.

Parents
  • O.K perhaps I had better say what I'm hoping to do and will your version do this, I'm looking to remove noise when cropping a photo, make pixels smaller if this helps also when cropping a picture, and Highlight dark areas without making the whole photo look washed out. The versions I've seen on E.bay range from £30 to over a £100. Does anybody have the elements 7 or 8 and are they suitable for what I want or should I be looking at the more expensive ones.

  • Hi Bishy,

    You don't need to spend a fortune to achieve what you want. I had a massive problem with noise, and this was pointed out to me on the forum, although I already knew. I have now eliminated it simply by changing the settings on my camera. There is a noise (grain) reduction setting on the Lumix. If you set the camera to a low ISO and set the grain reduction to maximum on the camera, you will not get grain. The higher the ISO the more grain you will get. The downside of a low ISO is camera shake and blur, but the Lumix also has a good jitter stabiliser.

    As for increasing the resoution, there is no point in having it any higher than (I think) 72dpi on an ordinary PC because the screen resolutions on ordinary PCs are only about 72dpi and nothing higher will show. It is only if you want to print everything that a higher resolution will show, and that again depends on the resolution of your printer. The Lumix downloads at 180dpi on most settings.

    You can change the resolution on almost all editing software, including the freebie I use.

  • I should have said that you will never completely eliminate grain!! I made it sound like I had managed this, and of course I haven't. I'm still very much a learner.  Photos taken in low light, such as at dusk, need a higher ISO setting and therefore grain. Most of your photos will be taken in normal light conditions. I take hundreds of shots and delete a good proportion of them, as I'm sure most people do.

    Birdwatcher is quite right, many of the freebies do exactly what you are looking for. I would try one before spending a fortune on something you need a degree to use (and I'm not exaggerating). You said before you use the Nero one but don't rate it. My hubby has this on his computer and I don't rate it either.

  • Hi again BBB

    That's very good advice from Sparrow. When I embarked on my epistle I didn't really know what you were looking for.

    Personally I think it is always better to shoot in the highest resolution possible ie. large/superfine or the equivalent on your camera. You can always reduce the resolution later but you can't create it afterwards if you haven't got it to start with. It doesn't really matter that it uses up more space on your memory card because they are relatively cheap. The more pixels you start with the less deterioration there is in your picture if and when you crop it.

    Have you tried using Google's Picasa it's a freedownload from their website. It's pretty good at cataloging photos and the adjustments although basic may be all you need.

Reply
  • Hi again BBB

    That's very good advice from Sparrow. When I embarked on my epistle I didn't really know what you were looking for.

    Personally I think it is always better to shoot in the highest resolution possible ie. large/superfine or the equivalent on your camera. You can always reduce the resolution later but you can't create it afterwards if you haven't got it to start with. It doesn't really matter that it uses up more space on your memory card because they are relatively cheap. The more pixels you start with the less deterioration there is in your picture if and when you crop it.

    Have you tried using Google's Picasa it's a freedownload from their website. It's pretty good at cataloging photos and the adjustments although basic may be all you need.

Children
  • Hi again Bishy,

    Following on from what TJ has said, the Lumix has a highest resolution setting of 12megapixels, which is the one I use most of the time, and this downloads to your PC at 180dpi, which is more than you need. TJ is right when he says you can always lower the resolution on software, but you can never increase what isn't there in the first place, no matter which software you use. If you have been having grain problems with your existing camera, either it is on the wrong settings or hasn't got good enough settings.

    As you all know, I am a total beginner at all this but have read up on resolutions and grain and ISO's and am still experimenting. I have reached the conclusion that it is the camera and the photographer, not the software, that matters. Unless of course you want to alter the photograph so much that it bears no resemblance to the original subject.

  • Hi Everyone,

    Thank you all for your input, you've all been very helpful, it will mostly be cropping noise and low level lighting noise I will want to remove, I do take a lot of pictures indoors, Christmas and childrens Birthdays, and I hate using flash much prefer natural lighting, I have to wait until the children are relatively still to get a picture quick so they don't end up a blur, so I end up with just a few usable images. I shall give some freebies a go, and if I'm not satisfied I shall go for the Elements 7 at £31 or version 8 at £41 which I thought was a reasonable price considering the amount of use I will probably get from it, plus my son is inheriting our Fuji Finepix so he may find the Photoshop fun to mess about with if we end up with that.

    Thanks again everyone, I won't select a best answer as I think they all are.

  • [wave] Sparrow, going slightly off topic... have you done any videos yet with your Lumix and if you have, have you found any video editing software that works with it, (other than what came with the camera) ???

  • Hi Squirrel, Sparrow is waving back furiously!

    I haven't done any serious videos, just a few of the dogs. Excellent quality by the way - ignoring the camera woman of course. I haven't looked in to editing software for videos yet. I used the one that came with my bird box camera, which happens to be the same as the one that came with the camera and is ArcSoft, albeit a different version. I can't tell you if it is good or not because I have nothing to compare it with. Suffice it to say, I can use it easily enough and it does what it says on the tin in that I can determine a start postion, an end position, and cut out what I don't want in between, with transitions and effects etc.. I haven't attempted to do any "photographic" editing and am not sure there are facilities for doing this.

  • I have just bought Photoshop CS4 Extended, but the student edition.  I bought it because my children are both doing photography and graphics and also because as a student it was much cheaper.  

    I already had photoshop elements 5 which I have not really got to grips with.  However, thanks to my 13yr old son I have been led down the route of some fabulous tutorials on youtube,  It is a steep learning curve and takes time and patience, but they are reasonably easy to follow and very useful.

    I have mainly been helping him to produce a magazine layout (which I did not realise you could do) but am looking forward to some photo editing practice once I am more familiar with it.

    Glad yo hear you are all videoing. I did take some video of my goldfinches but it was not very exciting so have just used it to practice editing.

    Hope this is useful 

    Sarah