Photoshop

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

 

 

Unknown said:

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 BBB, I'm totally new to this new age of DSLR photography and have only upgraded my kit in december.

I like you have heard and read lots of articles relating to Adobe Photoshop, so I visited their website and downloaded a 30 day trial of Elements 8. To see if it does what I wanted!

I have 14 days left of the trial and up to now I have been really blown away at how this software works.

I don't want to baffle you with detailed information, the easiest thing for me to do is show you the following photo's.

The first is the actual photo I took, the second is edited using Elements 8.

This was my first attempt using the cloning tool within the software, I wanted to remove all of the obtrusive branches and twigs from around the bird. Hopefully giving a clearer picture! this software enables you to make a bad photo look good!

I'm attemting to take good photo's in the first place so the use of such software isn't required!

I will gladly give my limited knowledge and advice to anyone! and if anyone who has much more experience in photography wishes to share their knowledge then I would gratefully recieve it.

Regards Buzzard

 

You have achieved good results with your picture.  It is amazing what the software can do. 

BBB. I think a lot can be achieved with the elements software and it is capable of great results as you can see from buzzards pictures.

I would not have bought the full version if i had not had the option of student discount.

Sarah

Hi Buzzard

I like the way you have played with the cloning tool in Photoshop elements for that picture. It makes the bird stand out much better.

I have just purchased Corel Paintshop Pro x2 for less than £30 from Amazon (thanks TJ) and it has everything and more that I will ever need for adjusting my images. In fact I'm still trying to work out what everything does.

It's worth considering as it's the previous full version to their latest issue, and the instruction book is much smaller than the Photoshop version.

They also do a smaller version.

Best wishes Chris

Thanks ever so much for that Buzzard, that amazes me how you can move branches and still have the bird left behind it, thats quite amazing, and thanks for your reply too sarah.

Buzzard it's funny you should mention the free trial download, I'm currently downloading it, have been since yesterday afternoon, it's just over half way now, our broadband connection is awful being out in the middle of nowhere, I'm going to leave it downloading tonight in the hope it might have finished by the morning.

The best free image manipulation software I know of is the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). It is an open-source product that comes as standard in most Linux distributions, but is also available for Mac and Windows. I have used Photoshop (the full version, not Elements) in my work for years but have discovered that all the various kinds of image editing work I've done in Photoshop can also be done in the GIMP - it is very powerful software and is great fun to use. You can download it here: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

I have Photoshop Elements 7 which is as much as most people will need and i got it on eBay for about £15. it is good if you get into shooting raw but needs a book or two to help get into its finer points. one of the best freebies is called Gimp (don't ask) and can do most of Elements quite well and certainly what you have asked about.

Dave

I use Photoshop CS6. It has the Refine Edge option that I use in so many of my Photoshop actions. In some CC versions was replaced with Select and Mask :(
And I like CS6 because of the Oil Filter which is really cool filter.

Unknown said:

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.

I use Adobe Photoshop 10, which is a good few years old, but meets my needs perfectly, I can crop, I can pull out poor subjects and make them clearer, I can remove blemishes if I want to, and cutout the background using shapes and I can add watermarks.

I did look at the possibility of upgrading last year, only to find that some of the features I use have been removed, and the latest version is full of useless to me rubbish, like categories, quick links to social media, story telling, story books and more rubbish, but that is my personal opinion.

There will be those who like those features, it is the way programs are going today, but it's not for me.