How important is it to have photoshop or similar for a beginner?

[DoubleJ]

Thanks @ricktas for you note about Aperture

Thanks also to @kmets. I gather you were suggesting a website. Since my first post that is what I did.

I have been hesitant because of all the PC about taking photos of kids these days. I have almost none of my daughters netball (in comparison to footy) although you can shoot your brains out at rowing.

I've posted a selection of non personal photos for the event just using iWeb and then a full dump of all the photos in a 150 pixel thumbnail size so that folk could see without being able to do too much with the image ie the bad people. I'm testing this out to see just how much trouble I get in for doing even that. Any thoughts anyone or different topic ?

You're right @kmets the kids do enjoy seeing themselves in action but the photos could be so much more - they could be great training aids. To promote and congratulate good tackle technique etc. Some rowing ones seem, to my limited knowledge, to highlight technique issues which would be useful to discuss on land.

Anyway I've gone a bit OT but the thread was about Photoshop for beginners and I guess that Management for beginners to me is more important. Messing with film based shots I can see adjustment tools to be really advantageous but with digital, one can take so many that maybe for a beginner it should be more about camera technique. For instance aiming that little centre dot for focus and light metering …

Getting back to the need for a Photoshop or Aperture like product, the problem I have with software, and I think many posters mentioned it, was understanding or using enough of the product to warrant it. To me another app is just another set of maliciously organised menu options that I have to learn, apply and understand what they actually did.

I used to just import all the photos into one iPhoto library but now dump to a directory and then import to a designated iPhoto library as a means to limit the size of the libraries and have the originals separate. All to an external hard drive.

I imagine that this will get quite clunky too ie management wise does anyone have any thoughts ?

Thanks JJ

PS added (I think) an image about rowing technique and used the few tools that I seem to need at this stage eg cropping and B&W to protect the guilty.