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.

[ashleyf]

LIGHTROOM 3!!!!!!!!!!!! Bought it for $130 and it is just so nice and simple...for me anyway. I will get ps in awhile after i have lightroom sorted =)

[Oznut]

Hooly dooly, this is doing my head in. I haven't taken a photo in over 12 months and I've pretty much forgotten everything I knew before. RAW, no idea. PS, I've been using it for years for graphic work but only a tiny bit for photos. I just bought a new iMac and the software (although basic) that comes with it seems to work well for now. Any thoughts?

[rocklogic]

I started off with just the Olympus software and GIMP - but then I'd purchased a student copy of Photoshop through the uni I was doing a business degree at (go figure!)

I'd started using Aperture for the past year or so now, and I can't believe life without it. I'm a RAW convert, and there's so much that you can do post-process to make images look better through Aperture. But it does take a LOT of time. I just came back from a three-week long trip to London and Manchester, and I'm sitting at around 2000+ photos - most will never see the light of day, but still the thought of doing the processing kills me

[mongo]

Mongo basically only uses PS. However, to your question, Mongo will say neither yes or no. There are many programs that do the job ; especially in the early simpler days of post processing until you outgrow those programs.

Mongo will say this - you do NOT need the latest version of any of this stuff (although that may have its limitations eventually). Mongo went from Photoshop 5.5 to CS3 in one step when CS3 was no longer the current photoshop version. In other words, Mongo bought an out of date version (which does far more than he can ever hope to understand - let alone use) for under $200 and has no interest in updating it. It does him just fine !

[Tommo224]

My personal preference is Adobe Lightroom. I use it to do all my PP work! I don't touch Photoshop for image editing anymore, and have been using Lightroom exclusively on my photo projects

Some of my other friends are the same. Only one of them uses both Lightroom and Photoshop (does lots of different editing styles).

I love Lightroom 3! <3

[clcapope]

I know this is some months after the original post but I am only just getting back into AP. Just recently I looked into purchasing Photoshop after having used Elements for about 2 years and found that I could subscribe (go to Adobe) to CS 5 on a monthly basis or for a 1 year commitment subscribe for a lower monthly cost, which I have done. It is an amount I can budget for each month and it is considerably cheaper than the upfront total cost for buying the software.

I am still learning how to use the features and it can be really interesting what you can do but I must say I am more for learning how to use my camera properly and getting good results than playing around with software - I worked with software for over 20 years and it still seems like work !
Forever learning