Photoshop! how do you do it?

[arthurking83]

It's not the first time I've posted about my dislike of this software, even tho I fully appreciate it's ability to edit images .. I've seen the results and more than anything I admire YOUR(you the PS user's) resolve in still using it.

I'm not an impatient person, but learning to use the software I like, is not how I believe software should work.

of primary concern to me is the ability to delve into the applications' workflow easily and without needing a PhD in subatomic computer particle quantization programming!

PS, has gone from a hard to use(or accurately get used too) software to a ridiculously incomprehensible nightmare.

My history with PS came via this method:

Earliest intro into photo editing(extremly basic) was PaintShop Pro.
This was with scanned films or photos, really basic editing to undull dulled scans and so on .. about 1997-ish.
No real need to update this workflow until about 2006 when I got a D70s.

With that I saw a need to be able to play with NEF files .. which PSP 6 or 7 couldn't do.

So .. first stop was Nikon's Capture(not CaptureNX!).... Nikon Capture v4.
Editing was very simple but unfortunately globally based. That is you couldn't dodge and burn in a manner of speaking.

ex Father in law introduced me to PS(he's a teacher of Photography related stuff!

So from advice I tried it too.
Couldn't understand most of the processes involved, and about the time I decided to just stay with Capture .. Nikon announced to the world .. CaptureNX.
Gave it a trial and instantly hooked.
I didn't and still don't need the ability to add remove skies and people and pimples and distort faces and figures .. so the ease of which I took to CNX made this the obvious choice.
That was about 2007.

Fast forward 7 years.

Now on a totally unrelated need .. not for photos, but the ability to manipulate an image. A PNG. A logo .. ie. not a photo, and so any manipulation and mangling of this image is deemed not only acceptable, but a prerequisite!

Enter PS .. even against my better judgement.

NOW!!
I know regular PS users will not understand becasue in life it's hard to unlearn the things you have learned .. but I still maintain good software is EASY to use. It shouldn't take half a day to research a simple manipulation of an image .. but that seems to be PS's forte.

Now it took me a few hours to first play with, then realise that I just can't figure out ..... how to change a simple plain colour in this PNG say from purple to green.
I know PS can do it, and I pushed a few buttons and widgets, but all to no avail, but did reveal some interesting concepts of what image manipulation is all about.
And I'm still not interested in it.

So .. enter .. tada! .. Paintdotnet. First introduced to me via the affable I@M(Andrew). Andrew is a true mate, and I know he wouldn't lead me astray, even tho he does his best to do so

So what was the result?(I hear you ask).

In about 3 or 4 pushes of a button, I not only figured out how to do it, without resorting to 10 pages, 30 videos and endless hours of internet research .. but we were changing colours with gay abandoned.
(Not that there's anything wrong with that! )

My sis is opening a cafe soon, and she's playing about with a logo she had designed for her. She has the right to do whatever she wants to it .. and she(we!) love the design. Great concept from the person she hired.

So changing a part of the logo took barely a couple of minutes in paint.net, I TAUGHT her how to do it in a few seconds ... Oh! that's easy was the remark.

So I ask you WHY .. Why did you persevere with that overbloated garbageware known as Photoshop .. now CS.

Yeah it may be powerful in what it can do .. but this doesn't cut it for me.

Driving a T909 Kenny with it's myriad of buttons levers gears and widgets is also a powerful application, but I'm not going to do that again either(any more thank god! )

One thing tho .. to those that did persevere with it and now do good with it .. I admire your resolve!
I don't have that sort of resolve, even tho I might stand out in minus something temperatures with half frozen hands to get a pretty inconsequential photo that I eventually didn't like.
I trudged through the most disgustingly effluent gloop, where I once got stuck in it so badly my bad knee couldn't lift me out of it .. and still 'enjoyed' that result of that photo session .. even tho I never did anything with those images either. I had had a ute, those boots would have stayed back there in Geelong , as they weren't coming into the car with me.
Just two easily recalled trials and tribulations in my pursuit of happiness in photography that I have endured .. but I will not ever again suffer PS or CS ever again.

It's not hard .. that is not hard to use .. they just make it so convoluted to do so.
Is there ever going to be a movement amongst the CS cognescendi to effect a change in CS's user interface from Adobe, to one that is actually useful?
Are the cloning masses simply happy to just keep on keeping on as they have been for so long?

Anyhow .. just a rant .. and sis is rapt that she now has pain.net installed

[I @ M]

Did you mean lead you astray or lend you an ashtray?

Yep, sometimes the better things in life don't cost you $9.99 ^#1 per month.

Anyhow .. just a rant .. and sis is rapt that she now has pain.net installed

Did you leave a t out on purpose?

^#1 Subject to change at any time, fees and charges may apply, no guarantee of compatibility with any product ever! See 256 pages of terms and conditions for further details.

[arthurking83]

LOL ... AP forum software left out the 'less' .. not the 't'



of course the real answer lies in my inability to speel coorektli.

[ricktas]

I started out with paintshop pro, on about version 2 or 3 or some other relatively small number, and I got a copy of photoshop at CS2 (on one of those disks that oft came stuck to the front of photography magazines.So installs it I did and during several months of having both PSP and PS open I slowly delved my way into the murky depths and eventually I popped out the other side, and here I am today.

And here and now today, I would have no idea how to change a complete colour in PS without googling and youtubing it. You see I am a photographer, and I might adjust saturation and vibrancy, but change the colour of something in my images completely, nup, not done that.

But give me a copy of Lightroom and I could. The TAT tool would be where I would head.

I think LR is what photographers use more and more, I do, and then PS is used to sharpen, add watermark, noise reduction etc, and save, along with the use of the clone tool (damn rubbish on that beach), and using some of my plugins. Most of which I can do in LR as well, but my brain is full from all the PS learning and I really don't have the inclination to learn yet another way to do it. It is easier to do it how I know how to, already.

As for Adobe changing how PS works, me thinks not. It is generally a rather expensive bit of kit that has for a lot of photographers been replaced by the much more cheap (in comparison) Lightroom.

Perhaps whilst you do your PS learnings, I need to learn more about Lightroom.

[arthurking83]

I never even thought to try LR!

it was a PNG file tho, so I don't even know if LR can read PNGs.

I actually like LR for it's workflow ... just very slow on my PC on D800 files. I can't imagine the grinding noises it'd make if I hooked up two monitors again(and yes, on a proper GFX card).

[ROA44]

Well at least you guys can use them, still only using View NX2 I have LR but only had a few looks so will probably wait till I can get my new system up and running. Certainly will also look at this Paintdot.net or Paint.net tho.

I notice though it's still MS $'s based.

[arthurking83]

.....

I notice though it's still MS $'s based.

I'm not sure if you mean paint.net is Microsoft's software. AFAIK, it's not.

The company it's offered via is called dotPDN with an LLC(US equiv of our PtyLtd!)

Whether the chap who wrote PDN is a former M$ employee is unknown to me.
But it's not a MS software package.

ps. Don't ever pay for it, as it says in the download areas. it's a fully free fully functional image editor. One thing also to note is that it won't open raw files tho. It has no raw conversion sub program.

I used it years ago to invert some negatives, as it was free and easy to get.

ps. ViewnX2 while it's a great simple initial editing software choice, it's really more of a file browser/organiser pre-processing software. You wouldn't only rely on it for 100% of your images.

[rackham]

Photoshop is not a single purpose tool. It never has been. Different people with different needs use it for different jobs... and that is - in my mind - a pretty clear indication as to why it is so convoluted.

LR on the other hand, is a (more or less) single purpose tool. Resultantly, it's pretty simple to use on a basic level!

[arthurking83]

Photoshop is not a single purpose tool. It never has been. Different people with different needs use it for different jobs... and that is - in my mind - a pretty clear indication as to why it is so convoluted.

LR on the other hand, is a (more or less) single purpose tool. Resultantly, it's pretty simple to use on a basic level!

Now that's what I wanted to hear!

That explains the mess of the UI.

Finding a tool that just does what you want is both easy and then completely distorted in it's implementation.

I did eventually find the tool I wanted .. something like Adjustments->Image-> Tools->Edit Options->Other options-> Are You Sure You Can't Find A More Useful Way->Somewhere In Here Is Nothing Of Importance->What Is It Exactly You Want To Do Again->Rejig Colours->Colour Swap-> Only for Idiots->Swap Colour

And that's where I found the tool that did a pretty bad job of doing what my sis wanted.
But I think I exaggerated a bit there .. I may have been the limitation in the bad job I performed on the colour change.

They(Adobe) should have some sort of user defined tool layout option widget that allows you to 'edit photos simply' or 'edit vector images simply' and so on.
of course it should be a predefined UI layout, with the ability to edit items in and out as needed.
There'd be no point in offering the ability to tweak the UI entirely on your own, as this is useless for the noob(me) . how do I know what I want, if I don't know how to do it?
That way the tools you actually need and use are there for the picking.

.....

[Warbler]

Well, you can dumb it all down by using presets and actions Arthur, and there is nothing wrong with that either, but some folks like to bake their own bread. Hell some folks even like to grind their own grain into flour to make their own bread. Some folks brew their own beer too. Do what suits you.

BTW. That's why there are so many folks marketing plug-ins for Photoshop. The complexity....

[fillum]

I think a point you've missed here AK is that Adobe also produce Photoshop Elements (PSE). Photoshop (CS) is 'professional-calibre' software so I'd expect some complexity in it's use in order to take advantage of the power it offers. If people need something simpler then PSE is an alternative. PSE has 3 modes (Quick / Guided / Expert) so users can select how much control they want.

The function you'd want in PSE for example is: Enhance > Adjust Color > Replace Color ...pretty straight-forward imo.



Cheers.

[arthurking83]

Thanks Phil.
I did eventually find the routine, and even tho my OP is mildly long winded, I understand that many folks don't have the time nor patience to read it all.
But I did find it.
What I found annoying, is that it wasn't obvious to the average bloke who'd never used PS before.

In contrast tho, I hovered over the small toolbar in PDN, and voila! Easy as pie. No searching for videotutes, and long winded descriptions of what how and why ..

Literally within 2 minutes of having installed PDN on my sister's PC, I 'stumbled' on the right tool, then found the correct tool to make the selection on an intricate part of the image, went back to the colour swap tool again, chose the colour and you couldn't wipe the massive smile off her face.
And more importantly she now thinks I'm a graphics god or something.
So next time I can't be stuffed doing something like this, I can safely say .. "nup! can't be done"(even tho I know it can be .. and I'm safe.



if I can find the image of this logo on my PC .. I'll post it up for all to see too.

Here it is here.

yoyo-test.png

The basic alteration I made as a test only was the change of colour to the yellow arc along the lower part of the image, which was originally the same green as the top swoosh line.

Of course sis want's more coloour options to play with and some transparency to use it as a watermark and whatever.
But now she knows how to change the colours herself, and she's off and running.

[bcys1961]

I have never used PS , but recently started using Lightroom , my first photo editing software and I find it great! The management of images via keyword etc is excellent and apparent they stripped out of it every thing the photographer doesn't need in terms of adjustment tools. It did not take long to come to grips with the basics, but just like photography in general to get really good requires experience and practice. Excellent use of the editing software is a skill in its own right.

I can also see that if entering competitions using Lightroom ( or another package ) is a bit like using drugs in the Tour De France. If you aren't using , you probably won't win!

[Warbler]

I can also see that if entering competitions using Lightroom ( or another package ) is a bit like using drugs in the Tour De France. If you aren't using , you probably won't win!

Well, you know if I read all the critiques, I see things like crop this, clone that, lighten this, HDR that. Editing images is a way of life. People want to see perfect light and sharpness, and vote for that. Images with no distractions, no noise, no spots. Most of us are mere mortals and can't do that without an editor. Now pass the roids please.