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01-17-2016, 01:38 PM   #16
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QuoteOriginally posted by toptenmaterial Quote
Hi, I'm pretty new here and have lots of questions. In another thread I posted some questions regarding picking up new gear. I'd say that I am a pretty decent student of photography who is approaching amateur level; I understand DSLRs fairly well and certainly a lot of the fundamentals (the K1000 is a great but stern teacher!). I have never done any real digital photo editing or post processing with the exception of the default apps on my iPhone and also some settings on Instagram. I'd like to learn photoshop or another serious editing program. Which one should I pick up? Also I'd like to know the processing requirements of a computer to use for this (my dad often complains of photoshop being a "RAM hog). Thanks!
Do the Adobe Photography Creative Cloud subscription; for Ps users it's a great bargain. Sometimes it's even discounted a bit at places like B&H.

There are tons of alternatives, but everyone is chasing Ps. If you are going to invest energy in learning, do it in Ps. It can do anything the others can. Not only that, but the resources available for learning dwarf anything else. Tons of books, forums, and online courses. Your local camera store or community colleges may also have classes in its use. Although it is not by any means easy to use, it isn't that tough. And anything you learn in Ps will translate to other programs because every competitor has to adapt to a Ps world. That's just the way it is.

And you also get Lightroom, Bridge, and Lr Mobile as well. And Pentax stuff works great with it.[COLOR="Silver"]


Last edited by Oakland Rob; 01-17-2016 at 01:54 PM.
01-17-2016, 01:57 PM   #17
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Just a brief note to say thanks for all of the helpful advice guys!
01-17-2016, 02:25 PM   #18
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QuoteOriginally posted by Oakland Rob Quote
Do the Adobe Photography Creative Cloud subscription
+1 on this, for me it's a "no brainer" and I already own LR5 and CS6 and I still think it's a great deal at £8.00 ish a month.
01-17-2016, 06:14 PM   #19
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QuoteOriginally posted by Pentaxis Quote
No, you assume incorrectly,I did not. In fact, I did not shoot transparencies and the negs that I did produce I filed pretty haphazardly.
I should know better than to assume Personally I never was much good at writing on the slide cards and what negatives I shot were dumped in a box. So my film stuff is a real mess. Digital has, for that reason alone, been a huge improvement in my workflow.
QuoteOriginally posted by Pentaxis Quote
Still, each to his own.....
Agreed, that's why we have choices. I actually admire folks that take the time to "get it right" and don't do any PP. Sort of like playing with a handicap. I have a friend who I've met at art shows who still uses her 35mm film camera. Completely refuses to go digital. I'm not into digital manipulation much, but if I shoot RAW then PP is required. If I shoot jpeg, then the camera is making all the decisions. I would rather have the image the way I want than the way the camera wants. I'm the artist, not the camera. And if I'm competing with other photographers for sales then I need to show the best image I can produce.

01-18-2016, 08:34 AM   #20
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+1 on Photoshop Elements. I started out with PSE then moved up to full blown Photoshop. Photoshop is too overwhelming for a newbie in my opinion, unless you have used something similar in the past. It is also quite expensive and hogs up a lot of memory.
01-20-2016, 06:38 AM   #21
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QuoteOriginally posted by jatrax Quote
I actually admire folks that take the time to "get it right" and don't do any PP.
Even if you do get it right in camera, you will likely need some kind of editing software if you want to do something with the photo other than view it on your own monitor.

At minimum, you'll want to be able to resize your photos so that you can send them via email, or print them. Even if you manage to frame your subjects perfectly every time, you will probably
need to crop photos if only to change the aspect ratio.

You might want to use a photo browser that allows side by side comparison of photos so that you can choose which of a set of duplicates you want to keep and which you want to discard.

I have a minimalist approach to PP. I browse my photos using FastStone which is free and lightweight ( It will run on pretty much any computer ). It gives me everything I need to browse and
edit my photos just about 95% of the time. When I need to do more complex editing, or RAW processing, I invoke one of a suite of other programs I have at my disposal, depending on what it
is I want or need to do.

I would recommend the original poster start with a basic editor like FastStone. When you get to a point where you feel you want or need to do more sophisticated processing, then you can add other programs.
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