Originally posted by Racerdew I can do more in paintshop prox 4. I think I would have to take a class in photoshop to fully understand the program.
Today I did shoot in just RAW and it was a little scary. All of my photos were very dark and did not look like the histograma and screen. I had to do a lot to them to brighten them up. I did notice a different effect to the pictures compared to JPEG. … Plus the pictures in RAW do not show as much color as the JPEG files. … I will give it more time but it feels like a step back.
@racerdew: In the hopes of steering you in a fruitful direction with regard to post-processing software and methods, I want to share my general perspective with you.
PaintShop Pro: I can't speak to it, since I've never used it;
Photoshop: I have 17 years experience in Photoshop, and I continue to use it extensively for my design work (and the occasional, specialized-edit to a photograph);
Lightroom: I have been using Lightroom since early 2008 (~ 5 years), when I got my first DSLR (Pentax K-20D). It's is a top-notch application. For processing photos—especially RAW photos—it is the undisputed king, in my opinion. I have a great appreciation for all that Photoshop can do, and almost two decades of experience with it—but it's almost irrelevant to me now because Lightroom is
that good.
With regard to your RAW "issues" specifically (i.e., muted colors, less vibrancy, etc.): Generally speaking,
that's actually a good thing. When you're shooting RAW—and using a powerful RAW editor like Lightroom—the "character" of your photos is more successfully derived from your
desktop processing (vs.
on-camera processing). It takes a while to get used to bland, drab photos coming out of your camera—but the payoff is significant, in that you are starting with source material that is more neutral, and thus, more flexible from a creativity standpoint. The apparent downside to this is that you have to invest a lot more time and effort "making" your photos into what you want them to be—rather than simply "taking" them with the camera. However—the beauty of an application like Lightroom is that it is designed specifically for batch processing large amounts of photos,
quickly and
non-destructively. This is the feature that really ties the room together, as they say :-) If you find yourself constantly wanting to bump up the exposure, the saturation and the contrast (for example)—just make a preset which does exactly that. Then, every time you import a batch of photos, you can apply that preset in one or two clicks, and voila. Once you build up a nice little library of presets, you can really motor through your images and perfect each one relatively quickly.
I hope that makes sense, and is helpful. Again—I don't know anything about PaintShop Pro, but I can wholeheartedly recommend using Lightroom (and shooting in RAW) as a fantastic solution to photography. The final piece of the puzzle is to get yourself some nice hardware (i.e., computer / display). I use a Mac Pro (2008) with lots of RAM (24GB) and a couple SSDs—and that makes everything much, much easier.