• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Editor Options (1 Viewer)

JWellman

Member
As Micky mentions, Photofiltre is an extremely capable free application - found at www.photofiltre.com - I use it for much of my basic image fiddling. There's also a paid for version called Photofiltre Studio, with some extra functionality - most notably layers.

The Gimp is great too, as he says, but the interface is an acquired taste I've never really got my head round - and I'm about three years in with The Gimp.

A less well known but capable editor is Satori PhotoXL (http://www.satoripaint.com): it has a few unique features, and is cheap as chips at £6.95.

The nearest thing you'll find to Photoshop though, is Ability Photopaint.

It really is a Photoshop clone (they describe it as "a photo and image editor that will instantly feel familiar, both in its interface and functionality, to users of Adobe Photoshop"), and is an absolute steal at £20.

http://www.ability.com/sales/products/paint.php

As KC suggests, it's hard not to love Paint Shop Pro, and although it's more expensive than anything I've mentioned so far, it's still a bargain compared to Photoshop and is very good.

I've got PSP 9 and I can't fault it for power vs. usability - though in truth I rarely need it or Photopaint: I'm not a "power user" by the remotest stretch of the imagination, and as long as the basic picture I've taken is "thereabouts", Photofiltre has a lot to offer.

Don't forget about Photoshop Elements though - v4 is available for about £50.

Keep an eye out for free copies of earlier versions of Paint Shop Pro and the rest on CDs with computer magazines, and bear in mind that the latest Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements won't run on Win 9x/ME.

To avoid replying to a topic that was old I decided to post a new one. I was reading the above reply from Keith about editor options. I guess I've never paid that much attention to my Paint Shop Pro. I've used it for years, almost daily. I use it to resize images but my primary use is for web development. (Like the logo image at the top of my personal website). Until someone on this forum mentioned using it as a photo editor, I hadn't given it much thought.

I'm in the market to buy a new editor and automatically thought I would save my money and purchase Photo Shop. I know it's what all the pros use but I'm wondering if I shouldn't hold onto my pennies for awhile. I absolutely love my Paint Shop and know my way around it so well. Photo Shop looks like Greek to me. Currently I'm using the software that came with my 50D because Paint Shop will not let me open RAW images.

I'm not sure what will be the best route, but I do know when someone edits my photos in Photo Shop they always achieve much greater results than my attempts. :eek!: A lot of it is just my lack of knowledge on HOW to edit.

Another option is Lightroom. Keith didn't mention it in his reply. Is it an editor also? I wonder how costly it is?
 
Honestly Jessica, while Photoshop certainly lets you do more (a lot more) to images, Paint Shop Pro (PSP) is eminently capable of doing everything you'd probably need to do to get an image up to snuff. I only stopped using PSP because it wouldn't run properly on my new (at the time) Windows 7 box, but I wouldn't say I get "better" results from Photoshop than I used to from PSP - or rather I'm not getting better results because I'm using Photoshop.

Lightroom is a bit of a mongrel in that while not an editor per se, it has a lot of editor-like functionality, and many photographers are able to use it as a one-stop shop all the way from ingesting the files from the memory card, through RAW conversion and onto post processing and resizing, right up to creating a finished image ready for use online, or for printing: plus it has excellent Digital Asset Managment (DAM) functions too.

I use Lightroom as my default RAW converter, but I admit that I still hand off my converted/corrected files to Photoshop, but that's primarily to allow me to access one or two plug-ins I use as a matter of course (and which I'd be able to run just as well from PSP if it ran properly on my machine).

As for PSP not allowing you to open your RAWs, consider this a good thing: earlier versions of PSP (up to PSP XI) had very limited RAW support; more recent versions (X2 and X3) have had a lot of work done on RAW support, but the image quality of conversions is still pretty nasty.

You can do a lot worse than continue to use DPP which came with the camera for conversions, and use PSP for the cosmetic work.

This is a (woefully out of date!) article I wrote about my workflow before I changed pretty much everything (I don't use Capture One any more, I use Lightroom; I use Photoshop instead of PSP; and I save my initial conversions as TIFF rather than as jpeg - although this was initially to help avoid posterisation artifacts from appearing in images when I used my favourite noise reduction plugin Topaz Denoise), but the underlying logic of the workflow is sound, and apart from the details, is what I do now, so it might provide some ideas.
 
Last edited:
Hi Jessica, photo editing software is a minefield, there are so many options out there (the software pages of my website currently lists 44 different developers with a multitude of different types of editor, and I still have plenty to list!!), I think if you find one you like it is well worth sticking with it.

Some packages like Lightroom and photoshop have so many fatures and the ability to tweak things that while being excellent they can become very complex, others like LightZone by Lightcrafts (one I am currently trialing for review) is a very simple processor that just uses sliders and doesn't have some of the tools to be found on more complex editors.

But with each system there are advantages and drawbacks, and the best way to find out if you will get on with ones is through trial versions (most comapnies offer these) and once you find one that you like read/watch as many tutorials or instructional webpages as you can.

If PSP doesn't handle RAW but otherwise you like it, then maybe try a stand alone RAW convertor (like I guess you already are), there is no harm in this at all
 
How about Photoshop Elements.
The new version 9 is quite capable of doing most things Photoshop does, it's also way cheeper than PS.
Will have no probs opening your RAW files.
 
Was going to say the same as Grahame, PSE9 is excellent and now has a layers option too

The guided edit is very handy and really can't be beaten for the price
 
Last edited:
I have PSE 6 that you are welcome to Jessica, just sits idly on the shelf gathering dust and no problem just popping it in an airmail envelope

Already updated with ACR 5.6 so you could use it to open RAW files from your 50D

Cheers
Rich
 
That's a kind gesture, Rich.

A small point. ACR 5.6 will open 50D files, as you say: but the current version of ACR as shipped (or at least compatible with) PSE 9 provides significantly better conversions, as it uses the new demosaic algorithm and the new sharpening and NR routines, all of which make an appreciable difference.
 
If you can get the RAW images converter, all that anybody needs is Photoshop 3.

All the additional gimmicks added by Adobe are there to make you spend your money, equally aided by the endless column stream of written waffle in magazines.

The less people fiddle with their images the better they will be.
 
but the current version of ACR as shipped (or at least compatible with) PSE 9

Keith

Can earlier versions be updated with the ACR you mentioned or is it specific to PSE 9?

Considering getting Lightroom 3 via my student daughter, very reasonable price and its no doubt a vast improvement on the version 1.0 I have.
Not that i'm complaining about PSE 9, got it when Amazon had their Black Friday deals on for £22.99 and must say its jolly good

Anyway the offer is there Jessica if you just fancy a play about with it, would have kept using it if it hadn't been so cheap to upgrade

Rich
 
If you can get the RAW images converter, all that anybody needs is Photoshop 3.
A fair point - although the Content Aware Fill tool in CS 5 is pretty amazing, and has saved a few images for me.

The less people fiddle with their images the better they will be.
Aye, which is why getting a good conversion is such an important part of the end result - the better the initial conversion, the better the end result, and the less faffing about will be necessary to get there.
 
Keith

Can earlier versions be updated with the ACR you mentioned or is it specific to PSE 9?
To the best of my knowledge (I'm not familiar with Elements, but I'm guessing Adobe has the same policy for both Photoshop CS and Elements) new versions of ACR are not backwards compatible with earlier versions of CS or PSE - they want you to buy new to get the benefit of the latest ACR and IIRC, ACR 6.3 is only compatible with CS 5 and PSE 9.
 
Last edited:
Thank you everyone! I posted this topic and then work projects hit the fan. :eek!: I've been trying to play more with Paint Shop and while loading the program on my Dad's computer I noticed during set-up it asked me if I wanted RAW images as an option. I bet when I first loaded the program I did not click that option.

I started a new project, based on something I read on a forum. I'm calling it "One Image a Day" and it's basically daily homework. It has helped quite a bit by making me think about what I'm going to shoot next.

I know some of the photos are WAY off but I think the best part is the fact that I'm practicing daily. :t:

The photos have not been bird related lately but you can view them here if you like. There are five photos on each of the links. Tomorrow I start page three!
 
Warning! This thread is more than 13 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top