Hi guys,
Looking for feedback on your picks for photo editing software, free and/or purchased. What do you use? Are you happy with it?
Tim
Best Editing Software
Moderator: Scott Waters
Re: Best Editing Software
Tim,
Lightroom. It gives you all the editing tools photographers really need, (and you can expand those with plugins), and it gives you cataloging all in one program. I was a long time Bridge, Photoshop, Microsoft Expressions Media workflow guy, but Lightroom does the job of all three 99% of the time. Its a rare day that I actually need to use CS6 anymore.
Lightroom. It gives you all the editing tools photographers really need, (and you can expand those with plugins), and it gives you cataloging all in one program. I was a long time Bridge, Photoshop, Microsoft Expressions Media workflow guy, but Lightroom does the job of all three 99% of the time. Its a rare day that I actually need to use CS6 anymore.
Re: Best Editing Software
I'll agree with Lightroom due to it's efficiency. I'm shooting just RAW now and doing presets with Lightroom speeds up the processing. I use Photoshop Elements for any additional tweeks such as crops.
Re: Best Editing Software
Photoshop Elements (whatever the current version is) does pretty much everything I need. I've used the full version of Photoshop CS(2-6) quite a bit, and in a perfect world of cheap software I prefer it to Elements. But the little bit extra it provides (the ability to record actions is my favorite) isn't worth the vast increase in cost for most of us.
- AndyO'Connor
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Re: Best Editing Software
I use PS Elements 7 right now (won it in an online photo contest a few years ago so it was "free"). It has worked well for everything I needed, but I recently was told it won't handle RAW and I am about to switch since I've been using my 7D for about 7 months now and am shooting full manual and I want to learn more post processing tricks, I just purchased a copy of Adobe Lightroom 4 and will be switching to that. Kris spoke highly of it and so did my Adobe contact.
Re: Best Editing Software
Lightroom. I just saw a special on it somewhere or 119, can't remember where.
Re: Best Editing Software
I think I saw a special on Lightroom 5 for $99. I am using Photoshop CS4 (but I now think I bought a pirated version). I think it is awesome, but I do wonder what Lightroom 5 has that CS4 doesn't, and vice versa.
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Re: Best Editing Software
As others have stated - Lightroom 5 - Get it while you can! More than likely Lightroom boxed retail will be a thing of the past and will be exclusive to the Creative Cloud by Adobe - forcing people to pay a monthly fee to use their products! Don't worry its only 49.99 p/month if you want the full collection, 29.99 for certain offers, and 19.99 if you score the "CS6 upgrade" which means you would've need to have purchased the box version of CS6 before they pulled it from the shelves *sigh*
Lightroom 5 is very fluid - can handle cloaning a lot more advanced than the previous additions and even has content aware functionality to it for cloaning. This is a huge improvement: I can actually do spot repairs in Lightroom vs CS6 thanks to this.
As your photography advances, your software needs WILL advance. It's simple really. Just like the camera body and lens you use to prefer is no longer good enough, sharp enough, fast enough, or accurate enough in AF. But, for many consumers to prosumers, Lightroom has been a staple.
Lightroom 5 is very fluid - can handle cloaning a lot more advanced than the previous additions and even has content aware functionality to it for cloaning. This is a huge improvement: I can actually do spot repairs in Lightroom vs CS6 thanks to this.
As your photography advances, your software needs WILL advance. It's simple really. Just like the camera body and lens you use to prefer is no longer good enough, sharp enough, fast enough, or accurate enough in AF. But, for many consumers to prosumers, Lightroom has been a staple.
Re: Best Editing Software
I've used every version of Lightroom and don't even open CS5 anymore. So I think that it's a pretty easy choice. This software is made just for editing photos and makes plowing through an entire trip's worth of photos a few hour chore instead of taking multiple evenings to do. I highly recommend it.
Re: Best Editing Software
Adobe has repeatedly stated that they have no intention of doing this with Lightroom.reptileexperts wrote:As others have stated - Lightroom 5 - Get it while you can! More than likely Lightroom boxed retail will be a thing of the past and will be exclusive to the Creative Cloud by Adobe - forcing people to pay a monthly fee to use their products!
I have also used Lightroom, PS Elements and various versions of Photoshop from Photoshop 5 to CS4. Lightroom is far and away a better product for what I do.
If you do want to some more serious photo tweaking than lightroom can offer (use layers, create new objects in photos, etc.), the GIMP does all that and is free.
But I have Photoshop and the GIMP on my computer as well as LR and I never open Photoshop or the GIMP.
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Re: Best Editing Software
Lightroom 5 is on special till 730 PM EST tomorrow, August 30, for 99.99 boxed retail or instant download. No sales tax outside of new york full version. Just wanted to get that out there!