alternatives to photoshop

hi all!

before i started shooting as a "business," i used picasa web albums to edit and

archive.

i use photoshop, but what is a good, easy alternative for simple editing?

most of images/style are clean and unedited, but sometimes i like to make them

more "artsy" with grain or sepia.....

nothing crazy.

thoughts?

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom does about 95% of what most photographers use Photoshop for + a Library archiving feature.

photoshop does it all.............why limit yourself? assuming you spent thousands on cam and lenses.............$600 for a photo editor is nothing.

Juliet,

 

Lightroom has been wonderful! I try to shoot my images as close to ideal in camera, and try to do only minor editing- Lightroom is easy to use, well organized, and a lot less expensive. Not to diminish photoshop's uses- they're incredible! But for a basic finish, I suggest Lightroom.

 

I can understand not using photoshop- either it is too complicated (for me right now, anyway...) or too expensive (also for me). Unfortunately, I've budgeted for my camera and lenses, and am not left over with enough for a $600 program.

I used Picasa for along time as an album tool with photoshop cs2 for advanced editing. Adobe Lightroom is a perfect replacement for them both and very easy to use - and as Shelli mentioned, much cheaper too!

 

j

Juliet,

 

This is a big question, with lots of good answers.

 

I agree with Ellis Vener that Adobe Lightrooom is a good choice. I use Lightroom and almost never open up Photoshop. Aperture, from Apple (Mac OS only) is similar to Lightroom in many ways, and also has an excellent reputation. There are a slew of other raw editing programs, including Silkypix, Bibble Pro, Phase One's Capture One, and nine or ten that I'm not remembering. Oh, don't forget whatever came with your camera! I have never used the software for Nikon or Canon dslrs, but I believe that I've heard it's quite good. The software that came with my Pentax dslr does not seem to me as good as Lightroom overall, but it can certainly do a lot. What all these programs have in common is that they provide a way to PROCESS your raw images: adjust white balance, contrast or tone curves, tweak colors, sharpness, etc. These are the tasks that are needed most by most photographers, especially folks like event photographers who take lots of photos.

 

What these programs do NOT do, on the other hand, is allow you to get into nitty-gritty pixel editing. Lightroom does let you fix red-eye and remove a pimple from someone's face, but that's about it. If you want to give the person a nose job, get a pair of open eyes from one photo and paste 'em into another photo where the person's eyes were closed, or put some politician's head on the body of a turkey, you'll need Photoshop or one of the other pixel-editors. I think Paint Shop Pro can do this sort of thing. Google "alternatives to photoshop". The GIMP is powerful and free. I should mention also that Adobe Photoshop Elements provides a large subset of its big brother's pixel-editing tools in a less expensive package.

 

I also want to mention Lightcrafts' Lightzone, which is a quirky but wonderful program that continues to fascinate me. I don't own it but I download the demo of every new release and I suppose I'll pony up the money for it one day. Lightzone provides excellent tools for general processing of raw files -- similar in result to those provided by Adobe Lightroom but with a very original user interface. But Lightzone also provides area selection tools, so for example you can select the sky in a photo and tweak its colors without affecting the same colors in the lower part of the photo. I don't think Lightzone actually has layers in the way Photoshop does, but it does allow you to "layer" effects upon effects, so that, for example, you can use Lightzone to do something that resembles HDR editing -- with a single original file. In its original couple versions, Lightzone used non-destructive editing much as Lightroom and Aperture do: edits were stored in a metafile and not written to an image file until you exported. With version 3, this seems to have changed and, unless I'm mistaken, Lightzone now works more the way Photoshop does, by making changes directly to a file. (I beg someone to correct me if I'm wrong about this!) If I'm not wrong then it looks as if the folks at Lightcrafts are trying to turn their program into an image editing alternative to Photoshop rather than an image processing and management alternative to Lightroom.

 

One last note about Picasa. You're right, it won't do for professional work. Its controls are simply too limited and too unsubtle. However, I must confess that I continue to run my exported JPEGs through Picasa, which I use now mainly as an uploader. Most of the time, I've gotten the file just the way I want it in Lightroom. But occasionally, Picasa's "I feel lucky" button (or the contrast button) can do something to the image that I just didn't figure out how to do in Lightroom, and I'll keep the change. One great thing about Picasa is that it doesn't actually store its own database of images, so I can export photos to a subfolder of the folder that I've configured Picasa to be aware of. It recognizes them automatically when they're there. Later I can delete them and Picasa doesn't miss them. I use Picasa mainly because it makes it so easy to upload photos both to SmugMug and Picasa Web Albums....

Juliet,

 

 

There is a free program called gimpshop, it's said to be a lot like Photoshop.

 

I think it can be found at gimpshop.com

 

It might be what you're looking for.

 

Jim Marby

I've been using Corel Photo-Paint for years and I love it. This is NOT Corel Painter, that's a different program. Photo-Paint comes as part of the CorelDraw suite. I think it's in the 300.00 range for the entire thing, but it's a great program. It does pretty much everything Photoshop does, runs most photoshop plug ins, but is less memory intensive, faster, and in my opinion, much more intuituve to use (and I do have Photoshop as well). I honestly don't know why more photographers don't use it, it's a great program.

You can get the Corel suite very cheaply on e-bay. It is a very underated program and I use the Corel Draw part for making albums. It does much of what InDesign does.

this is how i see it. if you are going to take this profession serious. you need PS. bottom line. yes there are all these other programs but PS is an industry standard and allows for many different types of things - why limit yourself? i use mostly light room and then anything i didn't finish there i take over to PS. Why are you trying to steer clear of an industry standard?

I Use LR & PS and I am not trying to start another topic but if it does the job well and it works for you than that is the best standard. Sorry Meg reul, but more choice is very healthy for us. If adobe doesn't have an upgrade each week and you have to have it and pay too much for it more people will not be looking you from what you call industry standard.

In general, I like to do most editing in LR. I use PS, but I would also recommend the PSP from Corel if you have nothing. It's powerful, and does 95% of what PS does with more user friendly buttons IMO.

GIMP is a great tool, but it is not built ground-up with the exceptional extras that Photoshop has. But, GIMP is Free (as in Speech and as in Beer), which is a huge plus for someone on a budget.

 

http://gimp.org is a great place to start.

 

Cheers,

 

-Andrew

GIMP = free and powerful

Photoshop = seriously expensive for a non-pro

GIMPshop = free and menus are arranged to look like Photoshop

 

Paint Shop Pro is nice and affordable.

 

Photoshop Elements lacks curves which is very bad (at least for me) but there seems to be a free cure:

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/curves-photoshop-elements-4-5.html

Photo.net's software seems to hate me today... Interesting first line.

Good easy simple editing and Photoshop batch actions....what's easier? As Meg said, PS is the industry standard.

I have been using M/S Digital Imaging. Very much like Photoshop, but easier and a lot cheaper. Costco, Fry Electronics carry it. Price about 85 - 90 dollars. Has a lot of file formats and it works. No bug in it. I have used in about 10 years. Love it.

 

www.mwhallockphoto.com has several items of work from it.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Mike Hallock.

<p>Here's a helpful link y'all....</p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_raster_graphics_editors">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_raster_graphics_editors</a></p>