Software options for Mac OSX - photo editing

[studiojmm]

Sadly, I'm loosing my darkroom this spring to a basement renovation. Since I hadn't been

using it enough (time constraints) or getting enough stuff printed and framed (money

constraints), I'm considering just going digital for my personal use photos - prints good

enough to hang in my house at 5x7 or 8x10 - and using the local custom lab as backup

when I want something else done.

 

I have a reasonable photo printer and scanner that takes film and slides. What I don't have

is good editing software. What do you recommend for an 800mhz Ibook with 512 ram

running OSX (most recent)? I'd consider upgrading the computer in the next year or so

(My husband's '99 IMac won't last forever).

 

Unless I'm missing something, Iphoto is just terrible for editing. Are there alternatives to

Adobe Photoshop? Any reason to go with them?

 

Thanks for your advice.

[wbowman]

The newest iPhoto '05 has MUCH better editing features than the previous version. You can now adjust temperature, sharpen, align, change black and white points, etc. It's not Photoshop CS, but it matches much of what many consumer-level editing tools offer. If you're needs are more along the lines of simple adjustments and tweaks, then you should be fine. You'll need something much more powerful (and expensive) if you want to do compositions, masking, etc.

[mystuff]

there's gimp, there are a few options for it on osx, some free, some for a small price, links here...

 

http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/

 

or from adobe, there's photoshop elements, a trial version is also available to try before you buy...

 

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelmac/main.html

 

i've used gimp on solaris, it is ok, but i much prefer ps on mac, imho you should have a look at ps elements, it has some really nice features and is a good price

[ray]

Photoshop Elements 3.0 ($89) should meet your needs quite nicely.

[dean_matsueda]

<p>One more option, Graphic Converter, an old Mac-only image editing program. More

info here:</p>

<p>

<a href="http://www.lemkesoft.com/en/index.htm">www.lemkesoft.com</a></p>

<p>

Its strength is being able to batch process multiple files in different formats very quickly.

It comes with a nice set of editing features but if you don't need batch-

processing, Elements might be the better choice.</p>

[berj_bannayan]

You'll also need to decide if you want to deal with 16-bit images. Of all of the software mentioned above I think only PhotoShop CS (and maybe the Gimp) support 16-bit.

 

I know that, for me, this is very important seeing as I do *alot* of black and white work and 256 measly levels of grey just doesn't do it for me.

[don_baccus]

Photoshop Elements 3.0 also supports 16 bits and camera raw formats just like Photoshop CS. Elements 3.0 is far superior to Elements 2.0 and after having upgraded, I've decided I really have no need at this time to upgrade to Photoshop CS.

 

As far as the gimp goes, I wouldn't recommend it on Mac OS X even though I've played with it some and am a software engineer who makes his living writing open source software on the linux platform. Elements 3.0 is cheap, books abound for it, online help is easily obtained, it runs native under Aqua rather than under X, etc etc. Just not worth trying to save $89 by using the open source gimp.