Idiots guide to image processing

Spie

Spie

Spie

Godfather
Godfather
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Bromsgrove
I have virtually no experience in image processing and all my photos are printed from jpegs. Is there an idiots guide somewhere than could point me in the right direction including what software to use?
 
Picasa has some basic functionality, IIRC—stuff like automatic colour correction, automatic contrast, things like that. Useful if you don't want to go the whole hog with Photoshop, maybe, but no substitute.
 
Most people seem to use PhotoShop CS2 but it's pretty pricey at £550 although you can get a student version at £100. PhotoShop Elements is a much cheaper stripped down version costing about £60 that still has all the important functions.

I got a really helpful book titled The PhotoShop CS2 Book For Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby which I found really helpful. It demonstrates how to carry out pretty much everything you'll ever need to do to your photos.
 
I think I've got Photoshop Elements on my 5D disc. I'll try and find it.
 
How much processing are you actually intending to do? If it's just basic levels and colour adjustments then elements will be fine.

Printing from Jpeg is fine.

As an alternative to home printing and all the trauma that brings with it (matching profiles etc) have a look at photobox. Cheaper than inkjet and great quality.
 
Spuds said:
I got a really helpful book titled The PhotoShop CS2 Book For Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby which I found really helpful. It demonstrates how to carry out pretty much everything you'll ever need to do to your photos.
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There is also Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers by Martin Evening (ISBN 0-240-51984-1) which is usefull.

Spie, CS2 does seem very overwhelming at first but it's not so bad once you start to use it (really!). I'm still very much a novice in using it but i'm slowly learning and as I do I can go back to my photos and reprocess them a little better (I shoot RAW). There are also scripts and functions you can download from Adobes site which do some of the work for you e.g add a border to a photo. It is expensive and you could argue that if you are going to only use 10% of the feature why buy it but you will learn more and use more. Let's face it, if we all decided not to use something if we only used 10% of it's features the majority of us wouldn't own DSLRs ;)

You also have a number of people on here who would be able to assist you with how to use it and photgraphic magazines like Practical Photographer run articles on how to achieve certain effects in Photoshop.

If I were in your shoes I'd get Photoshop CS2; I'm sure you could get a good deal on it :D
 
Depends on whether you just want to tweak levels or to actually edit the photos.

Photoshop (inc. Elements) or the GIMP would do you nicely probably. You wouldn't need anything that complicated to just brighten an image or something, though - I would imagine your 5D came with ZoomBrowser (?) and that would do the job.
 
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dod said:
How much processing are you actually intending to do? If it's just basic levels and colour adjustments then elements will be fine.

Printing from Jpeg is fine.
Click to expand...
Not a lot really, for now. I think I'll try Elements first. I thought it was on the 5D disc, but it's not. I'll download the trial from Adobe and see how I get on.
 
I do all my processing in Elements 4.0 and nobody has yet pointed at my stuff and laughed.










Then again maybe everybody is polite/feels sorry for me :)



//edit// Practice with USM , you'll be wanting it for the new lens ;)
 
Spie - you say you print from jpeg (most of us do) but do you shoot in RAW or shoot in JPG?

You will find, if you dont already, that RAW give a much greater flexibility and allows for recovery of images which would be otherwise unusable, especially low light conditions which you seem to be mentioning recently.
 
Slime101 said:
Spie - you say you print from jpeg (most of us do) but do you shoot in RAW or shoot in JPG?

You will find, if you dont already, that RAW give a much greater flexibility and allows for recovery of images which would be otherwise unusable, especially low light conditions which you seem to be mentioning recently.
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That was the reason for asking. I want to start shooting in RAW and wanted an introduction to image processing.

I've downloaded Elements 4 and it looks quite straightforward. Lots of filters though.
 
Spie said:
That was the reason for asking. I want to start shooting in RAW and wanted an introduction to image processing.

I've downloaded Elements 4 and it looks quite straightforward. Lots of filters though.
Click to expand...

Rawshooter (free) is what I use to process my RAWs, it's fairly simple once you find the 'convert' button. You just have a side-bar of sliders, and that's all you need really. Or just press 'auto-all'
 
at this point is it worth suggesting getting some thing like a Pantone Huey to calibrate your monitor.
No point tweaking the photos and what gets printed looks nothing like whats on the monitor!
Stuck a Huey on my monitor, 5 mins later nicely calibrated. The old un-modified colour was very blue and cool. Now its nice and warm and looks better.

Some one mentioned the Photoshop CS2 for photographers. Got that for xmas, damn good book if a little deep in places.
Getting more into using Capture NX now to do most of the raw editing then into CS2 for any thing i cant do in NX.
 
I too would recommend RawShooter Essential Its a Raw Convertor and is easier, better and mainly more intuitive than the Adobe Raw convertor built into CS2... Its also free which is good. RSE is used alongside Photoshop, be it elements or CS2... you use RSE to tweak the colours, exposure and contrast. Then export the image from a RAW file into a Jpeg or Tiff, import this file into PS and do the rest of the editting, such as cloning out dust, straightening horizons and adding borders.

I know using RSE adds another step to your workflow, but, IMO again it is worth it.

Alternatively, there is Adobe Lightroom which is currently in a Free beta stage, I have tried it and personally dont like it, but as your having to learn a new tool from scratch you might find you get along better with it than RSE.
 
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