[bethanhearne81]

As I am reasonably new to photography, I am finding it difficult to part with a huge amount of money to purchase photoshop and I was wondeirng if anybody has any ideas that I can get around it. Any much cheaper of even free softwares that are just of good, or even places to get photoshop much cheaper?
Any advice?
Beth.

[EdMak]

Gimp, http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ is free, and touted as akin to Photoshop, it has, to me, a very steep learning curve. It will open Photoshop files. There are many others. I used this, http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/download.php early days. Have a read here, http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/Thread-Free-software Ed.

[MrB]

FastStone Image Viewer is also a capable image editor - it is free and looks quite easy to use (but I don't use it as I have PaintShop Pro).

Link - http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

Philip

[Wall-E]

As I am reasonably new to photography, I am finding it difficult to part with a huge amount of money to purchase photoshop and I was wondeirng if anybody has any ideas that I can get around it. Any much cheaper of even free softwares that are just of good, or even places to get photoshop much cheaper?
Any advice?
Beth.

Adobe now has a subscription service for PhotoShop and a number of other software packages.
I'm paying $10/mo for LightRoom and PS. Already gotten an update since Christmas.
That deal was supposed to have ended on 31 December, but they'd extended it, I'm not sure for how long.
Next to the last option on this page:
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecl...guide.html

Now, having said that, I do 90+% of my work in LightRoom. Cropping, straightening, color balance, adjusting color and saturation, light editing. For 'heavy lifting' I will transfer to PS directly from LR. Then return to LR and print or export the finished image.

If that's STILL out of your price range, try Picasa which is FREE from Google.
I've used that (and still do for some personal stuff) for a fair number of years.

[WesternGuy]

I guess one question would be -Why do you think you need Photoshop? Like Wall-E, I do most of my editing in Lightroom. The latest version, Version 5, has some very nice new features to it that give you all kinds of options during post-processing. As well, Lightroom has an excellent data asset management Library module. You can download it from the Adobe site and use it for at least 15 days, maybe 30, I can't remember exactly, but this trial period will give you a chance to see if it is what you need and it is a lot cheaper than Photoshop. If you do need some of the features of Photoshop that are not in Lightroom, then there are a couple of ways to get them. The first would be to purchase Photoshop Elements and see if it meets your needs. The second alternative is to look at some of the plugins for Lightroom from folks such as Nik Software, onOne Software and Topaz Labs. These plugins do a lot of the types of processing that Photoshop does, but they do it a lot easier than trying to figure out how to do the same thing in Photoshop. I hope this helps a bit.

WesternGuy

[Pete.moyes]

I use photoshop and have done for years, though mine is very old PS6 - from around 1995 it works on windows7, though
there are many photo editing programmes out there I think a lot of it is down to personal taste and what you want to do with it.
Pete.

[Dromarakid]

As I am reasonably new to photography, I am finding it difficult to part with a huge amount of money to purchase photoshop and I was wondeirng if anybody has any ideas that I can get around it. Any much cheaper of even free softwares that are just of good, or even places to get photoshop much cheaper?
Any advice?
Beth.

[hotglassguy]

PaintShop Pro X6 from Corel is very easy to use, includes both editing features and an organizer, and is relatively easy to learn. Edit features are almost as complete as those of Photoshop. Full price of the "ultimate" version is $99 but Corel often has sales on it. There is a standard version also (fewer add-ons) that is $79. Also has a 30 free trial version so you can check it out. PaintShop also accepts the most popular plug-ins such as Topaz and NIK.

[John M]

I use Gimp - it is excellent. Unless you are doing a lot of graphic art, it is all you need - Photoshop is overkill for photographers.

I find Gimp easy to use - not sure why Ed finds it has a steep learning curve, most of the actions are pretty much intuitive to me.

[Phil J]

I use Serif PhotoPlus which does everything I need, reads and writes to Photoshop if required. It has several features which Photoshop Elements doesn't have and is relatively inexpensive , with deals on pricing appearing 'on-line' all the time. It comes with its own organiser, panorama stitching and 'craft artist' software. I think it's bit of a bargain. Check it out at, http://www.serif.com/photoplus/

Regards.

Phil.

[EdMak]

Probably John M, because I am stupid!. I make the same comments about Photoshop, I could make virtually nothing of the Books I bought, (£100), fortunately, a good friend, and, an expert, put me on the right track, I know enough to do what I want, but there is a lot I do not know/understand. Cheers. Ed.

[Phil J]

Probably John M, because I am stupid!. I make the same comments about Photoshop, I could make virtually nothing of the Books I bought, (£100), fortunately, a good friend, and, an expert, put me on the right track, I know enough to do what I want, but there is a lot I do not know/understand. Cheers. Ed.

Ed,

I expect that also goes for a lot of competing products as well. Pretty much a case of 'don't tell me how', as in book learning, but more a case of 'show me how to' as in being actually taught face to face. I also wasted a similar amount of money on books on Photoshop when I had an old copy (PS11) and frankly it was far too complex to achieve even simple tasks, simply.

I must admit that I find it vaguely offensive when without exception ALL photographic magazines publish articles on how to manipulate images in PHOTOSHOP and totally disregard the fact that a great many people, in fact it might even be a majority of image manipulation software users, are using anything BUT Photoshop itself. Just because Photoshop may be the industry standard in graphic design studios, does not mean that it represents a majority of usage by the majority of 'photographers'. In pretty much the same way that Apple Mac and its derivatives are or have been regarded as the pre-eminent platform for image manipulation, when yet again this only applies to the graphic design studio segment of the market. Like many others I have a large number of contacts within the actual photographic segment and I know of only one who works on a Mac, the rest use PCs or laptops of various makes, sizes and specifications.

Time will tell if Photoshop maintains the preeminent position it has hitherto been reputed to enjoy. How many self-employed photographers or small photographic businesses will or can be bothered to stick with it when the only option is to rent it on a monthly basis, rather than buy it outright? It seems to be a con to me and there are plenty of alternative options which will achieve the same end result, and that is what we are all paying for in the final analysis.

Regards.

Phil.

[tugdriver]

As I am reasonably new to photography, I am finding it difficult to part with a huge amount of money to purchase photoshop and I was wondeirng if anybody has any ideas that I can get around it. Any much cheaper of even free softwares that are just of good, or even places to get photoshop much cheaper?
Any advice?
Beth.

Hi used picasa before not great it will convert your raw files to jpeg without warning
Google may have sorted this. I used it a year ago
Regards
Ray

[tugdriver]

As I am reasonably new to photography, I am finding it difficult to part with a huge amount of money to purchase photoshop and I was wondeirng if anybody has any ideas that I can get around it. Any much cheaper of even free softwares that are just of good, or even places to get photoshop much cheaper?
Any advice?
Beth.

Hi used picasa before not great it will convert your raw files to jpeg without warning
Google may have sorted this. I used it a year ago
Regards
Ray

By the way PS elements is about cheapest all rounder and very good (around £60)
But can be found cheaper on ebay etc.
Raw image software bundled with camera is pretty good to start with but you do need something a little better to edit with after you convert raw file
I use light room and cs6

[Chastom]

As I am reasonably new to photography, I am finding it difficult to part with a huge amount of money to purchase photoshop and I was wondeirng if anybody has any ideas that I can get around it. Any much cheaper of even free softwares that are just of good, or even places to get photoshop much cheaper?
Any advice?
Beth.

[Chastom]

Hi Beth

The best photo editing software for you in my opinion is Adobe Photoshop Elements, it will do everything you want and more and is very easy to get to grips with. It currently retails for about £69 but you can get it for considerably less, for example if you go to the Camera World website http://www.cameraworld.co.uk/adobe-photo...lements-12, you can buy it for £49.

Picasa is free but very limited.

Gimp is also free, is very comprehensive but also has a long and difficult learning curve. It costs you nothing to try and it may just click with you.

Serif Photo plus is about the same price as Elements and just as easy to come to terms with, but you will be bombarded with telephone calls from serif to buy other products.

I've tried them all - including the full Photoshop - but I still stick with Elements. It beats all the others by a long way.

[bethanhearne81]

Thank you everyone for your replies!
Beth.

[Wall-E]

Hi used picasa before not great it will convert your raw files to jpeg without warning
Google may have sorted this. I used it a year ago
Regards
Ray

What do you mean 'without warning'???

ANY software HAS to do rendering/conversion of RAW files, as they are not viewable directly.
RAW files are useless outside PP software. You MUST convert it to something else,(e.g., TIFF, JPEG, PNG, GIF) for printing, web viewing....

Google decided not to put anything other than jpg export, as 95+% of the population doesn't know/see anything else.

Picasa is GREAT and FREE.

[Wall-E]

I must admit that I find it vaguely offensive when without exception ALL photographic magazines publish articles on how to manipulate images in PHOTOSHOP and totally disregard the fact that a great many people, in fact it might even be a majority of image manipulation software users, are using anything BUT Photoshop itself. Just because Photoshop may be the industry standard in graphic design studios, does not mean that it represents a majority of usage by the majority of 'photographers'. In pretty much the same way that Apple Mac and its derivatives are or have been regarded as the pre-eminent platform for image manipulation, when yet again this only applies to the graphic design studio segment of the market. Like many others I have a large number of contacts within the actual photographic segment and I know of only one who works on a Mac, the rest use PCs or laptops of various makes, sizes and specifications.

Time will tell if Photoshop maintains the preeminent position it has hitherto been reputed to enjoy. How many self-employed photographers or small photographic businesses will or can be bothered to stick with it when the only option is to rent it on a monthly basis, rather than buy it outright? It seems to be a con to me and there are plenty of alternative options which will achieve the same end result, and that is what we are all paying for in the final analysis.

Regards.

Phil.

Well, Phil, the magazines look at who actually has money to spend on advertisers stuff, and caters to them.
That's professional PS/LR users.
Sorry, but people who use use Gimp, PaintShop, PS Elements, etc., simply don't have the same disposable income, and can't write their purchases off as a business expense.
So, you *may* be right that the majority of 'photographers' don't use Adobe, but I'll lay odds it's got the greatest market share of any of them, and is definitely the overwhelming choice of working pros.

And as to cost. Right now, it's $10/mo for PSCC and LightRoom. 2 Starbucks. That's $120/year. If that's too expensive for a small photographic business, then they're just about to go under anyway.

It isn't 'reputed' it's a fact. The latest figures I could find were for 2009, and Adobe had 21% of all creative software sales.

The subscription model is being tried because PhotoShop is THE MOST pirated software in the world.
And there is plenty of other professional software that's by subscription, like QuickBooks or PeachTree.

[Phil J]

I must admit that I find it vaguely offensive when without exception ALL photographic magazines publish articles on how to manipulate images in PHOTOSHOP and totally disregard the fact that a great many people, in fact it might even be a majority of image manipulation software users, are using anything BUT Photoshop itself. Just because Photoshop may be the industry standard in graphic design studios, does not mean that it represents a majority of usage by the majority of 'photographers'. In pretty much the same way that Apple Mac and its derivatives are or have been regarded as the pre-eminent platform for image manipulation, when yet again this only applies to the graphic design studio segment of the market. Like many others I have a large number of contacts within the actual photographic segment and I know of only one who works on a Mac, the rest use PCs or laptops of various makes, sizes and specifications.

Time will tell if Photoshop maintains the preeminent position it has hitherto been reputed to enjoy. How many self-employed photographers or small photographic businesses will or can be bothered to stick with it when the only option is to rent it on a monthly basis, rather than buy it outright? It seems to be a con to me and there are plenty of alternative options which will achieve the same end result, and that is what we are all paying for in the final analysis.

Regards.

Phil.

Well, Phil, the magazines look at who actually has money to spend on advertisers stuff, and caters to them.
That's professional PS/LR users.
Sorry, but people who use use Gimp, PaintShop, PS Elements, etc., simply don't have the same disposable income, and can't write their purchases off as a business expense.
So, you *may* be right that the majority of 'photographers' don't use Adobe, but I'll lay odds it's got the greatest market share of any of them, and is definitely the overwhelming choice of working pros.

And as to cost. Right now, it's $10/mo for PSCC and LightRoom. 2 Starbucks. That's $120/year. If that's too expensive for a small photographic business, then they're just about to go under anyway.

It isn't 'reputed' it's a fact. The latest figures I could find were for 2009, and Adobe had 21% of all creative software sales.

[b]The subscription model is being tried because PhotoShop is THE MOST pirated software in the world[/b].
And there is plenty of other professional software that's by subscription, like QuickBooks or PeachTree.

Hi Wall-E,

That's $120 for something which you'll never OWN. Seems daft to me, but maybe it's just me?

Yes adobe had 21% of creative software sales. Which means that it isn't used by 79% of purchasers, so it's hardly in a majority position, is it? What it really means is that it is dominant in 'one market segment' which is what I said originally. However it does run in accordance with 'Pareto's Law'. It's like saying that BMW have 21% of a given market segment, but in the future you'll only be able to rent a BMW not buy one. As I said above, "that's seems daft to me". Oh and I'm someone who spent 27 years in a Marketing and Sales environment in a variety of positions and in more than one marketplace.

Regards.

Phil.

[Wall-E]

I must admit that I find it vaguely offensive when without exception ALL photographic magazines publish articles on how to manipulate images in PHOTOSHOP and totally disregard the fact that a great many people, in fact it might even be a majority of image manipulation software users, are using anything BUT Photoshop itself. Just because Photoshop may be the industry standard in graphic design studios, does not mean that it represents a majority of usage by the majority of 'photographers'. In pretty much the same way that Apple Mac and its derivatives are or have been regarded as the pre-eminent platform for image manipulation, when yet again this only applies to the graphic design studio segment of the market. Like many others I have a large number of contacts within the actual photographic segment and I know of only one who works on a Mac, the rest use PCs or laptops of various makes, sizes and specifications.

Time will tell if Photoshop maintains the preeminent position it has hitherto been reputed to enjoy. How many self-employed photographers or small photographic businesses will or can be bothered to stick with it when the only option is to rent it on a monthly basis, rather than buy it outright? It seems to be a con to me and there are plenty of alternative options which will achieve the same end result, and that is what we are all paying for in the final analysis.

Regards.

Phil.

Well, Phil, the magazines look at who actually has money to spend on advertisers stuff, and caters to them.
That's professional PS/LR users.
Sorry, but people who use use Gimp, PaintShop, PS Elements, etc., simply don't have the same disposable income, and can't write their purchases off as a business expense.
So, you *may* be right that the majority of 'photographers' don't use Adobe, but I'll lay odds it's got the greatest market share of any of them, and is definitely the overwhelming choice of working pros.

And as to cost. Right now, it's $10/mo for PSCC and LightRoom. 2 Starbucks. That's $120/year. If that's too expensive for a small photographic business, then they're just about to go under anyway.

It isn't 'reputed' it's a fact. The latest figures I could find were for 2009, and Adobe had 21% of all creative software sales.

The subscription model is being tried because PhotoShop is THE MOST pirated software in the world.
And there is plenty of other professional software that's by subscription, like QuickBooks or PeachTree.

Hi Wall-E,

That's $120 for something which you'll never OWN. Seems daft to me, but maybe it's just me?

Yes adobe had 21% of creative software sales. Which means that it isn't used by 79% of purchasers, so it's hardly in a majority position, is it? What it really means is that it is dominant in 'one market segment' which is what I said originally. However it does run in accordance with 'Pareto's Law'. It's like saying that BMW have 21% of a given market segment, but in the future you'll only be able to rent a BMW not buy one. As I said above, "that's seems daft to me". Oh and I'm someone who spent 27 years in a Marketing and Sales environment in a variety of positions and in more than one marketplace.

Regards.

Phil.

My point was, that, at 21%, they had/have the largest percentage of the market of any single company. And I'll lay odds the second is Corel with Painter.

If you don't like their marketing model, you can vote against it with your wallet by not purchasing a subscription. For somebody who makes money doing this, I see it as a real bargain. I have the latest version at all times. It would take me 6 years, using the exact same software, with no upgrades, to make it cost less than the subscription for that same period. I've already had an update since I subscribed in December.

I guess we can just agree to disagree.

[MrB]

....And as to cost. Right now, it's $10/mo for PSCC and LightRoom. 2 Starbucks. That's $120/year....

Although I'm not interested in using PhotoShop CS (as Paintshop Pro and Elements more than satisfy my needs in processing), I can see an interesting comparison here.

I like to have a Cappuccino, while I am out and about on my own or with friends, from a garden centre cafe or a pub or one of the high street coffee houses, almost every day. I also enjoy my photography hobby - both making and printing photos and regularly buying or exchanging photographic equipment. A quick calculation shows that, over a typical year, the cost of the coffees amounts to much more than I spend on photography, even including consumables like photo paper and ink cartridges.

In my case it seems very likely that this will always happen - I enjoy coffees and photography too much to change my ways. Nevertheless, perhaps it is an example to show that people don't always get things into perspective.

Philip

[shumicse]

You can get many free version of photo editing software by searching in Google.

[epicurus]

As I am reasonably new to photography, I am finding it difficult to part with a huge amount of money to purchase photoshop and I was wondeirng if anybody has any ideas that I can get around it. Any much cheaper of even free softwares that are just of good, or even places to get photoshop much cheaper?
Any advice?
Beth.

I use Photoshop CS6 and am not a professional. I also use Picasa3, which is great for free and if you don't need to do a lot to your photos. I taught my wife to use it for simple editing tasks, she's not dumb - just doesn't want to spend time learning a difficult program. I use it to upload my pics.
I also have Serif PhotoPlus x5 which cost me £8.29 (about $14) and it is good. The photo suite from Corel Draw is also good. As is Elements 10, which I also have. Inkscape you can download for free.
In the end you have to decide what you're willing to spend time learning, that's why I always come back to Photoshop. I still have the Elements 2 disc I started with. I know more of how to get the results I want with that than with the others

[RoadratNI]

As I am reasonably new to photography, I am finding it difficult to part with a huge amount of money to purchase photoshop and I was wondeirng if anybody has any ideas that I can get around it. Any much cheaper of even free softwares that are just of good, or even places to get photoshop much cheaper?
Any advice?
Beth.

You could look at Photoshop Elements 12. Easy to use as it has a quick fix mode, guided mode or expert mode. Doesn't cost too much but will do most of what you can achieve in the full blown Photoshop edition.
Also there is Lightroom. A bit more expensive but still a very good programme.
All the best
Victor