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What photo editing software is best

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Chris34

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Feb 3, 2009
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Hi all,

I need some photo editing software for my product photo's. I need to be able to put the object being photo'd onto a white background and it would be helpful to have some sort of colour tone adjustment. Can anyone recommend any software for doing this that is relatively easy to use?

Cheers,


Chris.
 
I use Photoshop - but if you needs are modest, try Google Picasa 3.6 - it's free and is pretty useful. It can do all the usual things people need, and the interface is rather simple.

For free - worth a go. Just google it - it isn't even that large a file.
P
 
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Thank you for the replies it is much appreciated. I've just tried out Gimp and it's amazing. Without any prior knowledge of photo editing I have almost got the perfect product picture without even reading any instructions. I'm well impressed, firstly because it's free and secondly because it's actually really good from what I have seen so far.

Now I think I'll have a read of some tutorials and see what this baby can really do : )




Chris.
 
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Photoshop is by far the best on the market,
it can also be free if you know how to use a torrent :)

But don't do that because it's illegal and wrong and you will go to hell and burn for an eternity unless jesus forgives your soul lol ;):p:rolleyes::D
 
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Photoshop or Fireworks will do the job for you. I personally prefer Fireworks. For some reason i find Photoshop annoying to use in comparison. Go to Adobe's website and take a look. I believe they are just about to release a new version aswell.
 
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If you don't want to buy the full fledged Photoshop, you could buy Photoshop elements for a fraction of the price :)
 
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matth said:
If you don't want to buy the full fledged Photoshop, you could buy Photoshop elements for a fraction of the price :)
Click to expand...

If you do some research you might be able to find PS Elements for free. Some of the mags out there give you older version of elements on a cd with the magazine.
 
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I prefer Fireworks to PS becuase it works so well with dreamweaver, however the number of features and functions in PS is far superior to fireworks, and the back up and support for PS is massive, it can be hard to find you tube tutorials, or even written tutorials for Fireworks your doing well.

Personally I think fireworks will be phased out in the next few years.

I don't like GIMP it's to simple after using Fireworks.
 
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TotallySport said:
I prefer Fireworks to PS becuase it works so well with dreamweaver, however the number of features and functions in PS is far superior to fireworks, and the back up and support for PS is massive, it can be hard to find you tube tutorials, or even written tutorials for Fireworks your doing well.

Personally I think fireworks will be phased out in the next few years.

I don't like GIMP it's to simple after using Fireworks.
Click to expand...

Why do you think Fireworks will be phased out? Have you heard anything? I hope not I've loved using it since the Macromedia days. I suppose since Macromedia was bought out by Adobe there are two bits of software that essentially do the same thing. Photoshop has more features though and is industry standard.

I've heard good and bad about the Gimp the best plus being that it's free. I might finally get round to installing Ubuntu on a laptop again someday.
 
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No i haven't heard anything just my opinion, but I don't see Adobe support all the different art packages and there baby is PS, and looking at the suits they sell, fireworks doesn't feature very highly.
 
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Never heard of anyone using fireworks for photo editing though, as was the OPs question.

GIMP in my opinion suffers the same problems as many opensource things in that it is powerful and well programmed but has poor usability. There is an alternate UI for it that makes it closer to Photoshop in look and usablility which used to be good but last time I looked at it a while back it had fallen behind the development of GIMP itself.

I can see the arguements that Fireworks is redundant in the stable of programmes that Adobe produce but it has a number of seemingly duplicated applications so they may be comfortable having the slightly different focuses within their portfolio
 
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I use Gimp - well, I suspect a mere fraction of its ability!

Its very powereful and free, but to someone with no picture editing experience (as I was) it was not simple and intuiative.

However, I've now learnt how to remove backgrounds and do some other whizzy things with it and I'm pleased with it.

You don't need linux to run it - I use it on a Vista machine, and the price is right!

Jeff
 
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I'm a fireworks man. The reason people use fireworks is because it's designed for web use.

The fireworks and photoshop optimising engines are different.

Fireworks is better with filesizes. Photoshop is better with detail.

benjamin_c said:
Photoshop is by far the best on the market,
it can also be free if you know how to use a torrent :)

But don't do that because it's illegal and wrong and you will go to hell and burn for an eternity unless jesus forgives your soul lol ;):p:rolleyes::D
Click to expand...
Can someone delete this post and throw this idiot an infraction.
 
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If you have lots of photos to edit then I'd say Adobe Lightroom. It allows you to make most of teh changes you'd need to on photos, and a lot quicker than photoshop. If you really want to cut and paste and mess about with photos then photoshop is the one, although I'm sure corel have a similarly powerful programs.
 
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Thank you for all your comments and opinions it is very much appreciated. I have been a bit too busy to have a look at editing in last day or so but I will have a look at the trail version of Photoshop over the next few days.

One thing that was essential for me was being able to have a clear line between the edge of the object and the white back ground and GIMP allows me to do this in a more than satisfactory manner. I will be testing Photoshop to see if it's easier and faster to complete the same task but at the moment I must say that just for getting the object onto a white background then GIMP seem's to be an excellent tool for doing the job.


Thanks everyone,


Chris.
 
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Going back to the original question... you were looking for the best solution for cutting out products from their backgrounds. While this can be greatly eased by correct shooting/lighting/backgrounds, I have found onOne Mask Pro (photoshop plugin) to be a real time saver. I used to do a lot of product photography, and it would have taken me much longer without it.

It may be overkill if you are just doing a few dozen images, but thought it was worth a mention.
 
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paintshop pro used to be the best and a few others before adobe bought them out and took them off the market or relabelled them. Personally I think there should be laws against buying out competition solely to remove them from the market. Anyway that's a different matter.

GIMP or Paint.net for freeware.
 
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I use PS and fireworks and wouldn't go anywhere else, you can pick up PS for less than £20 if you don't want all the gimmicks.

Photo Shop Elements 7 on Amazon marketplace is £17.xx and does more than I need, and I use PS a lot.

Gimp is great for making and editing basic web images, but for photo's I would get Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop.
 
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Photoshop is the best i've ever used. Lots of tutorials available on the web. You can do any kind of graphic work. Only your imagination will limit you.
 
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ACDsee 9 is for beginner photo editors.It is very easy to use. if you need something extra. then Use Corel Photo Paint and Adobe Photoshop.
 
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Faevilangel said:
you can pick up PS for less than £20 if you don't want all the gimmicks.
Click to expand...

Really? Where?

I have always been put off using Photoshop because of the huge price. I can see that being a worthwhile investment if you want to edit high resolution images for print but the smaller images for Web means this software is overkill. Paint Shop Pro, GIMP and other cheap packages do more than enough for web images.

However, at £20, Photoshop is worth trying!

Ian
 
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Ian, as per their post, they went on to qualify they were talking about a prior version of Photoshop Elements via Amazon.

Elements used to be a little poor in the fact it was too much of a watered down version of the main product however a large step forward was taken to give strong access to a lot of tools like curves in one version and since then Elements has been a real contender for even serious amatures
 
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abpublish said:
Really? Where?

I have always been put off using Photoshop because of the huge price. I can see that being a worthwhile investment if you want to edit high resolution images for print but the smaller images for Web means this software is overkill. Paint Shop Pro, GIMP and other cheap packages do more than enough for web images.

However, at £20, Photoshop is worth trying!

Ian
Click to expand...

it's not photoshop but photoshop elements, which is a watered down version of PS. It has a lot of tools that PS does.

I bought version 7 which is £17.99 + postage from here. It says used copy but mine was sealed with a unique serial #. It just has no instruction manuals. (It could be the OEM edition).
 
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Or, become a student and get the full version of Photoshop CS for around £100 - apparently, I'm not a student :(
 
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I think I've never realised before that Photoshop Elements was so powerful. At that price, it is definitely worth looking into.

What about vector graphics though? I know a few local web designers who use Photoshop (presumably full version as I assume Elements does not do this) to create logos and other graphics for clients. This confuses me as I thought Illustrator was better for vector graphics but again, poisonously expensive.

I've tried Inkscape before but I always seem to go back to Paint Shop Pro for vector graphics.
 
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I came across Photofiltre many moons ago and it is brilliant. Not as bulky as Photoshop or indeed Gimp and yet has a huge range of contrast/brightness controls - filters and special effects. You can even swap RGB channels with one click giving a completely different look.

For the job in qusetion. After adjusting the colour there is also one click transparency option so you can paste on any colour background and guess what. Photofiltre is free too.

Well worth a download. I gurantee for most touch ups you won't bother launching photoshop anymore.

Rob
 
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