Photo Software - Which Do I Need For My Photo Editing Tasks? - Help!

Photo editing software or photo software allows you to create and modify bitmap graphics and photographic images. Photo programs can be used for tasks such as painting and drawing, colour correction, enhancement of photos, creating special effects, conversion of images from one type to another, adding text to graphics etc. Some of the most popular software tools available today include Irfan View, Photoshop elements, Photoshops' CS suites and Aperture for Apple Mac: as well as Gimp and Inkscape - open source alternatives.

IrfanView is a piece of photo software that lets you open and edit images. If offers an exhaustive list of advantages and features such as speed, a compact image viewer, being simple to use especially for beginners, support for many media formats including multimedia, multi-language support, thumbnail option, options for painting and very controllable slideshows. Moreover it is free for individual use and is very user-friendly in terms of the GUI it presents to the user.

The major disadvantage, is that it does not offer some of the very advanced imaging capabilities and also it is not available natively on the Mac. Among the photo programs, it is an excellent choice for people who need to work quickly, avoid a very steep learning curve and simply want to balance, crop and save an image for the next step in their work. It probably isn't a good choice for a professional photographer, except as a very quick form of software photo editing.

Photoshop Elements is an adaptation of Adobe Photoshop and is available for as low a price as USD $99. Nevertheless, it has a strong set of software tools. The user interface is simpler than Photoshop while retaining the core photo editing functions. Thus Photoshop Elements is like a scaled down version of PhotoShop. It focuses on digital photography and on an RGB workflow. Some of the more complex photo editing features such as Curves, Channel Mixer, and Color Balance have been disabled, making the GUI more manageable, with a friendlier learning curve. The major advantages of Photoshop Elements include: an easy GUI structure to navigate and that it is cheaper than Photoshop. The only disadvantage is that some of the higher-end features are removed.

Adobe Photoshop CS is a set of software programs for image editing that is considered to be the industry standard for graphics professionals. Although meant for professionals, it is also available for students at a fraction of the original cost. The main features of Photoshop as a photo editor, are the flexibilities it offers for media creation, editing and authoring. The file format is compatible with any of the individual programs that are available in the suite. As the de facto king of the photo programs, it has many tools for advanced photo editing, including a bewildering array of special effects services. The disadvantages of this suite of photo editing programs include: features you will never use; highly expensive and it takes massive processing power from the computer system.

Aperture is Apple Mac photo editing software. The Mac enthusiasts claim its advantages are; that it includes an all in one Inspector to consolidate the projects, adjustment panes, quick image search, accelerated performance, advanced photo editing capabilities such as superb color fidelity, etc. The disadvantage of Aperture is that it can be used only on Mac operating systems. Among the photographers that I know personally, this photo software is growing in stature amongst popular photo editing programs.

The Open Source movement is also muscling in on the act with Gimp (which is gaining recognition amongst photo editing programs) and Inkscape; (a vector drawing program) which is very good indeed for developing plans, maps and other graphics that need to be drawn. I haven't yet got to grips with Gimp as a photo editor, but I have used Inkscape regularly over the last year and it is a fully featured graphics software. I recommend that you give these new open source graphic softwares a good look before spending hundreds on Photoshop or Aperture photo software. In terms of value for money; like Irfan View, they are incomparable. Amonst the paid for photo editing programs, Photoshop Elements is going to be a more than adequate for anything that you need to do for the web unless you are going down the road of becoming career graphic designers. For these individuals and for professional photographers the photo programs of choice will almost certainly be Photoshop CS for PC based workers and Aperture if you are on the Mac platform.

Ray Cassidy,

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Top 5 Features of Photoshop

Photoshop is without a doubt, the best image editing software around, so much so that it is synonymous with image editing itself. It can be used to add any type of effect to an image and is the most commonly used software to design logos & banners. Below are some of the most versatile and helpful features that Photoshop offers:

 

1. Layers - Many a time, if you made a mistake while editing or creating an image, you have to do it all over again, but this feature of Photoshop allows you to separate the different elements of your file into separate digital "transparent sheets" so one element can be edited independently. The various kinds of layer in Photoshop are - image layer, layer mask, adjustment layer, type layer, vector layer, layer style and fill layer and you can manage all these in the layer pallet.

2. Smart Objects - Smart Objects are like vector image data, imported from another photoshop file that you can scale, rotate, skew and warp without affecting the quality of the data itself, thus enabling you to play with different scales and positions without loss of quality.

3. Feather - Feather is blurring the edges of images (specifically bitmap). This is done to camouflage the edges of another image placed in an image without it being noticed when you cut & paste a part of the image from one place to another. This makes it difficult for the viewer to determine whether the image is edited or is the original image.

4. Healing brush and Patch tool - These tools were introduced in version 7 and had made editing much easier. These two tools are mostly like the Clone tool (which was the choice in the earlier versions of photoshop) except that they clone only the texture of the source.

5. Color Management - Photoshop 5 came with this feature and it is considered as the most important feature in the history of photoshop. It introduced the concept of device-independent working spaces which became the foundation for color management inside Photoshop. Color Spaces varied earlier from one monitor to another but this problem was solved with the introduction of this feature. Now it is possible to use one's calibrated monitor as a soft proofing device, using Photoshop as the lynchpin in the color management process.

These are five of the most useful features that have made photoshop the best in the image editing field. Of course the vast array of the other features provided with the application is what makes it the most versatile image editing tool on the market.

Luqmaan Ameen is the main writer behind Computer Realm, a blog which focuses on computer tips and several other aspects on computers and the internet in general. Can't afford Photoshop? Looking for a suitable alternative? Visit http://www.computer-realm.net/photoshop-alternative/ for a free Photoshop alternative.

Differences Between Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign

Having worked for an Adobe Authorized Training Center for the last 10 years I often get asked from students what the difference is between between Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

Firstly, let me say that all three programs are in fact owned and developed by the same company, Adobe Systems, the World leader in Web development, graphic design and E-learning software. All three programs are also bundled together into Adobe's Creative Suite, which is a great and affordable way to purchase this software.

I think part of the confusion, is that certain tasks can be done in more than one of these programs. For example you can find vector-drawing tools available inside Photoshop and InDesign, even though Illustrator is the predominant vector drawing program. The key to getting the most out of these three programs is to understand what their key functions are and how they can be used together.

Okay so lets look at each program separately. We'll start with Adobe Photoshop, which is probably the best known out of the three. Photoshop is a professional image editing software primarily used for editing bitmap images and image manipulation. Bitmap images are images, which are defined by their pixel structure. In other words digital bitmaps can be broken down into millions of tiny pixels and each pixel has its own attributes. Bitmap images are sometimes also referred to as raster images.

The most common type of bitmap image is a photographic image. Whether shot on film and scanned into the computer or whether digitally shot, photos are made up of millions of tiny pixels. So simply put Photoshop is a tool used to edit photographic images. It also has the ability to do lots of other things but the core function of Photoshop is to edit Photographic images.

If you go down to your local newsagent and pick up any magazine, chances are very good that the images in that magazine would have been edited or altered using Photoshop. Sometimes the adjustments can be minor such as subtle lighting or sharpening adjustments, and other times they could be major like applying a filter or special effect. Photoshop is used for retouching - ever wonder why the models and movie stars never have any cellulite or a double chin - the answer is Photoshop. Often an image can comprise of a few different images with have been merged together to form a montage. This effect can also be created in Photoshop.

Adobe Illustrator on the other hand is a vector-drawing program. Vector images are the other main type of digital image. Unlike bitmaps, vectors are made up of a series of lines and shapes, which are defined as mathematical formulae. Vectors are very good for creating images, which contain large sections of the same color. So for example a navigation button on your web site, your company logo, or any non-photographic image would be better off created as a vector. Illustrator is the World's premiere vector drawing tool, so if you were tasked with creating any kind of 'flat' art, such as a corporate profile, including logos, sign work, letterheads etc, chances are you would use Adobe Illustrator.

Adobe InDesign is the newest out of the three programs and is a page layout or publishing program. InDesign is used for putting together stuff like corporate brochures, documents, magazines, newsletters or advertisements. InDesign's specialty is working with documents that contain a large amount of type or text.

Often designers will use all three programs on the same project. For example we recently created some new course outlines so we used Illustrator to create our logo and a few other vector graphics, we used Photoshop to apply a special shadow effect to some bitmap images, and finally we imported all those elements from Illustrator and Photoshop into InDesign where we added the copy and defined the layout.

Quality graphic design can make or break any company's image. Adobe Creative Suite which includes Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign plus a little training can give you the vital edge to succeeding in a very competitive world.

Billy Gee is the Director of Training for Training Connection http://www.trainingconnection.com

We specialize in providing certified Photoshop training classes, Illustrator training classes and InDesign courses in Chicago and Los Angeles.

Useful Photoshop Tricks for Editing and Image Fixing

Even though Photoshop is quite user-friendly and does not involve many technicalities, one can still encounter certain problems while editing or fixing an image using this software. Here are some Photoshop tricks to handle some common problems faced during image editing process:

Overexposed Images- A great shot can be reduced to just a flashy picture if the light exposure is not proper. Whether due to camera flash or harsh sunlight, overexposed images can be tough to fix. But with Photoshop this is possible:

Open the image in Photoshop and go to Adjustments. Here you will find various options, choose Shadows/Highlights, and your image will be fixed. The changes are immediately visible, but can be quite extreme. Keep adjusting the Amount slider and Tonal width slider until you find the right balance. You can change the default settings as per your preferences, to achieve desired results.

Andy Warhol Effect- Remember Andy Warhol, the famous painter and photographer who was famous for his unique style called 'Pop Art'. With simple Photoshop tricks, you can bring the Andy Warhol effect in your pictures. Here's how:

Choose an image or photograph and open it in Photoshop. The first step is to duplicate the background layer and save it. Now crop the picture to get an interesting composition and Desaturate the cropped image by pressing Ctrl + Shift +U. Apply the Cutout filter to the image layer, and adjust the levels. You need to adjust the sliders till you achieve 3 shades of grey, black and white. Now apply the cutout filter again and you are done.

Resizing - Reducing the size of an image can sometimes affect the clarity and make it seem blurred. When you learn Photoshop, you can easily resize images while keeping the quality intact. To make an image smaller, open the Image Size Menu> click on the resample image and choose the Bicubic sharper from the menu. Bicubic sharper ensures that the image doesn't blur.

Adjust the Number of History States - As you might already know, Photoshop provides you the option of undoing several steps as it saves multiple steps as 'history'. However, by default the numbers of steps that can be saved in history are set to a certain few. To increase this number, you can change the settings. You can add up to 1000 states levels.

Click on Edit > Preferences > Performance and change the 'history' states as per your needs. But you must know that having many history states, will take up much more space on your RAM and you will run out of memory very soon. You can also use the 'snapshots' feature to go back and forward during your image editing process.

There are many ways Photoshop can help you with your image fixing and editing endeavors. Through Photoshop tutorials and videos, you can learn many more tricks and techniques of this wonderful software and can work magic with your photographs.

About the Author

Rafin O'Hara is a professional graphic artist and designer. You can view more of Rafin's Photoshop Tutorials at http://www.photoshopwarrior.com

The Problems With Photoshop Actions For Wedding and Portrait Photographers

Photoshop opened up a whole world of possibilities for photographers and image editing experts by allowing them to develop automation within their work flow. No more so than in the areas of Portrait and Wedding Photography.

At the same time though, it created an unprecedented burden on many to learn this new technology and perform like a pro. The trouble has always been that Photoshop is vast in its possibilities, and the task of learning enough of its workings a huge undertaking. Often times, it has become too much for some, and they disappear back into their shells. At least for a while.

My personal experience of this, as a photographer is that I was young and excited and very determined, and years on, I am still learning. Through this I have learnt something about identifying the challenges of specific types of image production, and then how to discover satisfactory solutions to reproduce them easily.

When you look at a beautifully edited set of images from a professional photographer, you'll see that they have had a lot of image enhancements made to them. For most Photographers, this is the primary way to create a noticeable difference between what they offer clients and what the clients can do for themselves. It adds a distinctive value to their work that clients can appreciate and are happy to pay for.

This makes professional image enhancement a necessity for Photographers wanting a successful business rather than just a fanciful luxury.

The challenges with this for Photographers are manyfold. For example, using Photoshop for this process is a given fact. However learning Photoshop requires a long term commitment as it is such a vast piece of software. Once you have learnt the basics, how far should you go with your retouching? What level of editing do clients actually like the best? How much time should you spend on editing the images? How much should you charge? What extras should you charge for? What is now expected as a standard level? Just what are today's customers expectations?

Some of these questions you will be able to answer instinctively. Others will require time and the feedback of your paying clients.

For the majority of Photographers the toughest questions relate directly to the photo editing side of things. Fortunately we have Photoshop, and then perhaps even better, we have Photoshop Actions!

The development of time saving Actions in Photoshop opened up a new arena for photographers wishing to improve the look of their work and compete commercially. These Actions are incredibly useful in Wedding and Portrait Photography, where dozens of images need to be edited in a short amount of time.

Actions are small (usually) bits of software that tell Photoshop exactly what to do to an image. Each Action is named according to its function and they are activated by clicking an onscreen button. These actions and their buttons are listed in a palette (a movable panel) inside the Photoshop work area.

Actions are designed to perform repetitive tasks at the click of a button. The sort of tasks they cope with can be wide and varied. Typically though, they will do things like add soft focus to an image, sharpen an image, add warmth to the colours of an image, or perhaps even to resize an image.

To the portrait and wedding Photographer, this can be a godsend. For example, as a Wedding Photographer, you may have 150 images or more lined up, and they all need work doing to them. Lets say you want to sharpen these pictures, then increase the color saturation slightly and finally bring out detail in the midtones! Phew! Doing each one manually one after the other takes hours as anyone who has tried will tell you.

Photoshop Actions to the rescue! With these Actions, you open one image, press a 'Record Actions' button to then log the changes you are making. When you are happy with those changes, you then easily 'Batch Process' all the other images on Auto with those same changes while you go for a walk or have a cup of tea!

Naturally, there are many tips, tricks and techniques involved with all of this, but in reality, these Actions make it commercially viable to output superb images to all of your clients all of the time.

Unfortunately though, there is a problem with all of this. Regular Actions have their limitations. In spite of what I have said, to edit your images to a satisfactory standard can still take a huge amount of skill and time. Time is expensive, and when you have established the processes you like to use regularly for your own personal style, you will still (inevitably) end up bogged down in tedious repetitive tasks.

So what is the answer to all of this? It seems that a new developer has produced some highly sophisticated Photoshop Action sets that have just been made available. Thes go beyond our normal expectations of what Actions are capable of. Amongst other things, they can be adapted to your personal style of imagery. These Action sets can enhance your images almost on complete auto pilot and they work at blisteringly fast speeds too.

You can find out more about these actions on the developers site at PhotoDomination [http://www.Photodomination.com]. I understand that they can turn out work that is finished to an incredibly high standard with very little skilled effort from the operator. This means your learning curve is shortened as well as that of anybody else that you may want to train to help you with your work! Aah! It sounds like an image editors dream...

There are a number of before and after shots at this site PhotoDomination giving you an idea of what is possible...Good luck

Mike Eastman has been heavily involved with the support and training of Photoshop Users for over ten years.

Many people who have used his services see him as a creative expert and a leading authority on the use of

Photoshop. There is more at PhotoDomination. If you would like Access to a Free PRO Level Photoshop Action set then go here: 60sec EZ retouch Action Set [http://photodomination.com/image-editing-software/free-photoshop-actions-02.html]

Top 12 Image Editing Skills Every Photographer Should Know

Before you start editing, make sure that you have a good image work flow.  This means saving originals in a separate place to prevent you from damaging or destroying the original image.  And get familiar with your program's UNDO capability - usually the Ctrl-Z key is a shortcut to undo the most recent image change.  Don't forget SaveAs, which allows you to save a copy of the image with another name so you don't disturb the original.

Crop.  This tool allows you to remove some of the image.  Generally you shape a rectangle around the area you want to keep and the rest is removed.  The area inside the rectangle becomes your new image.  Related to this tool are the rotate and straighten tools.  Rotate allows you to rotate the image, and Straighten does a similar task, allowing you to specify a horizon line or reference point. I recommend to rotate first and then crop after you have the proper orientation.

Brightness and Contrast.  This tool lets you increase or decrease the relationship between brights and darks (contrast), and increase or decrease the overall brightness of the image.  Combinations of brightness and contrast settings can have very dramatic impact to your image, adding extra "punch" or softening the visual impact.  It can also add emphasis to sunsets and other scenic shots.  If your image appears flat or dull, this is a good tool to try.

Saturation.  This tool is used to increase the color of an image.  Used to excess, the result can be artificial, and skin tones can be made to look unnatural.  But for floral and outdoor images, this tool can be used to sweeten the color impact of an image.

Resize.  This tool is used to change the size and number of pixels, or image dots, in an image file.  When sending something to a website for instance, you may want to reduce the image size so that it does not take too long to load.  When sending an image to be printed on a large size, you may want to size it larger.  Many programs will try to fill in the missing spaces if you attempt to resize an image beyond its original pixel dimensions.  Called interpolation, this program can deliver mixed results if you are trying to increase the images size too far beyond its original dimensions.  Combined with Crop, this is a good way to preview and prepare an image to be printed in a specific paper size.

Color Temperature/Color Adjust.  This tool lets you adjust the image's color temperature.  If your camera's white balance was not matched up to the color temperature of the predominant light source, the resulting image can have a color cast that is undesirable.  Using this tool, you either choose a color neutral selection (white or grey) in the photo and let the tool shift the color balance to match, or you tweak some settings or sliders to make the image "warmer" or "cooler".  It's better to get it right in the camera, but this tool can help rescue photos that otherwise have improper color casts.

Curves and Levels.  These tools are a more sophisticated verion of the Brighness and Contrast tools.  Levels allows you to change the white, mid and black points of an image and it will shift the image accordingly.  It is useful in pushing darks darker, whites whiter, and adding some lightness to midtones.  It is useful to bring up skin tones on faces while keeping very bright elements unchanged.  Curves is even more flexible, where you can describe a very sophisticated transformation of the original image's characteristics.  Both of these tools can also be used to excess, and the result is often surreal or abnormal in appearance.

Clone/Rubber Stamp.  This tool lets you remove items from the image or otherwise retouch the image.  For example if you have a telephone pole in an otherwise perfect rural image, you can use this tool to duplicate the part of the picture next to the pole and paint over the pole with that section.  With some practice, you can edit out glare on glasses, braces, background objects and much more.  Related tools include Scratch Remover and Object Remover in some programs.

Eraser.  This tool lets you remove sections of an image.  This leaves behind a blank spot or hole.  It's useful to isolate an object to place on another image, for example, to cut out a person so you can drop them into a location that was not in the original image.  A variant of this tool is the Background Eraser.

Layers.  Learning to use layers opens up an entirely new world in editing.  Basically you create two or more overlays that can have varying amounts of transparency so that you create a new image combining parts of these layers.  You can specify how the layers interact with each other, so that one may enhance the color of another.  That feature is called the "blend mode".  You can also use layers to superimpose items on each other, for example to put your subject in a new location.

Sharpen.  This tool lets you increase the edge contrast of the image, which makes small features stand out more.  You will generally sharpen only as a last step after resizing, because sharpening emphasis will change with the image size.  You can selectively sharpen parts of the images, such as eyes, to draw attention to them.  You can also apply a sharpening to the overall image.  The Unsharp Mask will let you specify just how small and how much to apply the sharpening effect.

Channel Mixer.  This is a tool that allows you to change the amount of red, green and blue in the image.  But its real value is in being able to tailor a black and white conversion to include specific amounts of red, green and blue.  If you choose "monochrome" as the output, you can mix the red green and blue channels to bring out features that a straight black and white conversion will not be able to do.  The defaults include 33% each of red, blue and green.  Experiment with 80%/10%/10% of various modes and see how elements like bricks or blue sky or green leaves will change from dark to light in relation to other objects in the image.

1-Step Fix/Smart Fix.  This tool often combines much of the above tools into an easy to use dialog that will let you play with many things at once to improve an image.  Even if you use this tool most of the time, remember that the individual elements above can be utilized individually to create image enhancements that the simpler tools cannot provide.

Want to learn more?  Take a handful of images that you are not totally pleased with, and spend some time using each tool to see how you can expand your creative and editing skills to produce truly great works of photographic art!

John Huegel is a photographer in the Erie, Pennsylvania area who specializes in Seniors, Dance Studio, Families and other groups. He is active in many charitable and volunteer activities in the Erie area. His work can be seen at http://jhphotomusic.com