Canada Kicks Ass
photo editing

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Praxius @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 8:00 am

Well, as a pro graphic designer and photo editor, Photoshop is the better choice out of most of the options. Corel Draw or whatver is a real pain in the arse and I seem to need to do more work just to get what I want out of it.

Photoshops easy for me mainly because I went to college to learn it inside and out.

The main difficulty for most is learning the Layers. Once you figure out the layers and what you can do with them, pretty much everything else falls in place.

There are many free online tutorials out there and a quick goggle search will get you started on that. Just search for what you want, add photoshop to the end of it, and you should get some pretty clear tutorials.

Some here have been saying that the basic versions or the cheaper programs are the way to go and to each their own..... the problem I find occurs with that is once you figure out the things you want to do, that's it.... you have very little to expand from in those programs and thus, limit your abilities to do more and better and get stuck only knowing how to do the basics.

Maybe that's all one wants.... that's all my mom wanted, but I got her into Photoshop regardless. She liked the wide variety of things one could do and took a few after hour classes and read some books.... now she's making her own calendars, photos and opening up her own art gallery.

No college required.

If you buy the elements or other cheap program, when you want to expand your knowledge, you then have to dish out more money to get the big programs, costing you more.

Get ahold of any version of Photoshop.... 7, CS, CS2, CS3, CS4... everything from 7 up is pretty much the same thing, minus a few little trinkets here and there and the layouts changing a wee bit.

Once you have one version, you won't need to keep buying newer ones unless you're that much of a PS junkie that you want to have every new feature out there. Most of the new features are just simple programmed actions made into one tool to save time, but still possible to recreate without them.

   



Praxius @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 8:05 am

I'd also like to add that photoshop also has "Actions" and "Batch/Droplets" which come in handy when you want to apply a certain process to a large number of images.

Rather then having to manually do the exact same things to each photo out of say 100, you record an action, set it to a key, do it once, save.... and then just push that key once to have it apply each time.

If you want to do it faster to an entire folder, you use the droplets or batch and select the folder, and if you have no manual inputs like adjusting cropping to worry about, you can walk away and it'll do it all for you.

In the long run if one wants to go pro, it can save a lot of time and money.

   



stemmer @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 8:41 am

If you don't need all the features of Photoshop, Photoshop Elements may do...

Cosco carries Photoshop Elements ver 7 for $89.00...

   



newfette @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 8:59 am

plus 50 bucks for the costo card cause i dont have one... lol

   



stemmer @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 3:49 pm

Well...Futureshop sells Elements for $129.00

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/prodde ... atid=10694


Having said that... I have Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 & Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0... I personally find Paint Shop Pro to be superior and the app I most use... I also have Corel Painter IX.5 and nothing touches it for digital painting or photo art...

   



dino_bobba_renno @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 4:06 pm

Praxius Praxius:

Some here have been saying that the basic versions or the cheaper programs are the way to go and to each their own..... the problem I find occurs with that is once you figure out the things you want to do, that's it.... you have very little to expand from in those programs and thus, limit your abilities to do more and better and get stuck only knowing how to do the basics.


The one thing I find with the less expensive (but not necessarily inferior) programs is there's all ways one feature or another that's missing or isn't as good as the one found with another program. Drives me nuts, I'm constantly switching back and forth. I love photoshop (I have an older version) as it has everything you need and want but even after all these years I'm still trying to learn how to use it. Maybe one day I'll get off my duff and go take a course.

   



EyeBrock @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 4:12 pm

Like I posted already.
I try to take shots that don't need too much PP. I'll use a circular polarizer to get that look I like and drop the light down. I always shoot in RAW which means you can do a lot quickly in PP and I use PS Elements basically to bring the file sizes down for e-mail and maybe straighten the odd shot or lose a hydro line.

DPP for Canon users does the job for me. I prefer photography to digital art and too much pp is really digital art.

   



dino_bobba_renno @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 4:16 pm

EyeBrock EyeBrock:
Like I posted already.
I try to take shots that don't need too much PP. I'll use a circular polarizer to get that look I like and drop the light down. I always shoot in RAW which means you can do a lot quickly in PP and I use PS Elements basically to bring the file sizes down for e-mail and maybe straighten the odd shot or lose a hydro line.

DPP for Canon users does the job for me. I prefer photography to digital art and too much pp is really digital art.


To be honest I don't know tons about photography or using graphic suites to edit, I use to be a pretty active artist and I just liked some of the effects you could create with digital graphics like combining photos into your art. But like I said, I still haven't learned to use the program efficently enought to do much with it yet.

   



Praxius @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 4:48 pm

EyeBrock EyeBrock:
Like I posted already.
I try to take shots that don't need too much PP. I'll use a circular polarizer to get that look I like and drop the light down. I always shoot in RAW which means you can do a lot quickly in PP and I use PS Elements basically to bring the file sizes down for e-mail and maybe straighten the odd shot or lose a hydro line.

DPP for Canon users does the job for me. I prefer photography to digital art and too much pp is really digital art.


Well if you need to know anything in Photoshop, give me a shout. I spent a number of years doing thousands of grad photos, school photos, wedding photos, blah blah blah.... besides the sign company I work at now, most of everything I do in PS is hobby now.... the professional photography industry is a real cut throat business, esspecially when dealing with school contracts..... eck. Stress I didn't need.

And if I ever gotta retouch the pimples and frizzy hair of some other grade 12 grad photo again, I might puke.

   



EyeBrock @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:00 pm

Thanks prax, I'm not a pro, just an interest amateur who bought a load of camera gear bit by bit!

And personally, I think the zits should be left in!

   



Praxius @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:08 pm

EyeBrock EyeBrock:
Thanks prax, I'm not a pro, just an interest amateur who bought a load of camera gear bit by bit!

And personally, I think the zits should be left in!


Fair enough... but you'd be suprised how many want them removed, along with reduction of the lines under their eyes, stray hairs, so on.

It's not all that bad, but when you got an entire school of grads to do, followed by another and another, it get's really redundant.

Something to do with them paying for a professional photo so they expect everyting they can get done I guess, even if it does look fake.

The worst I always found where the candid wedding photos of friends/family. One of the family members was on a bike with their husband for a pose and she wanted us to make her look thinner.

:roll:

I already tried to explain to them that it's virtually impossible to do and even if I could do it, it'd be very noticable that the photo was altered.....

I was going to open my mouth and say that if she wants to look thinner in a photo, lose some weight, or accept who you are..... but I gotta keep up my nice guy exterior.

I blame CSI for making people think anything is possible.

   



dino_bobba_renno @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:11 pm

Personally I like to photoshop the bulge in my pants to make it look bigger, saves on socks.

*Ps, what happened to the other avatar, I kind of liked it.

   



newfette @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:17 pm

dino_bobba_renno dino_bobba_renno:
Personally I like to photoshop the bulge in my pants to make it look bigger, saves on socks.

*Ps, what happened to the other avatar, I kind of liked it.



oh dino, always the gentleman.. and i liked the other avi too

   



Praxius @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:25 pm

dino_bobba_renno dino_bobba_renno:
Personally I like to photoshop the bulge in my pants to make it look bigger, saves on socks.

*Ps, what happened to the other avatar, I kind of liked it.


Oh, I tend to switch it up from time to time depending on my mood.... I've got a giant folder of avatars I whipped up over the years. Normally I'll stick to one for a few weeks or a month, but I'm a visual person and need to keep it fresh.

But since I'm new here, I figured I'd use Julian to represent the East Coast, yo!

Serj Tankian is quite the character with his expressions among other things, but I've also been using it for a while before I came here too.

   



EyeBrock @ Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:30 pm

Praxius Praxius:
EyeBrock EyeBrock:
Thanks prax, I'm not a pro, just an interest amateur who bought a load of camera gear bit by bit!

And personally, I think the zits should be left in!


Fair enough... but you'd be suprised how many want them removed, along with reduction of the lines under their eyes, stray hairs, so on.

It's not all that bad, but when you got an entire school of grads to do, followed by another and another, it get's really redundant.

Something to do with them paying for a professional photo so they expect everyting they can get done I guess, even if it does look fake.

The worst I always found where the candid wedding photos of friends/family. One of the family members was on a bike with their husband for a pose and she wanted us to make her look thinner.

:roll:

I already tried to explain to them that it's virtually impossible to do and even if I could do it, it'd be very noticable that the photo was altered.....

I was going to open my mouth and say that if she wants to look thinner in a photo, lose some weight, or accept who you are..... but I gotta keep up my nice guy exterior.

I blame CSI for making people think anything is possible.


I've seen a few 'overshopped' wedding photos, heads added in, wrinkles out, teeth whitened etc.
The customers seem happy with it but I reckon in time to come it will look like those old movies when the stars were in cars or boats with a moving film behind them trying to simulate them actually being in a car/boat. As in cheesy.

   



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