Photo editing Software

[Scott Conners]

Aaron, you've gotten a lot of good advice so far. One thing that is CRITICAL if you need correct colors is that you use a single color of light when taking your pictures. The light that comes from a tungsten bulb is very different than the color that comes from the sunlight coming in the sliding glass window. This will make getting a true color across the whole subject nearly impossible. You need to pick a light source and stick with it - use only tungsten light, use only sunlight, or use only fluorescent light. You can use a large white paper/sheet/reflector to bounce light onto the dark side to use the natural light only.
Tungsten lights (standard light bulbs) run around 3000K or lower, where sunlight in a nice clear blue sky can run above 6000K. This means that areas lit by the sun will be much bluer and "colder" than the areas lit by the tungsten bulbs. This can cause one side of your subject to be proper color, while the other side is far too red or blue.

Almost all of my paying photography is product photography, and having correct colors is always an important concern. I generally shoot using flash, which is balanced by the manufacturers to match sunlight, but I often have to gel my flashes to match ambient light so I can maintain color balance.

As for software, I LOVE Adobe Lightroom 2, it has taken my photography to a whole new level.
Calibrating your monitor is also important if you want to be sure other web users are seeing the colors you are seeing, investing in a hardware calibrating system is well worth the expense. I use a Spyder 3 Pro myself and am very happy with it.

[Aaron Berk]

Well I researched Gimp and it's got to steep of a learning curve for me at this time. It's a bit more advanced than I'm looking for. I'm looking into Adobe elements now, appears more my speed.
I think allot of my problem is turning out to be my mixed/inadequate lighting. After looking into the spyder calibrating tools the price tag scared me off. I read into the manual for my camera and it's not to deep. If my camera starts bugging out on me I'll upgrade to something with features I can manipulate.
Thanks again for all the great input, I'm still working the issue
Blessed be
Aaron

[Colin Giersberg]

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is a $300 program. Amazon.com had it on sale a few days ago for $189.99, but that was only for one day, so I ordered a copy for myself.

You can download a 30 day trial version for free, and start playing around with various settings. One nice feature with Lightroom 2 is that it is a non-destructive program. Each picture that you import into it can be manipulated as much as you want, but the original photo is saved as is. The edited version becomes a new version of the original, only with the changes that you made.

I tried the trial version, and liked what I saw, but I just didn't have enough time to learn very much about it before the trial expired, but now that I have purchased the program, that is a non-issue.

You can also try to download Picasa 3, which is a Google program , and guess what, it's free. From what I have read, it is still one of the best photo editing programs on the market, and that most amateur's and some more serious photographers like it. I have it now, and it is not bad, but I wanted something that would do more than Picasa offers. My only beef with Picasa is how it organizes your photos. Whenever I want to upload a photo in an e-mail, or to a photography forum, I have a lot of hunting to do at times, but that could be my fault.

Picasa 3 also will open up RAW images now, so you have that option should you upgrade to a DSLR camera.

Regards, Colin

[Tom Henry]

I use Photoshop CS3 on a daily basis...didn't dive into CS4 yet...

[John Keeton]

Like Jim, I use Photoshop Elements, but I have never dealt with raw images. I understand from others that they have their own unique qualities that require a better understanding of editing programs.

[Jim Becker]

Colin, Lightroom is a really nice application...designed for photo pros. I've been considering getting a copy, too, as I'm starting to play around more with photos artistically, particularly for our equestrian stuff. Here's an example just out of Elements....

[Bill Huber]

A little more on Raw files.

This is a real basic drawing showing the basics of a raw file. (see attachment 1)

Some differences in raw files and jpg files.

Raw file are not compressed in most cameras, there are cameras that do compress raw data, but it is no difference then making a zip file. The data from the camera is not changed just compressed. The only thing this does is to make the raw file smaller but it does take more time to do it and there for writing from the time you shoot the image until its on the memory card will take a little longer.

Jpg files are compressed and data is removed from the image, so that image will never be just like it was from the camera again. This compression is not a big thing as far as image quality until you really compress the file. (see attachment 2)

White balance can not be changed in a jpg file, the tint and color temp can be changed but the white balance can not. This is some what like changing the white balance but it is different and will not have the same effect.

You can look at a raw image as a board you get, it is 4/4 thick and it is ruff sawed, right like it came for the mill. Now you run it thought the planer and it is now a different board and can never be the same one you bought. The camera saved the image as a jpg file.

Now lets say you plan the board down to 3/4, rip it down the middle and cut it in half. You have edited the jpg image and re-saved it.

Now if this had been a raw image (board) you could just start all over with the original board if you made a mistake.

If you want the best out of the camera and it will shoot Raw images that is going to be the best. I know many people myself included that once we started shooing raw we could never go back to jpg.

It is kind of like cutting dovetails, from what everyone has told me, if you start cutting them by hand you will never go back to a jig.

Attachment 1
http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber/image/41450063

Attachment 2
This file was saved with the quality set to 12.
The image is just over 500k. (In Photoshop basically no compression)
http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber/image/22907798

http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber/image/22907799
This file was saved with the quality set to 8.
The image is just over 130k.

http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber/image/22907800
This file was saved with the quality set to 5.
The image is just over 80k.

[Bill Huber]

Colin, Lightroom is a really nice application...designed for photo pros. I've been considering getting a copy, too, as I'm starting to play around more with photos artistically, particularly for our equestrian stuff. Here's an example just out of Elements....

Jim, if you want to done more effects you want to go to Photoshop, not Lightroom. Lightroom will do some but not a lot like you can with Photoshop.
You really can not do Masking and many other things in Lightroom. Lightroom is more of a cataloging and developing sofrware, in fact the main engine in Lightroom came from a program call Raw Shooter Pro that Adobe bought.

Look at this gallery, these were all done in Photoshop with a plug in and could not have been done in Lightroom.
http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber/buzz

[Glenn Clabo]

Jim...Read this before you take the plunge.
http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmed...ghtroom_1.html

[Bill Huber]

Jim...Read this before you take the plunge.
http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmed...ghtroom_1.html

I really don't think Jim needs Lightroom for what he wants to do. The write up is a little misleading in that they are 2 different type of programs.

Lightroom is for just adjusting the image and the basic editing. I can shoot a wedding and have 200 plus images ready to go in an hour. But I can not take out things that are in the image that I don't want there, for that I need Photoshop.

Photoshop will do the same thing but will also let you do cloning, masking, perspective adjustment and much much more.

You can in Photoshop do batch processing plus you can also write and record actions to do a lot of things really fast to a image.

[Brad Wood]

It is super easy to build a lightbox, and very cheap. make a 1x3 frame with a couple 1x3 slats across the top. Mount some porcelain light fixtures on the slats, wire them up in a string. Wrap the whole thing in sheets of white foamcore. The longer the foamcore, the more focused the light,... shorter, wider spread of light.
Then take some 1000H tracing paper (or thiner/thicker), put it across the light box to disfuse/soften the light.
Just go with a straight white light bulb and block all other light sources. This way you have a single light temp source. You can use pieces of foamcore to bounce some of the light to act as fill. You can even use other light sources as key light sources, etc... long as you use the same bulb.

Overall cost to for getting yourself a halfway decent way to light small table top stuff is going to be less than $50.00

[Bill Huber]

It is super easy to build a lightbox, and very cheap. make a 1x3 frame with a couple 1x3 slats across the top. Mount some porcelain light fixtures on the slats, wire them up in a string. Wrap the whole thing in sheets of white foamcore. The longer the foamcore, the more focused the light,... shorter, wider spread of light.
Then take some 1000H tracing paper (or thiner/thicker), put it across the light box to disfuse/soften the light.
Just go with a straight white light bulb and block all other light sources. This way you have a single light temp source. You can use pieces of foamcore to bounce some of the light to act as fill. You can even use other light sources as key light sources, etc... long as you use the same bulb.

Overall cost to for getting yourself a halfway decent way to light small table top stuff is going to be less than $50.00

I am not sure you are talking about the same thing we have been talking about Lightroom is a software program, not a light tent to shoot pictures in.
Here is my light tent, I get emails for all over the world about it.

http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber/light_box_light_tent

[Scott Shepherd]

Bill, I think he was referring to using a lightbox to control the variation in lighting that was mentioned, not talking about the software, but I could be mistaken.

As you can see, there are many opinions. Most of those opinions (mine included) have a price tag attached. Photoshop is the Holy Grail, but it's also the Holy Grail in pricing as well. Photoshop Elements is the stripped down, retail version. There are many options out there, some free, some expensive. Almost every one of them has a 30 day free trial. Give them a shot and find the one that suits you and your budget and you'll be happy.

[David G Baker]

I am using Adobe Photoshop 5.5 which is about 10 years old or older, it serves me well. Shop on that Internet auction site for an older version at a much cheaper price.

[Brad Wood]

Yes, I was speaking to lighting not software. As others have mentioned, having a signle light temp is part of the equation. the OP mentioned at some point he was considering getting a light package (I think), so I chimed in that a home made light package can be had for very cheap. You can't really light an entire room on the cheap, but you can do table top lighting for super cheap.

The OP also mentioned using household lighting and light from the window, which I can almost gaurantee are not the same temp.