Thursday, June 11, 2009

PhotoShopping

What to use; what to buy? Those seem to be the circular questions I've toyed with over the past year or so. And so by default, I use Picasa, a free downloadable program. Great for me but I am ready to graduate. Girasoli's posting of a similar question got me to this conversation again.

Now, you can ask me any question you want about MSWorks - give me data and I'll give you a database - no problem I can have-at-it/construct - but I have this mental block with photo editing programs. Why? Not sure - could be that I once took a photog class where I was way out of my league with pros and a wonderfully gifted, student friendly pro teaching and he fielded questions about PhotoShop. It sounded dauntingly geekie for me a non-tech geek.

So, my questions are: Anyone have experience to know the capabilities of PH Elements as opposed to the more robust PH? Is it EASY TO USE?

Are there other programs out there that offer a diversity in processes of editing? The field is overwhelming to me so your personal experience with the pros and cons are welcomed.

Guess I should tell you what my primary objectives are for using this type of software: Cropping, highlighting, etc. all the basic stuff of editing images; I would like to go further into layering as I do scrapbooking and would probably be more likely to actually finish a project if I didn't have to lay out the two huge bins of materials (a money grabbing hobby for sure - but it does bring pleasure to see memoirs in this form).

So, I'd appreciate any advice. Keep snapping....

1 comment:

girasoli said...

I really like Photoshop Elements. I was fortunate to catch an online class (for free!) that demonstrated some of the features. It is a little complicated at first but there are lots of books and even some DVDs out there that help. I caught on pretty quickly although I don't know how to use all of the features. I have played around some and learned that way also. There are also lots of websites with lessons and examples.

I have never used the more expensive Photoshop but I have read that Elements can do most of what Photoshop can do. It definitely does layers (which is the most complicated feature).

By the way, someone (who might have either developed the program or works for the company) left a comment with a program that will work for my needs in case you are ever in need of an online editing program to resize photos.