Peter Lewin
25-Sep-2012, 14:34
Apologies in advance for another beginner's question. I currently own an Epson 4990 which I bought 5 years ago but used rarely, as well as Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 which came bundled with it. However I now have rekindled enthusiasm for getting into digital workflow, scanning my 4x5 negatives and ultimately learning how to print (I'm a decent wet darkroom printer, but guess its time to learn new tricks; before buying a photo-grade printer I'd like at least to be able to upload images to the forum). In the interim I upgraded my iMac to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.8) and 3 mb of RAM.
So today I downloaded the newest Epson drivers for the scanner, scanned a couple of new negs, and discovered that while I could do initial scans using the Epson Scan application, I couldn't open Elements any more. Presumably that is because I have a very old version of Elements and a relatively up-to-date OS. So now to my question: should I simply upgrade my copy of Elements (an $80 proposition), should I rather jump whole-hog into Photoshop (~$650 or so), or is there a better software package if all I want to do is work with black & white negatives (since Photoshop contains so many other features which I won't use)? Thanks for your advice.
So today I downloaded the newest Epson drivers for the scanner, scanned a couple of new negs, and discovered that while I could do initial scans using the Epson Scan application, I couldn't open Elements any more. Presumably that is because I have a very old version of Elements and a relatively up-to-date OS. So now to my question: should I simply upgrade my copy of Elements (an $80 proposition), should I rather jump whole-hog into Photoshop (~$650 or so), or is there a better software package if all I want to do is work with black & white negatives (since Photoshop contains so many other features which I won't use)? Thanks for your advice.