Do you really NEED Photoshop?

[jantman]

I will admit that I've used GIMP on Linux, just to see what it's like. It was...interesting. I'm a big fan of Open-Source, so I enjoyed using it. However, under Windows or Mac, I wouldn't think of using anything other than full Photoshop, nor do I know anyone who does.

Then again, especially in my generation, where most photographers do digital, and we've all known our email address ad long as we've known our phone number, not many people pay for software.

[Robert Skeoch]

I just updated from photoshop 7 to CS. I use the full version for the automatic batch features and the expanded colour range.

[pico]

Photoshop has one thing that is very handy - the ability to read, manipulate, and write HUGE files (over 2gb). LF people might find it handy.

Otherwise some features missing from Elements include slices, nonsquare pixels, onscreen proofs, better color features, CMYK separations at the push of a button, layer comps, pan-stitiching. And others that I can't think of offhand.

Elements can use actions from Photoshop to greatly expand its usefullness. There's a book on it.

[Jim Becia]

"Remarkably no one needed it for the first 150 years of photography."

--Chad Jarvis, 2004-08-21 05:17:36

Same with horses, airplanes, computers, etc. We got along fine without them also for the first thousands of years. Photoshop and the above mentioned things just make it a bit easier for some of us.

[Larry Gebhardt]

Picture Window Pro from Digital Light and Color should also be mentioned as low cost but very capable alternative. I used PWP for several years before buying Photoshop for the ability to use plugins and layers. Those are the two major features that I see PWP as missing. In many ways I think it is actually superior to PS.

[CXC]

I use a wet darkroom exclusively, so no PhotoShop for me, ever. Apparently I am the last one.

I am, of course, a (rank) amateur.

[Michael Chmilar]

The Onion has a funny "In the News" headline this week:

Photoshop Actually Bought.

[George King]

I must not need PhotoShop. I've had it on my computer for at least five years and almost never even open the program.

But then I use digital only for listing items for sale on ebay, and posting a few other small jpeg files to the web.

Of course, I'm basically a dinosaur in that the newest camera I own (other than my coolpix) is 30 years old, and many of them are 50. In fact, my most recent camera purchase (last week) was a 1954 Rolleicord. Heck, I've never even owned (or even wanted) an SLR.

[Lars Åke Vinberg]

Color correction, dodge&burn, contrast masks, unsharp masks - yeah, I find PS useful. Layers, large files (I am currently working on a 7.5 GB file as I am writing this) would be missed with PS Elements.

[tim atherton]

Just take colour work for example.

In the full version of PS you can make the sort of local adjustments to colour/contrast/saturation/cast etc that were really previously only available in the wet darkroom to the B&W photographer (abviously not colour - but I think you know what I mean). These can easily be made as globally or as detailed as you want. But it requires the use of layers which most chapers versions don't have.

A simple example I was working on. A cityscape of an old bank building shot early in the morning. The building facade is in shadow and the morning light is behind the building. The range of brightness between the building front and the sky behind is about at the extremes of the colour material I was using.

You can increase the contrast of the scene and lighten the building front sufficiently to make it look good (to my eye) but by that point the sky is compeltley blown out. But by doing those adjustments to levels and curves in a series of layers, I can then go back with the paintbrush on those layers and very easily "burn" (actually erase the effect of the layers) to whatever degree I want around the building to add as much detail back in the sky as I want - all very easily. And I can do this kind of thing using either a huge brush for the whole sky, or a very small brush to bring back lost shadow detail in trees and foliage or whatever.

I shoot a lot on Astia - using these techniques I often get a much wider effective "range" than I have been used to with transparency film - I can get much more shadow and highlight detail in any one print than I ever got printed on Cibachromes for example

(Of course it works just as well in B&W - giving me infintiely more control over dodging/burning and contrast than I ever had in the darkroom).

I'm not trying to set up a digital vs trad workflow though - rather why the full version of PS allows you to do much much more than the basic versions.

The other thing is (yes you get big file sizes...) but you can do most of this in a 16bit version of the file in PS CS and thus you aren't throwing away information before you even start