Photo Editing Software Choices

[Don Wallace]

My needs are quite simple but I always have trouble. All I want to do is scan colour neg and pos, with very minimal manipulation, and print. The problem is always getting the print to match the screen. I have varying degrees of success.

With PS, you definitely get what you pay for, but it is made for graphic designers, definitely not photographers. For me, it would be like buying a moving van to go pick up some milk at the corner store. I have Elements and even that requires far too much time reading and buggering around with the computer. I need to know way more than should be necessary to get a decent colour print, and I would like to get something a lot more streamlined for my workflow (scan, print - pretty basic). Software designers seem to think that the more options any tool has, the happier everyone will be. If your stove came with that much over-information, we would all starve to death.

Any suggestions?

[paulr]

My needs are quite simple but I always have trouble. All I want to do is scan colour neg and pos, with very minimal manipulation, and print. The problem is always getting the print to match the screen. I have varying degrees of success.

those are simple needs, but sadly there's no simple solution. getting the print to match what you see on the screen is a whole avocation! and it's not possible to do perfectly; the goal is to get close enough that you only go through a few sheets of paper rather than a few dozen. It comes down to color management, and I'm afraid there are no quick solutions to that. you're going to have to do a bit of homework.

With PS, you definitely get what you pay for, but it is made for graphic designers, definitely not photographers. For me, it would be like buying a moving van to go pick up some milk at the corner store.

well, it is made for photographers. for graphic designers too ... and for web production people, and digital media artists, and scientists ...

think of it as a big shop full of tools. you're under no obligation to learn how to use all of them. it just takes a bit of guidance to figure out which ones you want to master. it's not like buying a moving van to pick up milk. it's more like having a fleet of vehicles, and you get to pick whichever one's best for the trip to the store. This may seem like overkill, but the truth is that none of the simpler alternatives has the basic power you need to make photographs look their best. people who say that a photographer doesn't need layers and channels have not learned the techniques that employ those features. ones you learn the techniques, there's no going back to a lower end program. you'll only get frustrated.

[Bob McCarthy]

I've been experimenting with the new Nikon editing software called Capture NX by NIK Multimedia. In a word amazing. It has the most powerful masking technology that alone makes it worth the price of admission. Printing facility, including soft proofing, is very capable.

It's not a raw converter, and handles tiffs and JPEGs quite well.

It's free for 30 days, and I'd suggest a photoshop class machine as well.

Bob