How good is Adobe software?

Everyone seens to think taking a picture in RAW and pp with Adobe is a must. I actually find that shooting in Jpeg fine with large (3872x2592) setting on the Nikon D200 uses the whole 10 meg pix available and produces just as good a picture. The imaging suite I use gives almost as much control over the editing as Adobe but far easier to use and understand.

I do admit that this program is a windows based one and came out before Vista so don't know if it would work on that format.

For those interested it is Microsft Digital imaging Suite 2006

Although now out of production I bought mine from Italy and it is an English version for only £25 including p/p. Having just looked on ebay that particular source seems to have sold out but can still be obtained elsewhere.

Bit of a long shot but if any member wants to download my copy and lives near the Walsall area of the West Midlands they are most welcome to bring along their computer to put it on.

bazza

This is partially the old question of which is best, Raw or Jpeg. The answer is Raw but Jpeg is perfectly acceptable to most people.

For me I prefer Raw. Extra work I know but if I were ever luck enough to capture that image of a lifetime I would kick myself if I had it saved it as a Jpeg that had altered the original data and compressed the image. Give me the unadulterated raw data.

Is Adobe worth it? It all depends on how much control over the processing of your image you need. I doubt very much if I use 75% of the full power of CS3 but I do use certain features that are not available in other packages ie colour range & selective colour.

However, I do not use CS3 anywhere near as much as I used to because I find Lightroom2 for most of my work. It's a great program.

Steve

My new camera will take Jpeg + RAW at the press of a button so would it be best for me to use this for the shots I think will be special ones, or should I use it all the time?

At the moment, at say dog shows, I take so many shots I use Jpeg as it would take far too long to process all the shots should I take them in RAW as this is a situation where a half reasonable shot is better than none. These are memory or souvenirs shots not intended to be a piece of art.

So IMO neither is best it is a case of using the tools one has to suit the purpose in hand.

There was an article in one of the magazines, AP I think last week Raw vs. Jpeg. Raw is better and remains better as a working tool but as you say for the majority of people they wouldn't know the difference. Of course everytime you save a Jpeg, alter it, save it again etc. you lose more and more quality (you could copy it first of course) but still no getting away from the proven fact Raw is better. A good and reasonable priced alternative to PP is of course the cheaper Elements and Paint Shop Pro. Lost track of the latter, it was taken over from JASC (new name escapes me) but I know that company usually ruins most things. Even an old version of PS Pro like 9 I still use.

Snapper, are the dog shows you photograph indoors. If yes, and I was in your position, I would definitely use raw because one of the weak points of today's DSLR's is their interpretation of white balance.

In raw you can decide on the white balance at developing stage rather than have it fixed as it is with a jpeg. If the camera gets it wrong with a jpeg you're stumped or have to edit it which will result in degradation of the image.

At field trials I will take anything upwards of 400 images in raw and I do not have to process all of them as some are out of focus, missed the critical moment, camera shake etc. and therefore only process the real keepers.

Steve

I love Photo shop it is a wonderful tool, you are only limited by your imagination. Elements is even easier to use, and is fantastic, Bazza all editing suites take time and practice, but once you get the hang of it , it's quite straightforward to use.

I agree about shooting in RAW, you get the that "photo of a lifetime" and you will be gutted if it isn't in RAW.

As already stated by a few I shoot all images in Raw + jpeg now.

In the past I have taken some good images that I really like in jpeg at say 4mb but they are not good enough for commercial applications, where as I now know I can create a Tiff image from the Raw file at 38Mb which is commercial quality.

Memory cards are cheap so I will now always shoot raw + jpeg and look at the jpegs and filter out the dross before touching raws. Also I now file the raw files with the 'good' jpegs but I dont necessary process all of them. But If I need to I have them.

I recently took a series of photos for a landscape course for a panoramic HDR photo.
It was quick and easy to arrange the 15 jpeg images in HDR software to let me know if it worked. Once I saw the result it was worth me spending the time going through the longer process with raw files.



In my mind I think of it like saving space on a memory card by lowering the quality of a point and shoot 'because its only a kids birthday party' or similar. Then it is sods law you take the best picture of your niece/nephew or other and realise later its not good enough to use for anything other than just a very small print. Where as you would have loved to do a full size large framed print. Only recently I was asked to take some pictures at a family event and given a camera that some one had downgraded in this way. But I didnt know until later when I saw the lovely Thumbnail pictures.

Never miss another perfect shot

Sorry I will stop wafling now

Just wanted to say, that is a brilliant Panorama, really nice.

You will find many Nikonites swear by Nikons own captureNX software - in fact in my own tests I found it to be considerably better at working 'with' my nikons than Adobe software. That's for editing RAW files.

For everyday use a free editor such as GIMP.org is more than enough - I use basics such as level adjustments, crop, and sometimes the clone tool in 99% of my photos. I just don't want to spend the time making huge edits to my photos.

the PS family are very powerful tools in fiddling with photo's, and at the end of the day the pic that comes out of the digital camera is no different than a negative, it needs processing to get the best from it.

That processing should be done in camera on the camera's hardware to begin with in my opinion, in that I mean that I shoot jpeg. If you shoot RAW I take it that you didn't change any of the camera settings like saturation, sharpening, noise reduction and other such tweaks cause if you did you wasted your time as these aren't applied to your RAW image.

The idea that RAW will give you a better shot is a fallacy, there is no sense spending a fortune on a camera and then not using all that technology in the camera that Nikon or Canon spent millions on developing which you do if you shoot RAW.

As for the perceived loss of quality in shooting jpeg, who here makes constant edits to a pic and not save it as a psd in the meantime, therefore no loss of info from the. To get a noticeable loss of quality you would have to open and fiddle with a jpeg many many times and saving it back as a jpeg before any loss of quality would be visible. Which no one is gonna do.

As for the choice of software, I don't think there is much difference from GIMP to PS, and there is no need for 90% of photographers to have CS3, as Elements will do everything you require. Indeed only pro's doing graphic design work and those printing CMYK really need full PS.