Editing Suites

Everywhere you look everyone refers to Adobe for editing, on here- magazines etc.

Surely there must be others, ok Nikon has the NX and Canon I presume has there own, but what about other 3rd party ones.

Adobe I find is extremely hard and complicated, even Adobe run courses to learn how to use their product which just goes to prove my point.

Bazza

There are others Bazza, I just think that Adobe is the most popular 1 (I have it too) I used to use Corel before but it got really expensive to upgrade.

Paint

All editing packages are 'hard' when you first get them. It's only when you start to understand some of the features and terminology that things start to make sense.

I used to use Paint Shop Pro 4 for editing (not photographs though, graphics as part of my work) Eventually going through the versions until v7.

When I started photography, I naturally used Paint Shop Pro to edit my photos, even though I got Adobe Elements in the box with my camera.

I installed Elements, but it looked way too complicated, and I did tend to shy away from it. I bought a really basic book on Elements, it showed really basic editing principles step by step. There are loads of books like this, I can't remember the name of the book because I have lent it to so many people that I don't even know where it is any more.

Suffice to say, I was up and running with Elements. However, Elements has certain tools missing that lots of guides talked about, Channel Mixer and Curves are just two of them. So I went on to Photoshop.

In reality, Photoshop is no harder to use than my old copy of Paint Shop Pro was. All it comes down to is that the tools I used in PSP are in a different place in Photoshop and have slightly different names.

Plus, there are a lot more tools in PS. I probably only use about 20% of PS now, it's a massive piece of software, but is no more complicated to use, if you are just using basic functions like Contrast/Colour/Crop etc than any other program out there.

Alan.

Bazza, it really isn't too hard, especially Elements, once you understand the location of the tools and their uses. I have self taught myself, just by messing around on it. I also own Paint Shop Pro 9 as paint shop was my first introduction to editing suites, and I think that is very easy and straightforward to use

Ask on here if you have any queries, I did when I was given a copy of Lightroom, a lot of help from KK and I love it it is a great tool.

I have a copy of Adobe Photoshop for photographers book, that I "borrowed" of a friend, it is great and easy to understand I think it is about four years old, it is by Martin Evening, and I can understand it
Also look on You tube for videos

I've been a Photoshop user since version 4 came out. It was $600. and seemed complicated but ultimately powerful. I upgraded all the way to version 7 which I still have. Since version 7 didn't have support for RAW files I decided to try out Elements 6.0. Instead of struggling with the learning curve to get up to speed I signed up for an online service at http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com. Their helpful videos & text lessons seem endless. They also mail you a periodical full of additional tips & lessons. There's a great support forum at http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/index.php where you can get all the help you may need. I love the Elements software so much I never use Photoshop anymore. The Elements Village and lesson site is all you'll ever need. Check out the Village & get a feel for what's available.

Powerful programs such as editing suites have a learning curve - that is to be expected.

Another popular yet free one is called www.gimp.org