If the cost is holding you back consider Corel's Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 -- on sale this week for $39.99 by download or free shipping. Usually $79.99 and the upgrade and educational prices are higher than this.
I wish I had learned Photoshop years ago, but PSP does everything I need, especially in conjunction with Lightroom.
PS rocks for those times when you want to get jiggy with an image. Lightroom does 90% of what I need in the newest version. If all you need is basic retouching PSP works great as well.
Here is a photoshop tip. Sign up for a local Junior College class for a semester of photography. My class was online and cost about 65.00. This allowed me to get the student discount for Adobe products. I think I got PS CS3 and LR for 360.00 total.
Plus the benefit is I picked up a lot of knowlegde from the class.
Many do not realize the alternatives are just as good as PS and pretty much always have been. People only look at what they read/hear about and never consider anything else.
cordellwillis wrote:
Many do not realize the alternatives are just as good as PS and pretty much always have been. People only look at what they read/hear about and never consider anything else.
+1 If you put in "almost" as good as PS. PSP has an easier learning curve and covers more than enough bases for many people. As with most programs, the most recent version is much more powerful than the early editions.
Free trial on LR2, and yes, much better than 1. I don't know how anyone could live without it. There's probably a free trial on PSP. I haven't used Photoshop in almost 10 years and didn't get into it and have never tried Elements, so I'm not sure how they compare.
Corel's Painter X will also be on sale Friday morning. It should be at a really good discount.
ContagiousIdea wrote:
Elements is not worth the cd it comes on
My 2c:
I use PS but mostly because I had to create original files but I played with PS Elements trial and I like it. It is a great software if you just want to do is edit photos. Full PS is such an overkill if you are just going to use it for adjusting color, cut/paste etc and not creating art from scratch... most cost effective (notice I didn't say the best) software combination for 99% of photographers would be LR + PSP, GIMP or some other low cost alternative to full PS for those times when you need to do a bit more with layers and filters.
I think I'll install PS Elements on my 5 year old's computer. He sometimes gets to my laptop and plays with PS but on his he only uses MS Paint and I think Elements is inexpensive enough and has some cool creative tools
I have a Mac program called Pixelmator which i find does about 90% of what i want. I do want photoshop having always had it in the past, but at the moment i figure that that money is better spent on things that will aid my photography more.
There's probably a free trial on PSP. I haven't used Photoshop in almost 10 years and didn't get into it and have never tried Elements, so I'm not sure how they compare. 