OK, so we stay have a little way to go! I hope those of you not following the series can cope with this, but we’ll carry on for a while yet!
So far we have a number of things I think we could do.
Learning with Flickr
Flickr is not only a great place to archive your photos, it is a great place to learn. There are some great photographers using Flickr who post their shots into groups based around almost any subject you can think about. We” have a look at Flickr and see no only how we can learn, but how we can try things out and how we can get really useful feedback about our photographs.
Using Photoshop
I’m inclined to say, “go and buy a book”. But I think we can have a look at the range and potential of Photoshop — which then might inspire you to go and buy the book!
Storing and Cataloguing Digital Images
In all honesty I’m not that good at this, but I have created a simple ‘workflow’ that works for me. If I can do it anybody can do it. And I bet you can build a better system than me!
Is there anything else we should cover?
Is everyone else cool with this?
You didn’t think we’d let you off the hook that easily did you!?
“go and buy a bookâ€. Well I suppose I had that coming to me, but to be fair I have looked at the Adobe website which gives surprisingly little info (unless I’m getting lost on their very complicated site – they keep wanting me to buy “suites”) and tried an older version. To be honest I don’t even want to buy a book unless the idea of Photoshop is sold to me already.
As somebody who occasionally uses graphics software in my job I might be interested in buying Photoshop if it really does look that much better; but I think many of your readers will have found it hard to justify the cost of a DSLR in the first place, without now being faced with an even higher cost for software. Perhaps you’d also better write some stuff about the alternatives
Just joking of course, but in all seriousness, for us amatuer backpacking photographers where would you say money was best spent, Photoshop, or say a lens (or two) plus PaintShopPro or Gimp (both free, at least GIMP is and older versions of PSP are)? Is Photoshop essential in a professional environment because it gets results quicker than PSP or GIMP?
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I think your using a Mac aren’t you? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was better equiped out of the box to deal with cataloguing images than Windows is.
A pro friend advised some software some time ago, but I couldn’t justify the cost then. That was when I had hundreds of images. Now that I have thousands or tens of thousands of images I can begin to see his point. I’d be very interested to see how you cope.
“Is there anything else we should cover?
Is everyone else cool with this?”
No doubt something will crop up, but yes, it’s been a really interesting, thought provoking read. Thanks very much.
I was hoping you’d cover Photoshop in a little more detail, but as it’s such a potentially huge topic I thought you’d probably defer to the “buy a book” option. I’m pleased to be wrong!
I’ve looked at the Photoshop CS3 books on Amazon and there are too many
Knowing which one starts at the right level and goes to the right level is a big concern. I would be happier buying something if I had a small level of knowledge in the first place, so very much looking forward to that topic.
Image storage and filing systems are so personal that even if you had the best filing system in the world – it probably wouldn’t suit 80% of other folk. And I guess it also depends on the photo management system you use and how that system sucks the photo files off your memory card.
On another topic – thanks for pointing out PhotoBooks to me!! Wow! I just ordered one last night for the first time – they look great – can’t wait to see how it looks for real.
Thanks again Andy
Photoshop is a powerful tool with a steep learning curve and is the industry standard imaging application. I think the key to success is to work your way through the basics until you’re comfortable at that level before getting on to the more ambitious stuff. It’s often the case that different PS users will have different ways of achieving the same end result. There is a lot of imaging potential hidden behind a fairly innocuous looking interface.
A couple of useful books I have are ‘Adobe Photoshop for Photographers’ by Martin Evening which looks a little scary for absolute beginners but covers practically everything you’ll need to know. The other is ‘Photoshop Restoration and Retouching’ by Katrin Eismann. These two are my favourites.
Good recommendations Des. I’ll make sure they get a mention in the posts.