Hi all,

As you know I've just dipped my toe into the digital photography. I'm using a Nikon D70 for most of my pics and a Lumix TZ5 for the odd bit of point and shoot, or where the Nikon might get damaged.

I've been trying out Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom 2.5 and Photoshop Elements 8. I must say I do prefer lightroom though I have only done a little light (pardon the pun) work. So I'm interested in what you guys use for any PP work? I'm currently only shooting in JPEG but when I get round to it I'm going to try shooting in RAW.

Is this the best approach? I know it gives you more options while carrying out any PP work, though if I'm honest I get more than enough options in JPEG.

Anywho, my 30 day trails are nearly up, so what should I go for?

You do, but once you've got your JPEG, there's precious little you can do to it that won't make it worse.

If you shoot RAW - and you should if you're getting serious about your photography as a hobby - then Lightroom will be your friend. Once you have the RAW image, it's just the start. You can use LR to make non-destructive edits to your image, make duplicates (just instructions to the software so you don't end up with duplicate files for real), change almost every aspect of the way you shot the original (colour balance, exposure, black and white, sharpness, rotation, crop, whatever).

You just can't do that much if you start from a JPEG.

Just my opinion, of course, but there's a lot to be said for working out a post production workflow that doesn't include JPEG until you want to share it with friends.

I've had the Elements 8 trial too and to be honest, I don't really get on with it. I can get the same results from UfRaw and GIMP. It does the same thing, but takes up far less disk space and is free.

Well - shoot RAW and evaluate later is my motto. The thing about RAW is.... oh, hang on, need to get off my soapbox again

Lightroom is the photographers friend, as Heather has already pointed out. There's very little else you would need Photoshop or Elements for if you're just post processing. However, if you do wish to get creative then Photoshop is the way to go and, if the tutorials I've been reviewing recently are anything to go by, opening your RAW file from Bridge into Adobe Camera RAW and doing the post processing there is what the many do. But get yourself over to the camera forums, search for Ps v Lr and see the results for yourself (Lightroom for basics and Photoshop for the detail).

Al

Is CaptureNX not any good for you Nikon fans? Link

There's also Capture One but its fairly expensive. I had a free 'light' version with a Sandisk card I bought but didnt get around to using it. Link

I hated it. I really tried to get to grips with it because it came free with my camera, but it wasn't nearly as intuitive for me as what Lr is.
Now I'm on an Intel Mac I could try Aperture, but in all honesty I don't think I will. I really am very happy using Lightroom and I'm comfortable in my workflow.

Mark

I should add that I got Capture NX two years ago when I think it was still version 1. I don't know what it's like now, but I do hope it's improved over the years.

Mark

I do have to confess that I'm a GIMP addict.

I know the GUI sucks and that many things are back-asswards but I can modify the code and write my own filters.

Oh and it's free (as in beer as well as in speech).

+1

Well that's settled that then.

You know something's good when you and me agree on it.

I'm a Lr user too. It just suits my workflow, and development on it is fairly continuous (V3 is currently in beta).

Well, it's the obvious choice! I'm a firm believer in getting it right straight out of the camera and spending a not inconsiderable amount of money on software to fix mistakes is counter-intuitive. Ufraw has pretty much the same functionality as Lightroom and GIMP will do the important stuff you need from PS(E).

In the absence of GIMP/Ufraw, Picasa 3 is excellent.

+1

Sorry, I have to take issue with that! Lr is not just there to 'fix mistakes'. Its primary purpose is to allow you to catalogue your photos, organising them by date, keywords, and any number of other vectors. You can use it to fix mistakes, but you can also use it to do to a digital photo what used to be done to black and white prints, when different parts of the image would be exposed on the paper for different lengths of time to bring out more detail in shadow and highlight areas.

...breathe a sigh of relief.