PhotoShop LE

[Todd]

Greetings, All-
(EOS-1D) For whatever reason I can't download raw images (I assumed that they were simply a tif file, never had a problem with my Nikon raw images) so everything is .jpg in fine mode that I down load from a card reader since XP will recognize the camera, however, no software will communicate with the camera. To the point: The images look terrible concerning color, contrast, sharpness etc. After manipulating the tone curves, brightness and then unsharp mask I save the image as a .bmp and us it as my background. The picture doesn't look the same as it did in PhotoShop so I opened it again in Photoshop and it looks fine. I then opened it in PaintShop Pro and it looks as bad as it did when it was used for the background. It appears to be darker, grainy and oversaturated in red. Why is this? Also, how much is a real version of Photoshop. As is I cannot use any actions and that is a real disappointment.

Thanks for any replies

Todd Asher

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Todd,

I have a D30 not a 1D, so I'm guessing a bit. Your camera should have come with software to download and convert images from the camera. As I understand it the 1D uses the same raw format as the D30. I recall reading that Canon decided to label this TIF instead of CRW. Anyway the raw format cannot be used without conversion, so I should check you have installed everything correctly.

One easy check you could try to right-click a raw file in Windows Explorer and see what choice you have under "open with".

You should also be able to use File>Import to load and convert images uses the TWAIN drivers. You can definitely do this in PSP and PS; PS LE I can't remember.

The difference in the way your images look may be due to colour space issues. This is a whole can of worms that I don't want to get into because I don't know what PSP and PS LE do in this respect, so I really would be making things up. :D

Price of PS depends where you are in the world - around USD500-600, I think, more here in "rip-off Britain". Since you can afford the 1d, I guess Photoshop should be no trouble. :D

Regards,

[Todd]

Greetings Roger-
Thanks for the reply. I can afford to use the remaining food/entertainment budget for the year to upgrade to PhotoShop and aquire a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lens. Actually, I believe the upgrade costs from the LE version is around US $450, though it will be sometime before (version 7?) is released. No rush to upgrade until the XP driver probles are resolved. This is actually the first "problem" I've had with XP, thus I'm not disappointed with XP in any regard.

Take Care

Todd Asher

[Wildman]

Unless you're REALLY a high end user, consider an upgrade to Photoshop Elements. I got the software from Amazon for $79 with a $30 rebate... net $49. Elements does almost everyting the full version of Photoshop does and has a couple of neat additions loke a redeye brush and built-in file browser.

[Todd]

Does Elements support/use actions? I was somewhat suprised that LE didn't, though I would imagine LE must be the most basic version available.

Thanks-

Todd Asher

[Mike K]

PS Elements does not, in general, support actions. It will support a few plug ins like Ultrasharpnen 5.0 Pro, www.ultrasharpen.com which uses the alpha channel. Perhaps when PS 7 starts shipping then 6.0 will be available for less.
Mike K