Canon 1D and Photoshop for beginner.

[Rbj]

Hi all. I'm mainly a wedding, portrait and event photographer in sunny Scotland. I use a variety of formats but most of my work is done using 2 EOS 3's with PBE2, 550EX strobes and 16 - 35L, 28 - 70L, 70 - 200L lenses with 1.4 and 2x Extenders. I still use my old F1 which I bought new in 1981, with a variety of FD lenses as well.

Been thinking for a while about incuding digital with a view to possibly switching to this when up to speed. I'm using Macs (iMac and iBook) and have also installed Photoshop 7. Lastly I've bought a lightly used Canon 1D.

I've tried to install the Canon Digital Solution disc but the Mac starts in Classic mode. I gather I need a later version than 1.1 for OSX. Can anyone tell me how to go about this?

I also now realize that I need a plugin to handle raw files. Would I be as well to upgrade to Photoshop CS and be done with it, or is there an alternative worth considering? The upgrade isn't cheap at GBP150.00 but if it makes things easier I'm all for it. Downloaded a trial version of CS but can't load the Canon Twain. The rest of CS looks impressive from what I've seen so far.

I would be really grateful for any help.

Thanks.
Robin.

[RichardtheSane]

You could download the trial of Capture One from www.phaseone.com

Very good software

[Rbj]

Richard, I've downloaded the trial and have cancelled my visit to the pub tonight!

Many thanks.
Robin.

[gmitchel]

The upgrade from Photoshop 7 to Photoshop CS is definitely worthwhile to someone with a Canon 1D who does weddings.

PS CS includes Adobe Camera Raw. It makes it very easy to shoot in RAW, so you can deliver the very best quality images. It also supports 16-bit images for most features, another important feature for image quality.

Cheers,

Mitch

[Rbj]

Thanks Mitch,
I'm going to upgrade to CS. I've managed to figure out how to upload images from card reader leaving the camera out of the cycle ( with a lot of help from this site!) C1 looks good but is too expensive considering I've already got PS 7.
Thans both for your advice.
Robin.