editing... h e l p

Hi all,

I don't want to start a complicated editing mud slinging thread;

As I'm quite new to digital photography (about 7 months), so as I have zilch/zero/nil/no editing skills whatsoever, I only shoot in hi-res jpeg all the time, I NEVER ever shoot RAW because as stated I don't know what to do. I use a Canon 5D Mk1 body.

A few months ago I downloaded free trials of Lightroom and Elements 9 and totally gave up as I have totally NIL skills in this department.

So can anyone advise me an EASY (idiots guide) editing suite to try improve my crap/below average knowledge please? Might there be any good free editing programmes out there? Or, is the likes of both Lightroom/Elements top notch editing programmes good?

I have loaded the cd disc that comes with my Canon 5D/1 onto my pc but still haven't a clue were to start.

Any advice appreciated!


(digital photo numpty me)

For Elements, there is a great site with folks who pretty much know all of the ins and outs. The forum is called Elements Village and you can join for free and get answers to virtually all questions.

Their parent site is called Photoshop Elements Techniques. There is lots of free info on the site, but if you subscribe, the membership comes with a set of lessons, tutorials, etc. on disk, as well as access to all of the online tutorials and features in the members section. It's a great site and it has helped me get over the same hump you are trying to climb. I joined just about a year ago with a 2 year subscription, so I still have a year to go. I will probably renew when the time comes, because I get great value from the site.

I highly recommend that you look into it.

Welcome to POTN

Look at a product called Bibble.

It is easy, cheap, and simple to understand.

http://bibblelabs.com/

Adobe TV has a whole bunch of great video tutorial that can show you step by step how do do everything.
http://tv.adobe.com …arn-photoshop-elements-9/
http://tv.adobe.com/sh​ow/learn-lightroom-3/

Other things to consider would be Kelby Training and or Lynda.com. Both have limted free access, but the tutorials are worth the cost if you really need the help.

The strongest advice I can give is buy the Elements software. All things considered, it's pretty cheap. Usually on sale somewhere for 70 or 80 bucks.

That being said, I have heard good things about Google's Picasa. Search* some of the threads here and see if there are/were discussions that you can read to find out if it might be an option for you.

Rad

*"Search" is located near the upper right of every page here - use the "Advanced Search" and search for Picasa in the thread titles.

I like Lightroom and find that it meets all my photo needs. I suggest the Lightroom 3 book by Kelby. Lightroom can be a bit confusing upon start but everything falls into place and I'm amazed at everything it is capable of.

I second the recommendation for Lightroom and Kelby's book. Sit down at the computer with the book and work through it and it's nowhere near as difficult as it seems to be. Lightroom is actually pretty simple and you can learn a lot by just loading a picture, tweaking the sliders and seeing what they do. Ctrl-Z will undo anything you do and the edits aren't destructive anyway - you can always revert to the original picture as it was at the time you imported it.

Lots of LR tutorials: http://www.slrlounge.c​om/

René Damkot wrote in post #13608865
Lots of LR tutorials: http://www.slrlounge.c​om/

Thanks Rene', I didn't know about this site.

All the replies so far are great and there are a lot of tutorials out there, both for beginner and advanced. Especially for Photoshop.

With that said, I just want to bring up a good point that I hope most will agree with:

With digital photography (to do more than just point, shoot and post a photo), you have to devote some learning time to a software program to edit your images. You only get out of something - what you put into it. For more than just point, shoot and post, it's part of digital photography.

Like Veemac mentioned - sit down and actually take the time to play with it and see what each adjustment is doing and it will come quick. Even if you walk away with learning how to level, sharpen, make color adjustments and resize - it's a start.

Personally I'd go for Elements, as it doesn't cost the earth and is a very capable piece of software, and then I'd hit the Youtube tutorials to learn how to use it. As it is such a popular piece of software, there are all sorts of tutorials out there to pretty much cover anything you'd like to do.

Thanks for replies....

Can a standard j-peg image be manipulated using software? I appreciate raw shots hold more information and can be adjusted more, but just want to ask solely about j-peg please.

Thanks.

Yes.

Great advice in this thread and what should be a starting point with any new software that you are not familiar with would be the software's own instructions and help files!

-Douglas- wrote in post #13610823
Great advice in this thread and what should be a starting point with any new software that you are not familiar with would be the software's own instructions and help files!

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