need editiing software

I just upgraded from a Canon S1IS to a 30d, I have always used Photoshop 2 and arcsuite. I need to upgrade my editing software to shoot raw and do more editing features in general. I would rather spend my time learning the camera than studying books on photo editing, so Im not sure that CS2 is right for me, and the cost is a little intimidating as well. Any ideas.

For RAW processing, I would suggest first trying DPP which should have come with your Camera (also download updates to it as well from Canon.) Some pros even still prefer it to Camera Raw (although they're liking the way Adobe's Lightroom is looking, but expect it to cost some bucks when out of Beta.) If you feel that DPP doesn't do enough for you on the RAW side, then look into other options.

Don't know what's in Photoshop2 or Arcsuite, but Photoshop Elements covers most of my processing needs lately (I'm using version 3, but version 5 is out now.) Especially like the healing brush. And for those times that I need curves or some other options that Elements lacks, I use The Gimp (free at gimp.org). (My version of Elements came packaged with my WACOM tablet - all together under $100... not a bad deal!)

BTW elements (versions 3 and up) can use the Camera Raw plug-in (albeit limited compared to Camera Raw of CS2 users.) As far as I know, the GIMP doesn't handle raw at all, just your standard image formats (plus .psd photoshop files)

If you don't want to go for CS2 (or CS3 in a few months), I would suggest giving either Lightroom a try or PSE 5. Lightroom will give you more RAW conversion controls and you can process JPEG and TIFF images as well (there is no layers feature in Lightroom).

All editing software can be used on a trial basis ranging up to 30 days.

davidcrebelxt wrote in post #2440007
...As far as I know, the GIMP doesn't handle raw at all, just your standard image formats (plus .psd photoshop files)

The GIMP will handle RAW as well in a fashion similar to ACR with add-ins such as UFRaw. However if you're looking for something simple it's probably not the best choice.

e-k