Photoshop, Gimp and Lightroom

Hi All,

Having never really used Photoshop and only a trial of Lightroom, I have a question to ask...

There is a course near me starting on Monday, 2.5 hours per week for four weeks, every Monday night. It is an Introduction to Photoshop. Currently I use Gimp, as it's free and am very interested in Lightroom but I do not understand curves etc. What I want to do is understand what I am doing rather than moving sliders up and down until I get something near what I am looking for.

Would the skills I learn on a Photoshop course transfer over to Gimp and to Lightroom? Basically I am not in the position to be able to shell out for Photoshop and would continue to use Gimp and maybe buy Lightroom.

What I don't want to do is find the course really useful and then not be able to use the skills!

Thanks,

Will

Well, a lot of Photoshop "stuff" can apply to Gimp but you will still need to learn the specifics in Gimp. But still the class cold be great to dip your feet into "serious" post-processing. The one qestion would be how much of the class might be geared toward photography and photographers as opposed to fancy graphical stuff, but, well, maybe no big deal.

As to Lightroom, probably less unless the class is geared toward serious photographers. What Lightroom shares with Photoshop CSx is the Raw processor, Camera Raw in CSx, and I'd seriously doubt that a four week class in Photoshop would even dabble in Camera Raw unless, like I said, it was geared toward serious photography and photographers.

What I would suggest is that you download the 30 day free trial of Photoshop CS5, timing it so that you get it immediately before the first class so that it will still be functional by the last class.

And it wouldn't hurt to get a companion book such as Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Photoshop CSx. You may find the class stirring up some real interest in this field.

Of course, looking for materials covering Gimp will also help. In the class and Photoshop and (if you get it) the book, try to catch some key phrases that are not Photoshop-specific. For example, we hear a lot about the Photoshop CS5 Content Aware tools, which won't transfer directly to a Gimp tool, but the concept of cloning is a very broad term that should have tons of material for Gimp out there.

I still use a RAW converter & PS7. Once you understand Layers & Layer Masks & a few other simple things like resizing & sharpening, you might find that you can save the extra money for CS5 & put it into glass. So I'd recommend a version of PSE (PS Elements). PSE will do most anything you need to do & a lot of people here use it. If you're a student, you can even get a discount on it.

GIMP has most of the features that PS has, & it would work, but you'll get more help here with PS Elements. And you'll find most of what we think it's important to know to start out with in the "Sticky"s.

Lightroom is a very impressive tool and depending to the extent you are looking to modify your images Lightroom is usually enough. I know lot of people will disagree with me on this and I'm sure everyone has a different workflow, but unless I'm snitching images for panoramas or doing serious editing(e.g masking, adding text, combining images) i barely touch Photoshop.

Lightroom and photoshop are made to work together so if you got the extra cash get photoshop else gimp is more than enough.

I think learning the basics will help, you'll most likely pick up shortcuts and other hints to improve your work flow and help shorten your time infront of PS.

I need to understand things like sharpening, curves and converting to b&w etc. But once i know more, I will then start to find problems that I can deal with, as opposed to just living with imperfections...

Also, even in Gimp or Lightroom, I want to adjust something but don't know 'what' I'm doing, just playing with sliders until it looks better!

Porkywill wrote in post #11270228
I need to understand things like sharpening, curves and converting to b&w etc. But once i know more, I will then start to find problems that I can deal with, as opposed to just living with imperfections...

Also, even in Gimp or Lightroom, I want to adjust something but don't know 'what' I'm doing, just playing with sliders until it looks better!

Heh! The whole field of post-processing has layers that can run pretty deep -- if you are talking about a four-week Photoshop class are you talking about all day five days a week for our weeks? If you were and you had good retention (and video to boot) then you'd likely come out with a huge amount of skills and undertstanding!

But I'd imagine that it would be more like a couple hours a week for four weeks. There is nothing wrong with that because it'll cover the basics and a lot of the basic ideas will carry over to the Gimp and especially to Photoshop Elements, because these two programs are very much into things like layers and layer masks and tools that are more refined than most of the other stuff out there.

But, after the month is over, it'll be up to you to decide how you want to move for your long-term workflow. My personal advice is to start simply, like with Elements, and get the best out of it that you can. But a lot of people latch on to Lightroom or Aperture and there is nothing wrong with that, but still I always advise at least having something like Elements on hand -- there will be times when Elements will simply be better for certain tasks. And that's when it benefits you to get as broad and deep and understanding of things that you can -- the four-week class, sure if it works for you, and then books...online tutorials...it can go on and on until you personally are happy that at least you can do the things you need to do, and if you rn into an area that you find you fall short on at least you have a good idea of where to turn.