How did you start?

J

jameslongstrong

Messages
101
Name
James
Edit My Images
Yes
I do no PP to anything I take and am begining to get frustrated with my results. I am looking to do some minor adjustments to the pictures I take to make the most of them but have no idea where to start.

How did you beging to play with your pictures and where did you learn more and more?
 
I tend to experiment a lot and click on things to see what they do, if I am learning something new will dedicate hours to it until I can do it without thinking. Basically it is just practice.

To find out how to do something to start with if you are not an experimenter than do a search on the web for tutorials on what you want to do, for instance I use photoshop so would do a search for "PS tutorial extract background"
 
I stared with iPhoto as my catalog and editor. I was on iphoto 6, so I could adjust contrast/brightness, temp, hue, straighten, sharpen, exposure, and black/white point. It also had some preset b/w, sepia, enhance, etc. It is a good way to get started if you run a mac. I now use aperture with all of the same plus more.

Thanks
Rick
 
Adult education classes. Having a real live tutor to talk me through processes worked for me - plus you learn things from other students too.
 
well, processing raw is a natural part of taking an image, and retouching, with the exception of comping is pretty much just an extention of that - looking at an image, deciding what you want to be different and using the tools provided to acheive it - that coupled with sort of generally taking an interest on the internet pretty much accounts for it

have to admit i was photoshopping images before i got a dslr (admitedly, not to anywhere near the same level)
 
Download Picasa for free & just start trying the various adjustments. Then try a free 30 day trial of Elements 9. Plenty of "how to" vids on You Tube for Elements.
 
If it is just basic stuff you want to do then Picasa 3 will do most basic things, and few effect too. It costs nothing, allows you to play around without harming the original files, and lets get into editing in an easy way. You may quickly upgrade to a more sophisticated editing program, but you may not. :shrug: :)

There are other alternatives though, Paint.Net is a more advanced program than Picasa and is free. Gimp is another free but more advanced program than Paint.net. (I think) Paintshop Pro is another program, not free, but quite advanced.

And of course there is Photoshop CS and Elements.

If you decide to go down the Photoshop route then there are a few ways to learn, books, magazines, videos, internet and Adult Education courses (if you are lucky, though maybe not for much longer :(). What you go for depends on what type of learner you are. Adult Education classes, at least in Liverpool, tend to focus on Photoshop CS (CS2 in this case) and I would imagine a lot of them do the same around the country.

Although the full Photoshop is about £600, :eek: should you enrol on a Photoshop course you could qualify for a student edition of the program which is about £170. Quite a saving. ;)

Most magazines tend to focus on Photoshop CS, despite the cost of that version of Photoshop. (an indication of the widespread piracy of the program I think ;)) There are more videos and books for the full Photoshop too, again the publishers aware of the high Photoshop piracy rate, and targeting that market.

Lots of the things you learn about the full Photoshop can be transferred to Photoshop Elements should you not be able to find Elements specific tutorials.
 
I started with Photoshop Elements 6 and a good book by Scott Kelby.
 
redhed17 said:
If it is just basic stuff you want to do then Picasa 3 will do most basic things, and few effect too. It costs nothing, allows you to play around without harming the original files, and lets get into editing in an easy way. You may quickly upgrade to a more sophisticated editing program, but you may not. :shrug: :)

There are other alternatives though, Paint.Net is a more advanced program than Picasa and is free. Gimp is another free but more advanced program than Paint.net. (I think) Paintshop Pro is another program, not free, but quite advanced.

And of course there is Photoshop CS and Elements.

If you decide to go down the Photoshop route then there are a few ways to learn, books, magazines, videos, internet and Adult Education courses (if you are lucky, though maybe not for much longer :(). What you go for depends on what type of learner you are. Adult Education classes, at least in Liverpool, tend to focus on Photoshop CS (CS2 in this case) and I would imagine a lot of them do the same around the country.

Although the full Photoshop is about £600, :eek: should you enrol on a Photoshop course you could qualify for a student edition of the program which is about £170. Quite a saving. ;)

Most magazines tend to focus on Photoshop CS, despite the cost of that version of Photoshop. (an indication of the widespread piracy of the program I think ;)) There are more videos and books for the full Photoshop too, again the publishers aware of the high Photoshop piracy rate, and targeting that market.

Lots of the things you learn about the full Photoshop can be transferred to Photoshop Elements should you not be able to find Elements specific tutorials.
Click to expand...

i vaguely remember something about an adobe spokesperson suggesting most of their paying users used to pirate it or something, and how the official stance was not to worry about it because it accounted for a significant part of their marketing, and brand awareness

might have been someone nothing to do with adobe though, but i do remember someone who was a spokesperon of either adobe or a publication or something saying something like that
 
Learn by doing.

You can't 'break' anything so get fiddling with everything. I use PS anyway for work so editing a few images is reasonably easy to slip into but I don ever do too much processing. Lightroom may be an option for you are it has pre-sets you can download/install.
 
My first experience of photoshop was at a photographic dealers demo, I was hooked, that was photoshop 6.0, Still have the disk somewhere I expect.
 
My actual first encounter with image editing was when I was doing a PC Maintenance course and the Tutor brought his Sony Mavica digital camera (with Floppy Disk memory :eek: :LOL:), took a picture of you uploaded the image into the computer and then using Photoshop, copied your head and put it on your own T-shirt in the image. :eek: :LOL: It was like wow :eek: that took seconds to do.

Luckily there were easily accessible local Photoshop courses which made the initial learning process a whole lot easier. :)
 
Hi James, if I were you I would stay away from photoshop for the time being. The whole thing is like a religion dedicated to confusing the crap out of everyone. If you are struggling to get good results 'in camera' then photoshop will only add to your frustration and sense of ineptitude. Learn to use the camera to a reasonable standard and get to know the basics of what it can do. If you have an 50D then you should have the eos utility software which has a very good editor with it. You may not be able to 'special effect' images and all that crap, but you will definitely be able to polish up your basic efforts. Shooting in raw and then using the canon dpp software to adjust white balance etc is enough of a learning curve to start with and once you start to get familiar with it you will love it. I bought Photoshop Elements 8, and I absolutely hated it for it's unintuitive functions and overcomplicated routs through to the various functions. Download a free 30 day trial and have a go at it before you buy it mate.

If you want to learn to take serious pictures, then trying to get your head around the camera and photoshop simultaneously is just too much to take in.

Stick with Canon's included software, it has everything you need as a beginner. (y)
 
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