I need a photoshop program thing but hate the idea, can you help?

Sure. I learned, gradually. I improved, over several months. By "grabbing shots". Without "kidding myself". Nowadays I sometimes even take the camera away from my eye without taking a shot. Some day, I hope to be able to see the shot without even needing the viewfinder. :D

I just think it's unhelpful to belittle the processes of people who shoot what's in front of them, and to tell them it's not the way to learn. You can learn that way, and everybody has to start somewhere.
You've decided I'm belittling people who are learning.

All I can say is you're wrong! You've misunderstood something I wrote, I've explained myself, it's clearly not going to change your opinion. But I will point out that you're wrong if you think I have belittled anyone who's learning.

I definitely did slag off people who put no thought into their photography with the plan they'll be able to create 'something' in PP. I stand by that, it's not photography and those people aren't learning. But it's a million flipping miles away from the process you described that you've learned from.:)

I'm passionate and opinionated about photography, but I'm also hideously pragmatic! There's no single right way to learn, or to approach a subject. However there are definitely a lot of wrong ways of doing things. I'll definitely let people know when they're doing the wrong things, but if they're doing something 'different' from the way I'd do it, that's fine.

And even if I had been talking about people who were genuinely learning 'belittling' is a flipping massive overstatement. As I wasn't, it's a flipping untruth.
 
I take on board all of your comments.
at the minute im looking for inspiration on google images, magazine pictures and once you get your eye in there are Amazing examples of photography all over. Im seeing what I like about the images then trying to replicate it as best I can but this does mean il take shots then change a setting and then see if it was a good or bad decision.
I think this is what makes a dslr great for beginners and probably somewhat irritating for the great old hands who learnt their art the hard (and costly) way.

Iv only this week received my travel tripod for my Thailand trip and some other bits which should help my photography at home too (my first tripod)

thanks martyn I agree with the dog picture, I gave a print of it to the charity I was walking the dog for (sponsored walk for the spanish dog charity "pedro" (the dog) was saved from.

I fully zoomed out so I could use the biggest (3.5) aperture I could to reduce dof as best I could.
I went al servo on center spot focusing
I increased shutter speed to ermmmm.... 1/200 possibly I forget
I changed the wb to warm it up alittle as the day was dull
and cropped the image I gave them to get rid of the distractions and put him center of the frame but left alittle right hand side tree in it for additional interest.

I was alittle lost on an earlier post which said he was lost into the background, I dont know how I could have picked him out more as I was at the lowest 3.5 I could go. I dont remember my f stop number.

how would you guys have taken the shot?
thanks again everyone this is great but play nice :)
regards
rob
 
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You've decided I'm belittling people who are learning.

I said you were belittling the process. I chose my words carefully.

All I can say is you're wrong! You've misunderstood something I wrote, I've explained myself, it's clearly not going to change your opinion. But I will point out that you're wrong if you think I have belittled anyone who's learning.

I apologise. I have clearly misunderstood what you think. On the other hand, I think the misunderstanding was . . . understandable. "The people who are grabbing shots then trying out loads of processing till something looks ok are kidding themselves" makes no distinction, and when you went on to say that it was "not the way" to improve your photography, then that said to me that you didn't think one could learn by doing this.
 
think il call this thread done and start a new thread once I have some different pics under my belt.
id be happy to hear both your constructive comments in the future.
thanks for every ones contribution.
rob
 
If you are using Windows, and you have Microsoft Office, then you will already Microsoft Office Picture Manager on your PC. (Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Office -> Microsoft Office Tools -> Microsoft Office Picture Manager)

This allows you to do the basics of crop, contract, red-eye etc. This is a good place to start.

Once you have exhausted the capabilities of this simple kind of program you can move on to Lightroom 30 day trial or similar.

IMHO Lightroom is not the best place to start your PP adventure. It is too complicated, and although immensely powerful it does not have a very intuitive user interface. (Or maybe it was designed for people who have a different intuition from mine. :) ).
 
Thanks pentaprison thats great.
Im not a fan of intricate keyboard bashing and I like the keep it simple policy especially when learning to avoid loosing interest.
Too many wizz pops and bangs on a program sees me closing the computer and heading outside lol
Il steal the otherhalf laptop back and check it out.
 
Thanks pentaprison thats great.
Im not a fan of intricate keyboard bashing and I like the keep it simple policy especially when learning to avoid loosing interest.
Too many wizz pops and bangs on a program sees me closing the computer and heading outside lol
Il steal the otherhalf laptop back and check it out.

Oh, another option is to use Snapseed on your tablet. I've only had a bit of a play with it, but it seems pretty neat for simple edits, and has some pretty nice "auto" type default buttons
 
...
I apologise. I have clearly misunderstood what you think. On the other hand, I think the misunderstanding was . . . understandable. "The people who are grabbing shots then trying out loads of processing till something looks ok are kidding themselves" makes no distinction, and when you went on to say that it was "not the way" to improve your photography, then that said to me that you didn't think one could learn by doing this.

Well absolutely, if you'd ignored the other 118 words I'd written that firmly put that sentence in context, it's easy to completely misconstrue my entire post so that you can start a debate about something I never actually said, but which you disagree with.
 
...

I fully zoomed out so I could use the biggest (3.5) aperture I could to reduce dof as best I could.
I went al servo on center spot focusing
I increased shutter speed to ermmmm.... 1/200 possibly I forget
I changed the wb to warm it up alittle as the day was dull
and cropped the image I gave them to get rid of the distractions and put him center of the frame but left alittle right hand side tree in it for additional interest.

I was alittle lost on an earlier post which said he was lost into the background, I dont know how I could have picked him out more as I was at the lowest 3.5 I could go. I dont remember my f stop number.

how would you guys have taken the shot?
thanks again everyone this is great but play nice :)
regards
rob

That's the mistake, DoF is not dependant purely on aperture, it's a function of aperture and camera to subject distance, so your zoom at 250mm 5.6 from a further distance would have isolate the dog better. But you're also shooting a brown dog against a brown background, which won't help.

The tricks (techniques) we use to draw the viewers attention to a subject are (briefly):
Contrast - lighting the subject so that it stands out from the bg
Colour - as above for contrast, bright colours demand attention, red is the daddy at this, so we always avoid red things in the background as they fight for attention (like the sign in your shot)
Composition - leading lines which draw the viewer to the subject, the rule of thirds etc.
DoF - even with flat lighting we can make a subject pop from the background by knocking the bg out of focus, we can do more by having OoF foreground objects too which really makes an image appear 3d.

Of course there's a wealth more to learn around all of those issues, I'd suggest a decent book on the basics.
How would I have shot it? at 200mm f4, and getting down to the dogs level. If I'd been aiming for great results I'd have set up lighting and chosen a different colour dog.
 
I just had a quick search and your correct I should have gone at the full 55 but I think il get better results anyway when I get my 55-250 and 50mm 1.8 then I should have a basic but capable kit bag.
il take it onboard but to be honest in future il only be uploading images I love and really do want critiquing lol. These were just examples I found from recent in my sd card.
I suppose thats the difference, there are shots that are in the moment family pics and then there are the intentional thought through shots and sometimes the two cant be the same due to the situation. (the dog)

il be taking more pics and posting them up in due course anyway, you never learn if you never ask :)
thanks again
rob
 
Nowadays I sometimes even take the camera away from my eye without taking a shot. Some day, I hope to be able to see the shot without even needing the viewfinder.
My camera rarely leaves its bag before I've seen a photograph by eye - which is less about seeing a 'thing', or even a composition, than about seeing the light.

(Some people seem to miss the point that photography is ALL about light, and think instead that it's about shopping for ever more 'stuff'.)
 
Lightroom makes perfectly sense by shooting raw, that's what my experience is. So best thing would be to set up your camera doing raw + jpeg at the same time. Then process the raw images and see what produces better results at the end. If you prefer to do jpegs, Picasa may be good enough too, else something more powerful is needed.

Hint: In Lightroom you have to configure the software to display both. Normally you wont see jpegs, although imported from the camera, if there are raw image files with the same name.

On the other hand it's hard to beat the cooked output of a well set up camera as long the pictures are well shot under simple conditions. Raw has it's strength when the image has some problems, for example when shot under not so perfect light conditions, which is very often the case. :)

At the beginning with DSLRs I did a mixture of shooting raw and jpeg, mostly just to not waste space on the memory card and on hard disk. In the meantime I do everything in raw and I regret every image I just have done in jpeg only.
 
This may have been mentioned, because I've sped red the thred!

I've used a copy of Microsoft Digital Image (anniversary edition 2006) for a few years as a basic editor. It'll do most anything and more that Elements will do, and most of what PS will do. It may be getting long in the tooth, but it's still very capable. You'll probably have to look for a used copy on ebay, where there are loads, but there are one or two used copies on Amazon too.
 
I'm a beginner and find lightroom very very useful. I qualify for the student edition and am using LR4.

Gimp and faststone do everything else (for free).

an example of a 30 second tweak with lightroom sliders.

lizard.jpg
 
it is still the same image but, to my eyes anyway, has more pop. yes it could probably be improved more (it was literally a 30 second adjust of lens, blacks,whites,shadows,detail). Getting ti right in camera is right but images can be improved with good pp.

What I am trying to say is a fantastic image with no pp is just that, a fantastic image. If a fantastic image can be improved by pp why wouldn't you. A crap image will always be a crap image.
 
sponner thanks very much the change between the two pics is huge and shows to be honest how poor the image was before. im happy to see how I could have improved the shot with some reflected uplighting on his chin with my new reflector too.
as you say the image pops much more but I must improve my technique too
I will retake the shot with all of the suggested changes and particularly change the focusing.
my emphasis was his eye (iI love eyes) and you really brought that out.

I purchased the practical photography magazine so I have photo director 4 and dug out my canon software as suggested.
thanks again this thread has been a great result for me
rob
 
Similar to what others have said:
Why PP? The camera meter and sensor limitations cannot replace the human choice. As a human, (I presume) you can adjust something until it looks right on the monitor. And you can take your time too.
Take your time?
Sometimes I need to fix 20 shots and post them online asap. It must all be quick and easy.
Sometimes I want to get the very best out of a special shot. Panorama, dynamic range, complicated exposure or remove unwanted clutter that will entertain me for ages.

People have different hobbies too. For some PP is as much fun as shooting.
And some people even enjoy taking crap shots relying on fixing them in post. If they enjoy it, hooray for them!
 
Rob wrote, inter alia :-
I understand that when I change settings on my camera im digitally manipulating the image and its just an extension of that post picture taking.

rob

Not only when you change the settings, Rob. If you shoot jpeg your camera will do quite a bit of processing to the image before you see it.

Dougie
 
everybodys pics can be improved or enhanced with a photo editor
as no one takes "perfect shots "
a few people think they do
 
I love Lightroom, but for a free piece of software that looks very similar and does most of the same things you could try Darktable.
 
westie, one aspect which I think has not yet been mentioned regarding PP is that in addition to it indeed allowing you to do the same every enthusiast photographer has done for decades - making sure the images are processed properly to either make them look as close to reality as possible or to enhance moods or aspects the photographer considers importnat - it is indeed a lot of fun, and opens an entire new world of creativity.

When I got back into photography a bit more seriously again, I told my friends I want a PP software which just automatically processes my RAW images and gives me good results - i.e. the colours/contrasts etc. as I saw them when I took the picture. I didn't want to do any PP, although I was aware that PP is an essential part of some types of artful photography, and also of just plain normal photography.

Don't most of us remember how important it was in the analog film days to get a good lab to process your films? And even to get the right film for the camera and for what you wanted to photograph? Why should all of this suddenly be wrong - it isn't. On the contrary, digital photography has made it a lot easier to get the best out of your images. We don't have to go to a darkroom, use all sorts of chemicals and utensils and magical gestures ;) to give the film our personal touch. We can in a very intuitive way, with an immediate result control, optimize the image as we want to.

Of course one should always try to optimally prepare the shot on location, but that only in a minority of cases will render good PP superfluous. And it is fun, did I mention that? ;)
 
.. no one takes "perfect shots "
a few people think they do
I do!
But it's only when I mess the shot up in PP that it starts to get good. :naughty:

But seriously, I think if OP Westie1 does not want to do much PP, there are quick and dirty programs that in no way compete with the fully fleged raw developer, but give you quick fix options with an array of previews letting you choose the effect that looks nicest.One that springs to mind is Picasa.
Just crop, tweak and upload is all you need for many family type shots.
 
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