ChrisA
Contributor
You ask "What is the best photo editing software?" That's not an easy question because you have to know a lot about who is asking the question in order to give a meaningfull answer. I'll you will get otherwise is what you see above, replies like "I use XXX, It works for me." Not really usfull.
If you had asked "What are the best fins?" At least we all would know what you want to use the fins for, To swimm underwater while diving with scuba. But we know very little about your photo editing needs. What types of things do you do or want to do with your photos? Just crop and print? More extensive manipulations involving multiple layers. Pre-press color seporations...?
One telling question I ask is if you every work onm parts of an image? In other words, if you ever apply a filter (say to sharpen) to a selected area or do you only use these one the whole image. Sometime my flash will over-iluminate a foreground object whould you try to bring that down. Have you ever "punched up" the color of a subject while tonning down the background, or maybe applied a blur to abackgound to make a subject stand out? You get the point? you need to talk about _what_ you want to _do_ to the images before you can ask about which software can best do it.
But again I'll recommend "gimp" it is truely full featured, beaten only slightly by recent version of Photoshop but Gimp is free and there is a huge on-line suport network for it.
I agree with Ansel Adams. He was famos for using extream manipulations and darkroom technique to make an image look the way he wanted it to. Somethings the result looking not at all like what he saw when he was there to shot the negative. He shoot black and white specifically because that media could be manipulated without the result showing signs of being worked over. Color, he though had to be a mostly litteral interpetation. But he didn't work with digital color where we can change the color of the water without changing the color of a fish in it. Adams was more interrested in communicating what a place "felt like" then recording what it "looked like". OK back to UW digital and the year 2004.. Adams also wrote many times that one could produce good work with _any_ equipment. He used hand held 35mm camera, medium format and large view camers. He beleived that understanding fully what equipment you use matters more then what it is you have. Same here and now, vision, style, sense of color and proportion and so on maters a LOT more that what you use.
If you had asked "What are the best fins?" At least we all would know what you want to use the fins for, To swimm underwater while diving with scuba. But we know very little about your photo editing needs. What types of things do you do or want to do with your photos? Just crop and print? More extensive manipulations involving multiple layers. Pre-press color seporations...?
One telling question I ask is if you every work onm parts of an image? In other words, if you ever apply a filter (say to sharpen) to a selected area or do you only use these one the whole image. Sometime my flash will over-iluminate a foreground object whould you try to bring that down. Have you ever "punched up" the color of a subject while tonning down the background, or maybe applied a blur to abackgound to make a subject stand out? You get the point? you need to talk about _what_ you want to _do_ to the images before you can ask about which software can best do it.
But again I'll recommend "gimp" it is truely full featured, beaten only slightly by recent version of Photoshop but Gimp is free and there is a huge on-line suport network for it.
I agree with Ansel Adams. He was famos for using extream manipulations and darkroom technique to make an image look the way he wanted it to. Somethings the result looking not at all like what he saw when he was there to shot the negative. He shoot black and white specifically because that media could be manipulated without the result showing signs of being worked over. Color, he though had to be a mostly litteral interpetation. But he didn't work with digital color where we can change the color of the water without changing the color of a fish in it. Adams was more interrested in communicating what a place "felt like" then recording what it "looked like". OK back to UW digital and the year 2004.. Adams also wrote many times that one could produce good work with _any_ equipment. He used hand held 35mm camera, medium format and large view camers. He beleived that understanding fully what equipment you use matters more then what it is you have. Same here and now, vision, style, sense of color and proportion and so on maters a LOT more that what you use.
