HELP?? Need advice from Camera Savy people

I was into photograghy some years ago and had a Pentax K-1000 that I loved and got some great pics with, but went to a digital point and shoot when I got my computer. I lost all control in the process, but what finally got me totally po'd was the slow shutter response and rapid battery depletion.

I am happy to say that I just got my first entry-level dSLR and absolutely LOVE it. I got a Nikon D-60, cause I wanted the vibration reduction feature it had that a few others I looked at did not have.

Ritz Camera was great at explaining the various differences in features and that helped me decide which to choose when I explained what I wanted to be able to do - override the automatic settings sometimes to get specific results or use auto features for general shots.

But now I need to know which photo editing program is a good one. So any recommendations on price vs quality and user-friendliness? I'm talking something beyond the Adobe Free version, and am willing to pay for it, but hope I don't have to put out $600.00 for a full Adobe Photoshop program. Anyone using the Nikon one? View NX?

 

Sorry to say, but that would be Photoshop! In terms of software made just for simple photo manipulation with features like exposure correction, color curves, cropping, and other basic stuff, I actually found that I really liked the software that came with my Canon Digital Rebel XTi, called Digital Photo Professional. It's basically a clone of what you can do with Adobe Bridge and the Adobe Camera Raw tool. I still much prefer Adobe Bride + Camera Raw tool, but the Canon one was a fair alternative. You might have to buy a Canon camera to get and/or use the software though.

Back to RAW processing for a moment: Raw is a really good thing. It's basically a dump from your sensor, instead of letting your camera decide a few important processing details like sharpness, contrast, color balance, even exposure to a degree.

Raw images have a slightly higher dynamic range than jpeg or other stanard formats. That means there's more difference between the bright and dark areas in a captured image, and not all of that range of information fits into a jpeg. When shooting jpegs, your camera automatically crushes the dynamic range and bakes in the color balance.

If you work with raw images you can change the color balance as much as you want on the computer (can really save some shots if you forget to white-balance or set a CB mode) and you can also change the exposure in a fairly generous range without too much visible artifacting. You can recover details in over-exposed clouds, for example, or in shadows on a person's face. It takes some finesse, but it gives you a lot of room to improve your shots. You can also do tone-mapping to try and squeeze all that dynamic range into a single image in a more cretive and interactive way than your camera's onboard processing would allow.

 

I agree with Ichabod, Photoshop is really the ultimate photo editing package, or digital darkroom. But it's also $600 which clearly puts it out of my budget. As an alternate there is Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro, either of which can be picked up for less than $100. I use Paint Shop Pro and am quite satisfied with it, I'm sure a full blown copy of Photoshop CS could do a lot more, but for most everyday touchup, PSP is a lot easier on the pocketbook.

 

You are 1 step closer to switch to DSLR.

 

Looks like a great choice - enjoy!

 

Depending on how computer savvy you are, you might want to consider GIMP.

GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program

Better than Adobe Free, and you can't beat the price.

 

The GIMP is kinda gimpy... and actually a full-blown image editor is probably not what would interest Neicy or Freshmtt: Something more like Adobe Lightroom (yes, it costs money ) is probably right up their alley.