alternatives to CS3
 

When I joined the forum the conventional wisdom seemed to be that 'you are going to end up needing to use Photoshop, so might as well start now'.

I admit I have not got/used CS3, don't even think my computer would run it and anyway would rather put the cash to a new computer first. Did use PSE4 (cheapo CS2) for a while with FZ7 and later following DPP with CR2 from 350D as a host for FocusMagic and NeatImage and with curves plug-in.

Instinct led me to getting a Nikon (D80) and Nikon Capture NX and I find the combination superb and meeting 99% of my needs. (They do not include HDR, artificising). NX costs about £100 & free 30 day Trial (tho can be cheaper on e-bay, but do only buy correct regional version - see NX thread).

Most of the NX tools work on .jpg or .tif files and likewise if you need the other 1% it transfers elsewhere as .tif. They also work on whole or only part of the image and in combination using 'steps' which I find much easier to manage than 'layers'. For example you can convert to B&W with a blue filter on near-blown parts of an image and orange on the rest.

Resulting saved files can be in .NEF format which includes all the 'steps' open for re-edits using a minute fraction of memory required for .psd.

Why do you say that Chris?

CS3 has higher minimum requirments than previous adobe programs. as does NX.

Have just checked, it probably would if I bought OS 10.4, but am not going to do that (a) because even 10.3 was a move too far, but has some trade-off benefits (b) when I absolutely must I will skip to 10.5 saving another £85

NX 1.3.1 seems OK on 10.3.9 now I have the correct version and there is a free patch for 10.5

Lightroom does most things I need to do to my images. It will crop, correct colour, correct exposure, sharpen, remove dust (although I still find this last to be easier with PS7 - just a matter of practice I expect), convert to BW, and also acts as a catalogue and database for my images.
My PS use has decreased hugely since I started with LR.

But Lightroom can't be selective. You have to work on the whole image. How do you burn in the sky or dodge the shadows without a proper editing package.

I use Lightroom, and am a fan but it is primarily a database/cataloguing tool. As Greenbunion says it cant be selective - that's where Photoshop comec in - CS2 in may case.

Now I don't know how flexible NX is, and whether is has the capability to make selections based on channel information, selectively blur (to soften skin tones) & sharpen (to empahsise eyes etc) which I use a lot in post processing my portraits...so for example would you have been able to get from this Attachment 3956
the RAW file for my shot of Victoria in this months comp with exposure adjustments etc...


to the end result that I posted in my gallery Attachment 3959

I could just say 'yes' Clive, but I think that starting with a Canon and studio lighting and your professional level experience on portraiture, it would be over-doing things. Also you only need to pay for an upgrade and see what is new.

For what most of us encounter, ie trying to convert outdoor/location mug-shots to as near-portrait standard as we can achieve, NX has an additional goodie in the the 'U-point' technology that allows, typically, deep shading on parts of the face to be corrected very quickly and only where needed. Eye sharpening and pimple removing (only on men of course) are also quite easy.

I have done a bit in the NX thread on applying totally different treatments to one part of pic from another (to supplement Nikon tutorial).

If you care to e-mail me original CR2 of Victoria, I would love a play and to give her hair a shampoo to soften it a bit, otherwise a beautiful portrait.

I should make it clear that I do not rate NX for data-base/cataloguing. Being a mac user, I use GraphicConverter for that, about £50 I think. It slip-streams the mac finder database and has one or two other gems like its 'unskew' & 'local contrast enhancement' (can be done in CS, see cambridgeincolour tutorials) to restore clarity of complex reduced images and no-fuss slideshow for all or part of a folder.

For PCs you need one of the many other progs recommended in the forum & no idea how Lightroom compares.

Yes - I agree, there are some things PS is needed for, particularly anything using layers as you suggest. It's just that I dont often need to do that.

I was going to suggest PhotoImpact ($50) , but seeing as you're a mac user there is not much point.

Hi Chris and others - have you ever used Aperture? I use it as my main catalogue application. Apperture 1.6 is on the way I understand, and it promises to be all anyone could need (Previewed at Nikon Solutions Expo a couple of months back by a CS3 demonstrator who was drooling and itching to get his hands on it ! ) It does most of the adjustments I need and then anything else goes goes to Photoshop CS3 - I also have CS2, Lightroom, Elements and NX but I have always found the Nikon Software and Apple do not sit well together - they are always slow with their Apple software and usually buggy to start with. I use Lightroom as a sort of sub catalogue with certain chosen images, and Elements is useful if you arn't going to do much. However which ever application you use with Apple a large RAM helps I use 4.5 Gb RAM and can run all of the above together. I would suggest a minimum of 2 - 2.5 Gb to run PS well.

I wasn't particularly after info for myself, as I am very satisfied with NX despite it being slowish on an ancient machine -

Just thought the subject could do with a new airing 2 years on and so that newercomers to DSLR know they don't necessarily need to lash out £500+ (UK) before getting down to serious PS.

Clive - this was done converting in DPP with sharpness raised to about middle of range, but no other tweaks except a bit of crop, then entirely in NX. My cutting out is scrappy compared to yours, but as you know you can go chasing stray hairs for ever (haven't tried to remove them from around the eyes either). Also I suspect you planted onto a real background of some sort, I have just done a blackish one with grain added then gaussian blur.

Above all I don't have your experience in portraits, so have only done an obvious tidy up.


http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...1&d=1200949984

Interesting experiment Chris.

A couple of observations - I never do any sharpening at the conversion from RAW stage... in fact I do all my post processing and then sharpen at the last step - I find this reduces the occurrence of odd sharpening effects.

The cutting out is I think a big difference, and you may be surprised to learn that I do not use any selection tools to do it. If I explain the technique I use (which I think you will agree is effective) and then you can tell me if this could be replicated in NX... because as you say you could go on chasing stray hairs for ever - with my technique you don't have to :confused:

As you point out the key is make the hair not look cut out.

1. I go to the channels palate and look at the individual red, green & blue channels to determine which has the greatest contrast between the models hair and the background - usually the blue channel.
2. Next I go to calculations and blend the blue channel with itself in multiply blending mode to create a new channel. This has the effect of adding the darkness of the pixel values together so light bits become a little bit darker and dark bits become a lot darker. This makes the stray hairs stand out better.
3. I then go to calculations again with the new channel and repeat the step but with overlay mode. This now darkens areas darker than 50% grey and lightens areas lighter that 50% grey.

I now have a mask like this Attachment 3961 which preserves the fine hair detail Attachment 3962. It is then a simple matter to fill in the centre of the mask with a black brush to get Attachment 3963 apply this to the layer, position new background underneath - generated with a Photoshop action - and you have a perfect natural looking cut out in about 5 minutes max :D

I then work on the eyes, lips, skin tones etc, again using masks generated from the layers using different channels & blending modes depending on what I'm doing. For example I smooth the skin tones through a straight red channel mask and sharpen through and inverted red channel mask, and the highlights in her hair were enhanced through a grey channel mask blended with itself in overlay mode.

The point being that using these masks that you can lighten, smooth, darken etc the parts of the image based on the lightness or darkness of the image itself thereby enhancing the tonal graduations.

There, I've given away my trade secrets :rolleyes:

Hope this makes sense - I would be surprised if NX gives this level of control, I may be wrong - because if it did it would become the industry standard.

Oh well, a nice side effect of starting this thread, you guys now have a master-class in portrait editing :cool: :)

On the specific, as you know Clive the original was very soft, and the end position included some very hard textures. My request for a play was to see if, the hair especially, could be softened....and why not use a live example for the discussion.

On the general, PS/CS I would describe as having attained a near monopoly, an unhealthy situation and reminiscent of Autocad in architecture/engineering whence I have retired. No creative hands-on architect ever touched Autocad, it was, precisely, industrial. Microstation and one or two other strugglers were on the contrary design orientated; Architrion, the best, actually went to the wall (or French only).

PS/CS is different in that its cost is dropping and it can be used at simpler levels by beginners, but I have yet to meet anyone who took to it like a duck to water. Yes, it has myriad features that professional photographers need and it appears that most of the more advanced amateurs on WPF use sub-sets of it to a greater or lesser extent for special purposes. Yes, this includes users of NX beyond a particular stage of editing.

NX includes enough advanced colour and tonal editing features (and facility for processing different parts of an image differently) for most outdoor photography. It works in a more intuitive manner and, costing 1/5 of the price of CS, I am suggesting it is an alternative for those of us newer to SLR photography, keen to learn, who appear to form a large part of the forum.

I am not binning PSE(4) yet, as I know that it includes one or two features I may need and haven't got on my other mac sharewares. But, lacking curves (or, better, LCH in NX), I don't find it much use for landscape. I re-edit most images for which I originally used it, now using DPP or NX with significantly improved results. I also find the 'layers' operation a pain compared to the NX 'steps'....and, apart from comparison testing, have not used it since getting NX.

I have not tried Aperture as at £300 plus a newer computer, I would need a pretty hard sell on it Andy.

Hi Chris

You make some good points, particularly about the pseudo monopoly, and the lack of ease of use of PS for beginners, not to mention the price differential.

I'm not sure what functionality NX 'steps' provides - it sounds like a sophisticated undo facility. While layers offers this as well, they also give the capability to fade the effect of any particular action by reducing the opacity, group layers together so they only interact on each other, and nest layers within groups to facilitate selective masking of selections etc. I use all of these techniques when processing portraits, but also there are occasions when they can help bring out the best in other types of shot. For example my shot Slate Fence used combinations of this and the layer masking technique described above to bring out the shaft of sunlight on the slate and mosses in the foreground to lighten the light parts without lightening the dark parts.

We probably need to get together some time to understand the capabilities and benefits of the respective software packages ;)

Each STEP has an opacity %age equivalent to that on a LAYER and can be turned on/off individually. The ones checked 'on' act cumulatively without having to decide on a % opacity for higher layers. The steps all get saved in a saved .nef file whether on or off and whether originating from a nef or jpg, so you can revisit/re-edit as on a .psd

The 'Control points' do this by acting either within their radius as set or also bounded by a selection shape - for brightness,contrast, R,G,B,warmth ± - or in 'linked enhancements' ie employing additional filters from the menus.

The 'partial selection' zones also define a boundary (with optional feathering and opacity) within which any combination of other 'enhancements' work that are in menus. This does not however apply to sharpening; that can only be done on the camera settings (best), ie only on .nef, or there is unsharp mask (with usual attendant dangers). So for what you described, you would have to start sharp everywhere (why I did it in DPP on your CR2) and then use blur filtering where you didn't want it.

Now why didn't I think of that. Love to only am slightly confined to home except for limited excursions at present, but you are welcome here, as are any WPF members, for a quickie meet.

Absolutely right here. But I keep‘0’ sharpness in my camera and push sharpness to 3 during raw processing. Tell me if I’m doing anything wrong here.
..And it’s a great eye opener. Thanks a ton Gidders for this.
Chris, I’ve just ordered my Aperture from Apple Store here. They don’t keep it in their stock as it’s special software. Price here is £200.

Chris, there's no need to pay out over £500 for CS3 as Elements 6 costs about £65 and does everything that most photographers would want. The Gimps is free and is pretty good. A newcomer to photography who wants to take more than snapshots will soon want to move onto Photoshop.

It's interesting what you say about architects not using Autocads. I'm a structural engineer and work from architects' drawing daily. I agree that most architects won't use Autocads, but here's the thing: very few of them know how to use computer aided drawing software correctly. It is generally just seen as a substitute for a pencil, without taking advantage of the various facilitites that it has - sometimes resulting in drawings that take longer than by hand or lead to potentially serious errors.

I think that to get the most from any piece of software (whatever its use) it must be used correctly and fully - there's little point in using it otherwise.

Yes Rudra, Aperture 1.5 is down to £220 here (more tax), rumour says 1.6 in the offing, but I need newer computer for even trial version and have just spent n years frivolity money on 80-400 lens. Anyone wanting to see if they can do the masking Clive describes in Aperture??

Mike: does PSE6 have curves, essential to my mind? - and then its back to square 1, if you are going to end up with CS3, might as well start there as I assume all the menus and everything else possible is different even if most of the same stuff is included? - or has there been the longed for re-write and a bit of consistency?

I really am NOT trying to say there is an 'all-things-to-all-men' alternative, but am trying to explore if there are alternatives that will take keen learners most of the way faster and cheaper...and maybe in one or two areas even further.

What are these super costs of Aperture? Amazon sells it for £149 and on ebay you can get it for £70. If it is an older copy it automatically updates to the latest version via Software update.

Rudra

As I understand it in camera sharpening only applies if you are shooting JPGs - in which case you would probably want a little sharpening applied. RAW files always look a little soft 'straight out of the camera'.

At the conversion from RAW stage I apply what ever noise reduction setting I feel are appropriate (in lightroom I have a set of standard ISO dependenant settings that are applied automatically when my RAW files are imported.

However I apply zero sharpening at the time of converting from RAW (which is probably why the colour original image I posted of Victoria looked soft). I will then apply any retouching to lines, wrinkles, spots etc, brightening of eyes, darkening of lips etc.

The final step before printing is then to apply sharpening either via smart sharpen (CS2/3) or unsharp mask. In either case I do this on a separate layer so that I can mask off any areas I do not want to sharpen (eg skin tones) and then also fade the opacity until I have the degree of sharpening I want. (In the case of Victoria, with hindsite it is perhaps a tad oversharpened in some areas but this was down sampled for the web from a file prepared for printing A4 - thats my excuse & I'm sticking to it ;) )

I'm following the thread with interest. Masterclass from Clive a bonus. :) :)

I think Chris's point is very valid particularly for anyone on a limited budget. What gives best bang for your bucks is then the most important question.

Don

Yes, I follow the same process in CS2.

Andy, I see you are right and Aperture is available much cheaper inc 'buy now' UK source £85. Just I would need a new computer to go with it. Also, what does it actually DO? How about asking Clive for his RAW as I did and doing a comparative for us? Clive & I are also tentatively plotting a software workshop, would you be interested in coming Brumwards to do the honours with Aperture?

On sharpening in-camera, I assume all decent cameras have settings within (as 350D & D80) so that you can shoot with your normal/preferred settings of sharpness, saturation, contrast and only need to touch them during RAW conversion if it is a different shot from the usual.

Hi Chris, I would be very interested in the workshop, but short of bringing my G5 dual core desktop with me it might be difficult. My laptop is an old Titanium Powerbook which will not run Aperture. But let me have a think and I might be able to lay my hands on a more up to date Laptop. If Clive would send me the RAW file in question I'll show you what Aperture can do. As Don says this is becoming a very interesting thread.

For sharpening, I use a two-layer method with USM or use high pass filter and layer blending mode. Both methods give similar results, better than USM alone, but rely on layers, for which I understand requires PS.

Elements 5 does not have curves. However, I find shadows/highlights together with layer blending modes gives results that I find quite acceptable.

Andy, Chris, etc

I'd be more than happy to come on a workshop. Andy, I have a pretty good laptop you could use and I could arrange to come over then go down together.

Thoughts?

Derek - Here are the minimum system requirements - can you meet them?
Minimum system requirements

One of the following Macintosh computers: Mac Pro; Power Mac G5 with 1.6GHz or faster PowerPC G5 processor; MacBook Pro; MacBook; 15- or 17-inch PowerBook G4 with 1.25GHz or faster PowerPC G4 processor; Mac mini with Intel Core Solo or Intel Core Duo processor; iMac with 1.8GHz or faster PowerPC G5 or Intel Core Duo processor
1GB of RAM (2GB required for Mac Pro)
5GB of disk space for application, sample projects, and tutorial
DVD drive for installation
Mac OS X v10.4.8

Do camera setting affect RAW files???
 

I keep seeing quotes like this and somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure that, if you shoot in RAW, then the camera settings for sharpness, saturation, contrast etc have NO impact on the RAW file - thats the point of RAW - the camera makes no decisions for you - they only effect if you are shooting in JPG :confused:

I'll do some tests somethime when I get a minute, but I'm fairly sure this is the case - happy to be proved wrong :rolleyes:

As you say, RAW is designed to keep everything possible and does.

What it is is that the settings in the camera pre-set the variables for that file for a RAW converter program. From 350D in DPP, there is a set of sliders equivalent to those in camera 'parameters'. From 80D there are 4 'non-picture controls' which, if you do revisit, show camera settings as 'unchanged' for you to change if you wish - or you can just skip that step.

On your CR2, the sharpness slider shows up as 1 on a 10 point scale whereas contrast, colour tone and saturation come through as 5.

My instinct is that the manufacturer's own software has the closest analogue to the camera's built-in computer, so to sharpen Victoria, I set scale to say 7 in DPP rather than mess with it in editing software. In DPP, setting the sharpness scale higher than 7 usually leads to halos and noise, same as careless use of unsharp mask - maybe that is all it is. In NX the sharpen in the camera controls is far superior to using USM later, but that is available for .nef origin files only.

Just to add a voice of caution to this headlong stampede towards technology!
Too often we use software to try and rescue a crap shot. I think it worth reminding ourselves that the secret to good photography is great composition and correct exposure - not "my computer's more powerful than yours". :D :D :D

The sharpness function in DPP is very basic to say the least, I doubt if many people would use DPP for sharpening - same for noise reduction. These are far better done in a better image editor.
I leave it set on 0 and do all my sharpening in CS2, even then straight USM sharpening is fairly crude unless you use masks as it will sharpen globally which is rarely whats needed. The 'smart sharpen' function gives you a bit more control as you can reduce the sharpening effect in the shadows and/or highlights.
As for halos through sharpening, this should never happen because it means is that you have oversharpened. One thing you should always do when sharpening is to view the image at 100% and if you see halos then reduce the amount until they disappear.

Having said that, I do like DPP for converting my RAWS but all I usually do is the adjust Exposure and white balance before transfer to CS2.

I've been thinking about what Roy says above and been back over my posts - Looking back I rarely sharpen anything - so how many of us do automatically sharpen images?

Are you shooting RAw or jpeg?

I think if you shoot in RAW then most images could do with a bit of sharpening but if you shoot in jpeg then sharpening has has already been applied (unless you have turned it off) so there would be less need to sharpen any more.

I shoot RAW & JPEG but tend to use the JPEG versions for most online work. I only use the RAW for stuff I want to print and that goes from Aperture straight into CS3, but again looking back, I notice I rarely sharpen.

Again, I think we begin to misunderstand - the guts of the camera is an array of posh light meters (see eg http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sensors.htm ) wired to a microcomputer.

The manufacturer does the wiring and programming so as to suit most purposes, fairly loosely in 'unprogrammed' modes, much more elaborately in programmed ones (for point-and-shooters), but nevertheless programmed with as much control left to us as we care to take up.

So there is no such thing as 'no sharpening', at very least there is the minimum level the manufacturer has deemed sensible to give us as a starting point, set for a softish image in case that is what we want. Setting slightly higher levels of 'sharpening during conversion' either in the camera or conversion software is needed to give crispness if not sharpness. Canon & Nikon (group) use different type of sensors, so degrees of latitude are different. Where are you Robski, you are the guy that really understands?

I doubt if any of us lot do, but you can also plug the camera straight into a printer and in that case the manual gives instructions for processing roughly equivalent to the RAW stage of DPP + red-eye removal and other common tweaks. Just gives some idea of the computer circuitry within the camera.

Why do you need to sharpen at all during conversion - you can do this after the file has been converted :confused: