Some of you have been asking questions about which tools and what versions and such, so I thought it best to write another discussion about software and specifically about image manipulation tools.
First, there is no need to invest a lot of money in tools like Photoshop CS 3 or CS 4 if you have not already done so. Photoshop is expensive. This is a narrative photography workshop and our focus is on our stories, and the way in which we construct them and present them. This is not a photography tools and image enhancement workshop so we need to worry about whether we have the ‘best’ or the ‘latest’. We just need the workable.
There are some excellent image manipulation tools that pretty much do all if not more than Photoshop CS 3/4 offer. Remember that Photoshop was not specifically designed for photographers, and there are products now available that were in fact specifically designed for photographers.
Tools like GIMP and GIMPShop are free, created under the Open Source software development structure. They are reliable and excellent and do most all that Photoshop can. And there are simpler, more basic products also available on the internet but the nice thing about the GIMP structure is that it can handle most all RAW formats including the .DNG format.
Also, there are the more simpler photographic tools like Lightroom and Aperture, but one that few people know about and is in fact very good is LightZone. It quite cheap, less than $100, and more importantly, it is fast, completely non-destructive in its image tools and of a size that will not grab a lot of your hard disk space.
I already discussed alternatives to iView Media Pro in a previous post.
Ok, enough about toys!
