Hello Mamas -
Does anyone have any experience with Adobe Photoshop, and would you recommend it for editing photos? I am wanting an upgrade from the software that came with my camera, but not sure that I want to pay the cost for Photoshop unless it is absolutely worth it. Specifically, I would love to be able to fuzz out the backgrounds of some less than professional photos, and be able to color only a portion of a photo (like a dress or hairbow and leave the subject b/w). If anyone can recommend a different software with these capabilities, that would be great too.
Thanks,
Martha
Thank you for all the great advice, I ended up purchasing Photoshop Elements this week, since Staples had a rebate on it.
My husband has Photoshop on his computer and I have Ulead Photo Impact on mine. I like Ulead better! And its cheaper!!! It's easy to use and you can airbrush and fade backgrounds just like Photoshop. You can do all kinds of neat tricks!!
Download the free trial. :)
I have PhotoShop Elements which is like a diet version of PhotoShop. It has all the basic features that a person who isn't a graphic artist would use and it costs WAY less than the full on PhotoShop.
I have it and very rarely use it because I can't figure out how to do anything with it. It is so frustrating! I have used Corel Snapfire and it is great and very easy to use. I definitely don't recomend Adobe. Good luck finding something.
It's totally worth it if you can afford (and even find) the classes to figure out how to use it! I got the updated version at our office recently, but even my office can't afford to get us training! I bought the home based version for my mother-in-law a couple of Christmases ago. It was a lot less expensive and (supposedly) a lot more user friendly than the full-blown version. She has yet to be able to use it however, because she can't find training classes for the software. I know Microsoft Office like the back of my hand, but this photoshop is not user-friendly at all. It's definately not something you can just "pick up" or learn using a manual. Very frustrating! I would love to hear from other moms out there who happen to know where someone could get photoshop training and at a reasonable price. :-(
Yes, I really like Photoshop. It is fun to play with and you can some cool tricks with it. Look around and get a good deal on it. They sometimes offer rebates or you can get it at Costco or Sam's.
I use Adobe Photoshop Elements. I'm not sure what the differences are between Elements and the full blown version. But I know that I can do everything I want in Elements and it costs a lot less. You can definitely blur the background and color in portions of the photo.
I just created a group photo of my coworkers, but they weren't all there at the same time. So I took one group photo and then took pictures of the people who weren't there and pasted them in. Unless you looked really closely, you couldn't really tell.
I just sold our Adobe photoshop, too bad you didn't post this about 3 weeks ago. Its nice, my husband had gotten via the VA education for a college class. I just found that it was just soooo involved and I didn't have time to figure it all out, so thats why I sold it, but it was def fun to play with and if you know what your doing, I'm sure it'd be awesome.
picasa is something I use a lot for editing and it is free. Just google picasa as it is from picasa. Paint.net is also free and it has more options with editing like color tinting a bow adding wings as so forth. Photoshop is good but you need to either take a class or get a really good book to help you navigate it or you will only use a VARY small % of the program as it is a very start from scratch program. Photoshop elements is a little easier and self teaching but you wont be able to to everything that you can in photoshop. There are other programs out there that give you the same options photo shop does but is a little easier to navigate if you are gonna be a self taught user like Photoimpact and such. Good luck! :)
