Does photography capture the soul?

Thanks for the beauty. Sometimes you find inspiration when your not even looking.

Adam has the same expression on his face when Caleb is trying to kiss him that I have whenever Darren kisses me.

Nice stuff Johno. You do your beautiful subjects justice with your craft.

I’m sure you smiled when you typed this: “windows version not available yet”

I want to be like you.

Hey, so my wife and I are learning and soaking up as much photography stuff as we can…so…I don’t know much, but is photoshop elements all I need? I mean, am I right in thinking that it is going to do virtualy everything that I want/need to do? And if so, what does this new mac program do that adobe photoshop doesn’t?

Good question. Here’s how I like to explain it… At least to myself.

There are Kia mini wagons and there are Toyota Land Cruisers… Both can get you where you are going however, one has more power and options to go places that would make the other wet it’s pants.

Keeping this a short post…

There are point and shoot cameras for $100 and there are DSLR’s for $700… Just for the body not including all the interchangeable lenses… which cost as much or more than the camera body alone.

Same idea with the software. Right now I don’t think PSE is the wrong software for you. However, there is a lot of customization in the higher end software…

As you learn to shoot pics in Priority mode, Aperture mode or even Manuel, you’ll also want to fine-tune your prints via the software especially when you shoot pictures in RAW not JPG. There are many different color adjustments in Lightroom detailing highlights, shadows, etc.

The higher end you go, as you have done with your Nikon D50, you realize the road less traveled. It’s a lot more than a point and shoot.

Take it one step at a time. Go to dgrin and sign up for there forum. I have learned a lot from other photographers. Lurk for a while, then post a shot and sit back and learn from some great folks.

Give me a call anytime.

peace.

I’ve been immersed in this issue lately, as we’re trying to get our photo workflow figured out at the Palau Association, and we have a LOT of photos.

I’ve been using both Lightroom (since beta 1) and Aperture for a few months now, and I have mixed feelings about them both. Aperture started out with some amazing feature, but serious flaws, many of which have been addressed.

For those of you in the thread, these apps are mostly about workflow. Photoshop is great for manipulating images, but not great at managing thousands of images. Files in folders don’t cut it anymore. They’ll also do basic image manipulation, like color correcting.

Lightroom has a ways to go IMHO. It’s image editing tools are the strongest, but set management is broken and the UI isn’t my favorite. Who knows what it will cost in the end, too? If it’s really cheap (~$100US) then it might be a contenda’.

Aperture is an amazing experience. You have to see it to belive how it works with two monitors – there’s simply no better organizing/set creation experience out there. I hooked up a 17″ LCD to my PowerBook (yes, it works on the older stuff!) and it was soo cool – performance wasn’t bad, either. Seeing your images full-screen without chrome is a great way to work.

It has areas that need improvement. I hate the iPhoto-like all-photos-in-a-package file – annoying. Managing metadata could be better. Filters are cool, but if you stack ‘em up you better have new hardware.

They’re improving it more, now, though. Apps like these two are already encouraging me to shoot everything in RAW now – the dynamic range is worth it, and there’s no hit in the workflow arena now.

Rizzle, keep in mind that these two apps are targeted at professionals, and probably have more features than you might need. If you want to try one out, start with Lightroom, it’s probably the easiest to get started with, and it’s free for now.

I would like to try Aperture… Demo version? I don’t think they have one.

I guess I was set back by Apertures bad start and the “Minimum System Requirements” I know what my powerbook G4 can do and how it acts when pushed to it’s limits. So Aperture means upgrade to me.

True, there’s still things to fix in LR and my experience is only with LR so I’m kind of one sided. One feature I like is dropping the photo in PS for quick edit and then jumping back into LR and it’s there.

Can Aperture do the flash slideshow albums? Nice extra to have.

In the end, I have much to learn.

Thanks Allen.

peace.

I really appreciate your photography. It’s inspiring and I wish I knew more in that area. I’ll do my best with the info I have. You rock!

Hey, this is turning into a pattern for me and John and Allan. We need to all sit down and meet face to face sometime.

Ryan, them’s some good questions. And you’ve got some good discussion going here, all of which I agree with. However, you have started some discussion which may be a little confusing-’especially since we can get pretty passionate about this stuff. So, I’ll do a little summarizing and if I get anything wrong, the guys can set me straight.

When you asked “is Photoshop Elements(PSE) all I need?” I think Johno was saying it is, as long as you don’t mind driving a Kia. PSE is a mini-van where Photoshop is a Land Cruiser. Both will get you to the store and back. Only one will get you to Timberline lodge with 18 inches of snow on the ground. Most of the time I just need to go to the store, occasionally I like to go to Timberline.

PSE will give you the ability to do lots of adjustments to images. Use it for now, see if you enjoy adjusting images. If you do, and you want to take it to the next level, go get Photoshop; the skills you learned in PSE will be immediately rewarded.

Next you asked “what does this new mac program do that Adobe Photoshop doesn’t?” Johno, didn’t really address this, but Allan touched on it and then muddied the water by bringing up Aperture. The new program you are asking about is Adobe Lightroom. It is designed for what we call digital workflow.

Digital workflow is when a photographer wants to do image adjustment on a slew of pictures, very quickly. Like when I shoot a wedding, I may have 500 pictures that I need to make white balance, levels, exposure, cropping, and perhaps other adjustments to. In Photoshop I basically do it one image at a time. With Lightroom I can work on groups of images and easily adjust and see these adjustments on multiple images simultaneously, saving me lots of time. If you are not doing big photo shoots, or if you just find yourself working on 1-5 images at a time this may not be needed. Also, Photoshop and PSE allow you to do image manipulation, like cloning out unwanted backgrounds or people, taking open eyes from one picture and placing them on another where someone blinked, and so forth which is not available in a workflow app. (BTW, if you’ve seen the current picture on my blog of my nephews and dog, it is a combination of 3 different pictures; I find it difficult to get them all to cooperate at the same time, so I shoot a lot and then combine the best in Photoshop.)

What Allan did bring to the discussion is something that you didn’t even ask about, but is of big concern to anyone with lots of images. How do we catalogue and access them?

Allan admits that image manipulation is best in Lightroom (which is what we would expect from Adobe), but he doesn’t like its management features. It sounds like he likes Aperture better, but still longs for something more. Imagine coming home from a week-long trip with 3000 images. Now do that 4 more times so you have 15000 images. Then your boss wants some pics from the crowd where kids are sitting with their parents. How do you find that image amongst the 15k of images that you have shot? If the tool you are using for workflow is capable of tagging and cataloging those images you are way ahead of the game. (I’m not sure Lightroom or Aperture will ever satisfy this requirement, but I definitely hear what Allan is saying.)