Please advise me on photo processing

Hi

I have bought a Canon EOS40D and am now considering software for image processing. I already have iPhoto 2008 running on a new top spec iMac and find it much superior to previous versions.

Q1: Yesterday I downloaded the free trial of Aperture 2. I can't really see that it adds a great deal to iPhoto 2008's capabilities. Am I missing the point?

Q2: I know that Canon provide software with the camera and I have loaded it. Again, iPhoto downloads automatically from the camera and organizes images very well. The Canon menus lack screen crispness and I cant see any additional functionality with the Canon software that iPhoto doesn't provide. Again, am I missing something crucial here?

Q3: iPhoto only has fairly limited photo manipulation tools so I downloaded the 30 day free trial of Photoshop Elements (and the Bridge tool). I have yet to find the time to have a proper look at it. Is this the best tool for image manipulation for a (very) amateur photographer?

Q4: Can Aperture do what PE does? I could not readily find many of the capabilities. I also get the impression that Aperture is quite slow even on the fast 2.8G iMac. I only have 2Gb memory and may upgrade this to 4Gb if necessary.

Many thanks for any expert advice.

For a newish amateur, I would recommend Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 AND a good book on its use. Elements is a good compromise between excellent functionality and a reasonable price. However, image editing is not a fundamentally simple thing - learning the basics with a good book will pay you back over and over.

AJB said:

Hi

I have bought a Canon EOS40D and am now considering software for image processing. I already have iPhoto 2008 running on a new top spec iMac and find it much superior to previous versions.

Q1: Yesterday I downloaded the free trial of Aperture 2. I can't really see that it adds a great deal to iPhoto 2008's capabilities. Am I missing the point?

Click to expand...

Aperture is more powerful in control and raw processing. If you are shooting just jpegs then to be honest iphoto is plent enough for you. Me personally my workflow is processing and adjusting the raw images in aperture, i then export them as full scale tiffs and jepgs. the jepegs i import to iphoto for quick viewing when displaying, and the tiffs i store on an external drive as backup.

Q2: I know that Canon provide software with the camera and I have loaded it. Again, iPhoto downloads automatically from the camera and organizes images very well. The Canon menus lack screen crispness and I cant see any additional functionality with the Canon software that iPhoto doesn't provide. Again, am I missing something crucial here?

Click to expand...

I am a Nikon Shooter, but I have heard good things about the Canon software, but again Aperture can do it as well.

Q3: iPhoto only has fairly limited photo manipulation tools so I downloaded the 30 day free trial of Photoshop Elements (and the Bridge tool). I have yet to find the time to have a proper look at it. Is this the best tool for image manipulation for a (very) amateur photographer?

Click to expand...

Depends on what you mean by manipulation. It is more advanced that iphoto in what you can do, but if you are looking to make you images look liek some of the ones online or that you see, then no; you would more than likely need a photoshop CS, as they have way more tools at you exposal. The use of bridge is a good way to organize your projects, as long as you keep the number of projects to a minimum.

Q4: Can Aperture do what PE does? I could not readily find many of the capabilities. I also get the impression that Aperture is quite slow even on the fast 2.8G iMac. I only have 2Gb memory and may upgrade this to 4Gb if necessary.

Click to expand...

Depends on what you are looking to do. You wont be able to get the "cool effects" you see on many images now aday, but with aperture 2 they have added the ability to use plugins which is huge. As for speed, look at my profile to see what computers i use and you will see that you have plent of enough power on ur imac to run it.

On a side not take a look at lightroom also, but i like aperture way better.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the advice and very helpful input. Yesterday I spend the entire day fiddling with Aperture, Photoshop, screen calibrations, printing and so on and have a better idea of what is out there now. I also looked at GIMP and some other free or shareware programs, but decided that the disadvantages are too great.

I think PE will do most of what I want with photo manipulation as it does have layers and most of the processing tools that I need to remove unwanted things from prints etc. I think Photoshop CS is a step too far for me in both cost and complexity.

I also worked through the Canon software manual and played with the software. I can see that it does many of the things that Aperture does, though Aperture does it more cleanly. My intention is to start shooting in RAW as that will give me much more PP felxibility. I understand that the basic modes on the 40D are JPEG only though.

I am not sure (have not looked) if iPhoto handles Raw. With the relatively low volume of shots that I will produce, I suspect that if iPhoto will handle RAW images, then that plus Photoshop Elements will be sufficient for now as I can tweak the raw images with the bundled Canon software.

I presume Photoshop Elements is capable of saving RAW images?

shoot raw, use lightroom...