I was surprised, but what is your most used/favourite Photography App that you use ??

Exodist said:

So, looks like I am adding Pixelmator to my tool belt.

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I knew it lol But it is a great little Program though. I Love it, and used it to Post Process my Photo's

Exodist said:

EDIT:
Can anyone recommend a good Photostich program. I don't do Panoramas but maybe 1 or 2 times a year, but would like to have one as friendly as Photomerge is in PS. I have been trying Hugin, but its so overkill and complex. It just makes it overwhelming and quality seems like crap when I do get it to halfway work.

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Have a look at this page of Ken Rockwell on Photo Stitching.He has some good info there,Panoramic Photo Software, but i have heard good things about PTGUI, but then comes down to how much you want to spend as well.

EDIT : This looks like a Popular one too. EDIT 2 : Oops thats for Aperture.
I did have one on my Mac, but ill have to look through my TimeMachine BU's and see if i can find it, as i have deleted it, reason being, if i wanted Panorama, my iPhone5 does a great job, and i can't think od a time where i would be doing Panorama shots with my Mac. Im thinking it was the PTGUI Trial as it did a good job, but i had 3 images, used with a tripod, but it was the 2nd or 3rd day after i had my Nikon and didn't lock in the settings, so 2 of them, had very different exposure's and brightness so it didn't look the best. See below and don't laugh ;P

I will download PTGui and try it.

LOL don't feel bad, I went out last month one afternoon to get some HDRs and had left the ISO on AUTO.. :-/

I think I have found a really great photo stitch program. And whats even more great is that its free. Canon PhotoStich comes with the camera when you buy it, I just forgot about it because i never used it. Seems you can get updates for it from Canons website, but the only way to get the program is to have the CD. I have managed to stitch photos together that Photoshop wouldn't or couldn't.

Also as a further update with just a few days left on my trail of Pixelmator, I am still loving it. I even re-downloaded PS Elements one last go and worked with just it for a full afternoon. In the end, I just couldn't stand the lack of options with the effect filters/tools. The HDR options were so bland it made you feel like someone forgot to add some code in there. Plus the pano software constantly failed trying to stitch together some night photos I had.

So my digital workflow is now officially:
Lightroom 5, Photomatix Pro, Pixelmator, and Canon PhotoStitch.

Very economical and still very powerful.

Adding a new program to my digital tools belt.

Star Stax. Used for blending images of star trails into one image. Recommend by a few high end photographers online, its multi platform and free. Though they do take donations, so thats something to consider. Software - StarStaX

I just upgraded from Photoshop Elements 7 to 12. It's capable of some remarkable tasks. I recommend it highly. It's reasonably priced too.
Photoshop Elements Techniques Learning Center – Photoshop Elements User

Backlighting said:

I just upgraded from Photoshop Elements 7 to 12. It's capable of some remarkable tasks. I recommend it highly. It's reasonably priced too.
Photoshop Elements Techniques Learning Center – Photoshop Elements User

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I found it to limiting. Even though it comes with Photomerge and HDR Pro, the feature set on both was to limited compared to the PS CS6 equivalent.

In the end, I found Pixelmator a much better option since I already had Photomatix Pro and Canons Photostich software. All of which were less then half the cost of PSE and offered way more functionality.

Had Photoshop for a while but as others have noted, it became more than I needed. Have stuck with Aperture since 2008, and now have NIK plugins as well as Photomatrix.
For me the best part of Aperture is the filing system, would be hard to switch. A lot like Nikon and Canon. Once you have been with one for a long while, it would be hard to change because of the investment in lenses and accessories.
The time and effort to change Libraries and reorganize storage would be considerable. Just need Apple to step up with Aperture 4 and keep it's comparatively small following happy.

Thought you guys would find this article interesting reading (it's aimed at iOS, not OS X, photo-editing apps) -- and yes, I wrote this one:

My Five: Chas' photo-editing apps | Electronista

chas_m said:

Thought you guys would find this article interesting reading (it's aimed at iOS, not OS X, photo-editing apps) -- and yes, I wrote this one:

My Five: Chas' photo-editing apps | Electronista

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Hello Chas
Your view is appreciated.
Me, when I'm extremely comfortable with an app that does everything I need, such as
PE 12, it takes a lot for me to switch. I love skating thru the apps I know very well. To each his own.

Having been actively involved in photography since I was a kid, I'm spoiled with the features of still cameras. I rarely use anything else.
Now if someone can put the features I like with still cameras into a iPad or iPhone, I'd be the first one to buy it.
Happy New Year
-Backlighting

Been using a new software title the past month or so since my last post on this thread and trying it out. Its a open source app called Time Lapse Assembler. Its a super simple app that takes photos and builds a video file from them. From recently trying to dump 500 or so files into iMovie. This app can simplify your video editing. Now this program doesn't do any audio support as all it does is build photos to a movie file. It supports file formats h.264, mp4v, photo-jpeg and raw. It has quality setting in Max, High, Norm and low. And it offers support for scaling and resizing the images. And offers of course lets you choose the files per second speed. Its fairly easy to use, choose your file directory (files must be in order and the only the files in the directory that will be used in the video), choose your parameters and hit Encode. Even on my Mac Mini its encodes at a very reasonable speed.

You can get it here: Time Lapse Assembler | Day of the New Dan

Enjoy..

Pixelmator 3.1 is out . . . BIG improvements for the power of the new Mac Pro and some for us lonely Notebook types

TattooedMac said:

Pixelmator 3.1 is out . . . BIG improvements for the power of the new Mac Pro and some for us lonely Notebook types

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I was just going to post about this!! ;D

Full 16bit per channel color has been added. This even surpasses what PSE can do.. This update alone makes the app completely valid for professional photography editing. I am just ecstatic over this update..

Photo editing software

Hello, brand new to forum. I was wondering if someone could recommend photo editing software for a novice, me. I am going between PSE and Lightroom. Thank You!

I use Lightroom as my base application were I do 90% of my photo retouching. I use Pixelmator for photo manipulations like moving objects and adding special effects and sometimes text. I also find Pixelmator to be much better then PhotoShop Elements. Pm also supports full 16bit color unlike PSE that only support 8bit color. Plus Pm is only $29 on the App Store and if you go to their website you can download a 30 day trail version. Not only is Pm a better value, its more feature rich and better looking program.

Hope this helps.. And welcome to the forum. Tells us about what type of Photography you do and we may can offer other software that can assist you.

Here is a list of Programs I use and what they are for.

Lightroom5: Post Processing
Pixelmator 3.1: Photo Manipulation
Photomatix Pro 5: HDR Processing
Star StaX 10.9: Rendering Star Trail Images
Canon Photo Stich: Panoramic Photos
Time Lapse Assembler: Rendering Video from Photos
iMovie: Processing Video files.

Cheers,
Joe

margber said:

Hello, brand new to forum. I was wondering if someone could recommend photo editing software for a novice, me. I am going between PSE and Lightroom. Thank You!

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Depends on what you call editing ??

Editing, meaning changing, Hue, Colour, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and so on, or Editing, meaning, manipulating the image, like moving objects, putting in another object, rendering 2 images together and so on ??
For the later, I'm a Pixelmator person like Joe above is, but if its just for Post Processing, then i would go for LR, even though i use Aperture (there are rumours of a .v4 coming out).

Again as Joe above has pointed out, there is a lot of different Apps to do a whole range of things, so if your looking for JUST a Photo Editor come Manager, then Lightroom is for you, or Aperture

Cheers

favourite app? not an editing app, but one I use a lot when out in the field is dofmaster