Photo Editing Software

[Hockeyman55]

Many have asked me about what programs I use for my photos so figured I would start a thread regarding photo editing software. Feel free to comment on what you use or any question you can think of.

The real reason I wanted to stat this was to let everyone know about Lightroom 5 beta out right now for testing. Its active until June and then of course they will make you purchase it but from what I have seen it has some really awesome new features that 4 doesn't have. The two that stick out the most to me are the new clone brush tool and being able to work on your photos if they are stored on an external hard drive without having the drive plugged into computer. LR4 does have a clone tool but all it is right now is a circle and really doesn't offer much flexibility besides being able to change the size of the circle. Having a brush gives you so much more flexibility (especially if you need to delete someone's head from a picture like I did to Felipe, sorry buddy ) The smart preview feature is what I am excited about. Now I can work on old photos without having to drag around my external harddrives and also now I can free up my internal hard drive by moving all my photos to external. Any of you guys out there that have gone thru this know exactly what I am talking about



Here is the link and also the list of features with descriptions

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2013/04/lightroom-5-beta-now-available.html

Lightroom 5 beta Enhancements

Advanced Healing Brush
Lightroom 2 added the ability to quickly remove spots and imperfections from your images. Photographers could only heal circular areas, but many unwanted elements in photographs have irregular shapes. In Lightroom 5 beta we’ve overhauled the Spot Removal algorithm.

With the Advanced Healing Brush, photographers can now adjust the size of the brush and move it in precise paths, so unwanted objects and flaws—even those with irregular shapes like threads—just disappear. Lightroom 5 even let’s portrait photographers achieve subtle, natural looking results when they smooth wrinkles or fix blemishes on their subjects.



Upright

There are many things that can come between a photographer and the perfect photo. Not holding a camera straight, or taking a picture from an odd perspective or with the wrong lens, can cause a subject to appear tilted or askew when imported into the Lightroom catalog and viewed on a computer screen. Correcting such images often requires a number of separate adjustments. A photographer might rotate an image, adjust it vertically and horizontally, and change its aspect and perspective. Finding the optimal combination of these settings often relies on a time-consuming trial and error approach.

Lightroom 5 extends the range of image enhancements available to photographers with Upright. The new Upright tool gives photographers four easy methods to straighten tilted images with a single click. Upright analyzes images and detects skewed horizontal and vertical lines, even straightening shots where the horizon is hidden.



Radial Filter

Busy backgrounds or bright colors can distract viewers from the focal point of an image. Photographers may try to reduce the distraction by cropping an image, but this can result in the loss of interesting detail and balance. Another approach to focusing the viewer’s attention is to create a vignette effect, but this only works if a subject is in the center of an image.

The Radial Gradient tool in Lightroom 5 now offers photographers more flexibility and control in how they guide a viewer’s eye to emphasize the important parts of an image. Using this tool, photographers can create off-center vignette effects or multiple vignette areas in a single image. This local adjustment control lets photographers minimize distractions and focus a viewer’s attention exactly where it should be.



Smart Previews

Photographers need flexibility, and new solid state drives and ultra-light laptops let them work from anywhere. However, the limited storage capacity of these devices restricts access to complete image libraries and original raw files, which are often stored on detachable storage devices or desktop computers. Inability to access to the files they need impacts their ability to edit and share high-quality images while on the go.

New Smart Previews in Lightroom 5 let photographers easily work with images without bringing their entire library with them. They just generate smaller, stand-in files called Smart Previews and leave the originals back at the studio. Photographers can make adjustments or metadata additions to Smart Previews and apply their changes to the fullsize originals later when they reconnect to the device holding the original files, all nondestructively, of course.

For many photographers, generating Smart Previews as they import their images gives them the freedom to disconnect from their storage device at any time, leave the originals at home or in the studio, and edit the Smart Previews from wherever they are. Building Smart Previews while importing is easy, just check the Build Smart Previews checkbox within the File Handling panel in the Import dialog box.

Improved Photo Book Creation

In Lightroom 4, Adobe introduced a robust Photo Book creation workflow. The Book Module makes it easy for photographers to create beautiful, custom books for clients, friends, or for their own personal enjoyment. The Book module provides everything photographers need to create a Photo Book and export it to a PDF for online viewing or directly upload it to the online printing site, Blurb.

Now Lightroom 5 lets photographers customize Photo Books more than ever, with a variety of easy-to-use book templates that you can now edit to create a customized look. Photographers can add page numbers, individual photo captions, and page captions.

Slideshows with Videos and Still Images

Lightroom 4 provided photographers tools to do more with video clips—from organizing, viewing, and making adjustments and edits to playing and trimming clips and extracting still images from video footage. With Lightroom 5 photographers can now easily combine still images, video clips, and music in creative HD video slideshows that can be viewed on almost any computer or device.

 

[Octobers Fade]

I will have to look into this....none of my pictures are processed.

 

[JungleSkip]

I've been playing around with Lightroom 5 and I LOVE it. I was only using the software that came with my camera, and LR is so much better.

 

[maxairmike]

Have to go download that LR5 beta! And I totally feel you about the hard drive space issue. I've got about 75GB of images of the parks and a trip I took late last year that I should start moving over to my main external. The external drive editing will be very nice with LR5, and may really sway me if I can edit remotely via the internet as well (though I'll have to test both my HDD sharing and network connections for speed)

I mostly use LR3 with sometimes using Nik Color Efex when I need to bring out details I can't otherwise, or have a processing method in mind that isn't just my typical colors and exposure leveling. Sometimes I'll pop into Photoshop for some other purposes like selective coloring (I love doing that, but it can be hard to find good shots for it) or making "toy" photos. I find myself using Photoshop a lot less for actual pictures outside of the powerful resizing tools, since I really don't like how they're set up in Lightroom.

 

[Hockeyman55]

I will have to look into this....none of my pictures are processed.

Even if you don't use it for processing its a really great tool and RAW to JPEG converter.

- - - Updated - - -

I've been playing around with Lightroom 5 and I LOVE it. I was only using the software that came with my camera, and LR is so much better.

I downloaded beta 5 this morning but have yet to take it for a spin. Once I get home from work I want to mess around with it. I love LR4 so with these new features its a no brainer for me to upgrade

 

[Hockeyman55]

Have to go download that LR5 beta! And I totally feel you about the hard drive space issue. I've got about 75GB of images of the parks and a trip I took late last year that I should start moving over to my main external. The external drive editing will be very nice with LR5, and may really sway me if I can edit remotely via the internet as well (though I'll have to test both my HDD sharing and network connections for speed)

I mostly use LR3 with sometimes using Nik Color Efex when I need to bring out details I can't otherwise, or have a processing method in mind that isn't just my typical colors and exposure leveling. Sometimes I'll pop into Photoshop for some other purposes like selective coloring (I love doing that, but it can be hard to find good shots for it) or making "toy" photos. I find myself using Photoshop a lot less for actual pictures outside of the powerful resizing tools, since I really don't like how they're set up in Lightroom.

I hated not being able to visit photos not on my internal hard drive. It showed a preview so I always wondered why I couldn't alter it. Im so happy they added it. Right now my laptop has 500gb and has about over 400gb of photos since last October My 1TB external has probably about 300gb worth prior to October. Do you have your external hooked up to your network? Mine just sits there in my room and I connect it to the laptop when needed. Is it pretty easy to connect to router and be able to access while out and about?

I love Nik and have actually been using Photoshop CS6 a lot more lately. After I do what i do in LR and Nik I toss it over to PS and have been running it thru high pass to sharpen the photo. I think it does a better job sharpening than using the LR sharpen tool, which adds a lot of noise.

 

[maxairmike]

Thanks for the tip on sharpening, I may try that out with CS5. My external is a pure network drive to start with, ethernet is the main port with one regular USB port to attach another drive to transfer stuff or expand the capacity. I've used it remotely before (working on a school project chilling in Panera...I miss those days), but it has been so long I forget how to do it.

Its a WD MyBook drive. It pretty much just works after the initial setup, which was a little confusing. I have the files set up to look exactly like how I have things organized on my laptop, so I just drag any new files/folders into the matching directory on the external. Makes it so much easier to find stuff, since if it isn't on my computer, I know exactly where it lives on the external. I always tend to forget the password I used for the configuration manager, though, so I have to reset it every time I need to use the manager.

 

[Hockeyman55]

Thanks for the tip on sharpening, I may try that out with CS5. My external is a pure network drive to start with, ethernet is the main port with one regular USB port to attach another drive to transfer stuff or expand the capacity. I've used it remotely before (working on a school project chilling in Panera...I miss those days), but it has been so long I forget how to do it.

Its a WD MyBook drive. It pretty much just works after the initial setup, which was a little confusing. I have the files set up to look exactly like how I have things organized on my laptop, so I just drag any new files/folders into the matching directory on the external. Makes it so much easier to find stuff, since if it isn't on my computer, I know exactly where it lives on the external. I always tend to forget the password I used for the configuration manager, though, so I have to reset it every time I need to use the manager.

I have a WD Elements Desktop External Hard Drive that was really pretty much plug and play. I set mine up the same way you did to mirror the folder on my laptop. I really only have pictures and videos on it so its pretty easy to keep organized. Im searching the interwebs now looking for ways to connect y UBS drive to my network

 

[maxairmike]

If you have a fairly new router/modem it probably has a USB port or two. You may need to go into the router/modem configuration software to set it up on the network, but it shouldn't be hard.

 

[Hockeyman55]

If you have a fairly new router/modem it probably has a USB port or two. You may need to go into the router/modem configuration software to set it up on the network, but it shouldn't be hard.

Even if its not a network hard drive? From what I read I may need something like this Linksys' Network Storage Link or D-Link's Wireless Network Storage Enclosure


This is what I have
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002QEBMB4/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[maxairmike]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can plug that into your router/modem and have it become a networked drive, or at least accessible over the network (not sure about multi-computer usage). I'm about to experiment with my girlfriend's 1TB USB drive if I can find the manual after I reconfigure mine. There might be an odd driver or something you have to use that makes it not just PnP, but I'm pretty sure you can do that. I can't imagine it would be much different than plugging a printer into the router/modem, just have to have the right drivers. If they don't exist through "official" channels, then that's a risk factor.

 

[Hockeyman55]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can plug that into your router/modem and have it become a networked drive, or at least accessible over the network (not sure about multi-computer usage). I'm about to experiment with my girlfriend's 1TB USB drive if I can find the manual after I reconfigure mine. There might be an odd driver or something you have to use that makes it not just PnP, but I'm pretty sure you can do that. I can't imagine it would be much different than plugging a printer into the router/modem, just have to have the right drivers. If they don't exist through "official" channels, then that's a risk factor.

I will have to check. Im not sure if my modem or router have a ubs port.


I messed with LR5 last night for a little bit and the only thing that stinks with the smart preview is you have to physically select each picture you want to have that option with. Its going to be so tedious for me to go thru all my albums and do that to.

 

[Hockeyman55]

Any of you guys using the beta version of LR5 having issues editing them in there and then sending to Photoshop and none of the changes you made in LR showing up in PS?

 

[maxairmike]

Haven't really used it too much yet. I'm going to try the leveling feature on a few problematic images later this evening. My first impression is that it really isn't anything different from LR3, but I haven't really gotten into the "meat" of the program yet.

 

[Hockeyman55]

Haven't really used it too much yet. I'm going to try the leveling feature on a few problematic images later this evening. My first impression is that it really isn't anything different from LR3, but I haven't really gotten into the "meat" of the program yet.

I love the clone brush. I used it to clone out someone in a shot and went to throw it into CS6 to sharpen and the cloned out image was back in the picture :bang:

 

[maxairmike]

Spent some time playing with LR5, and I think I have a greater appreciation for the smaller workflow changes than the major feature changes. Specifically I love how they've grouped all 3 of the HSL sliders for each color, since I like to adjust them on one specific color at a time, so it was annoying to jump between the tabs in LR3.

 

[Hockeyman55]

I have yet to dive to deep into it. I gave up on it the other day after I had the clone tool issue. I also noticed some of my highlights would give off a red color when I adjusted certain settings. Ive had that happen before but in a blue color. It went away the last time but didnt with LR5. I may just restart my computer and see if that helps clear it up

 

[maxairmike]

Check the histogram, and if you have any little triangle icons in a box at the top of it, click on them. I had the clipping "marks" show up as well and they were driving me nuts so I started clicking around to try and turn them off, and the little triangles at the top of the histogram are the toggles.

 

[Hockeyman55]

That may be what it is. I know it showed up once after my kids decided to start smacking the keyboard and hit some buttons

 

[Jakemeister]

I use paint.net I don't do a lot of heavy editing on my photos. I mainly use Curves, Soften, Auto-Level, and a few others to get my photos to my desired level. It does exactly what I need it to do with the 8 or 9 extensions I have downloaded for it. I suggest it for most amateurs who want to do light-mild editing.

http://www.getpaint.net/