Alternatives to PhotoShop.

[Shoot]

Was just wondering if anyone knew of any good alternatives to Photoshop as a complete Post Processing Package? I just cant justify the expense of Photoshop... but if there is nothing out there that comes close i may have to rethink my ideas.....

[radar]

Hi,

I use BibbleLabs' bibble as my main processor. They have a lite and pro version. You can get a trial version to try it for 30 days. The lite is $69USD. It basically does most of what I want these days. It runs on windows/mac/linux.

http://www.bibblelabs.com/

For extra processing, I use The Gimp. It is an open source equivalent to Photoshop. Some people also use UFRaw with it so you don't need the above bible. I find that the advantages of bibble more then make up for its small price. Gimp runs on Windows/Mac/Linux, find it at:

http://www.gimp.org/

Edit: UFraw is at: http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/

HTH,

André

[MHD]

I use GIMP and UFRAW....
very happy

[Shoot]

Thanks a million guys, am downloading them as we speak......

[losfp]

You don't find you need any of the "Pro" features, Andre? I'm always on the lookout for faster and quicker ways of batch processing RAWs...

[radar]

You don't find you need any of the "Pro" features, Andre? I'm always on the lookout for faster and quicker ways of batch processing RAWs...

I do use some of the pro features. Initially, I didn't use them so that's why I quoted the price on the lite version. Ability to use dual processors in the pro version is a big plus as it does speed up post processing. If you start with the lite, you can upgrade to the pro later. Bibblelabs is pretty good that way. Pro versin is $129USD.

Also for me, I use it on Linux and a Mac, so having the pro version allows me to do this.

André

[owen]

I've been using photoshop for about 7 years and am very familiar with it. I tried Gimp and Gimpshop but gimp was too awkward and gimpshop just sucked... was a bit buggy.

So I thought I'd try the Photoshop elements 5 and I"m surprised that I can still do most things that I need for photo work. I'll be buying that when my trial period times out.

[Raskill]

I'm a bibblepro user, but for cloning out I still use CS.

Bibble is really good, like has been said, you get it free for 30 days. If you want to try it for longer you can contact the developers and they give you an extension code.

[MattC]

My preference is RML or NC with PS CS2. RML is an excellent raw convertor (and inexpensive) but needs a decent computer.... It is a serious resource hog. It is best run using two computers - edit on one and run the batch processor (misleading name - the batch does all of the work) on another.

UFRaw is a good raw convertor that can be used as a standalone application (not just a Gimp plugin)

Gimp is 8bit with no colour management. I understand that colour management will be coming in the 2.4 release. No idea about 16bit (I am a bit behind after time away).

Cinepaint is an off-shoot of the Gimp project. It does handle 16bit files and iirc does have some colour management options. If checking out Gimp, I would highly recommend looking here: http://www.cinepaint.org/

Cheers

[DaveB]

I used to use Gimp as my main editor years ago. I eventually moved away from it as it didn't do 16-bit work or handle profiles.

Gimp is 8bit with no colour management. I understand that colour management will be coming in the 2.4 release. No idea about 16bit (I am a bit behind after time away).

I'm sure it'll be exciting when it gets here, but it's been "coming" for years now.
But otherwise the Gimp did its job well. FilmGimp (which became Cinepaint before I stopped using it) used the old Gimp UI (i.e. it split from Gimp before I got into Gimp) but at least it handled 16-bit files well.

I took up Photoshop CS when I moved to a full colour-managed environment on Macs, and these days use CS2. For a long time ACR has been my RAW converter for visible-light work, and working with Bridge and iView MediaPro this produces excellent results. But you've said you can't face the cost.
I know it's not officially released yet (there are a variety of rumours about actual release dates) but the official Lightroom release is not far away and the price will be have to be significantly less than the full Photoshop.

Recently I've been doing almost all my work through Lightroom, only using Photoshop for fancy outputs and for compositing/panoramas. For "straight" photography it should handle everything you need it to (including dust spotting - fancier cloning requires an external editor). It can integrate with external editors where required (I have it linked to Photoshop CS2 and to LightZone) and it handles profiles properly. And if you want to transfer your RAW-tweaking settings to ACR (rather than passing rendered TIFF/PSD files to the external editor) you can (not in the public 4.1 beta though).
Keep it in mind, although it's not publicly available NOW so that might put it out of contention for you. I'm not privy to a release date, but time is ticking by!

What functionality are you after when you refer to "a complete Post Processing Package"?
For example, this JPEG file was produced (from a CR2 original) via LR:

(I'm still trying to work out a decent crop for that)
Last week I shot several thousand exposures, and I finished all the sorting/labelling and most of the editing yesterday. All through LR (with IRaw Mono and LightZone linked into that for my IR shots).

[xorl]

Gimp is 8bit with no colour management. I understand that colour management will be coming in the 2.4 release.

There is limited colour management in the current releases (display filters). Depending on your requirements, you might be able to use visually calibrated sRGB.

No idea about 16bit (I am a bit behind after time away).

Gimp has been waiting on the GEGL project to deliver the infrastructure required to support 16bit editing. GEGL was stagnant for a long time, but recently it has made a lot of progress. 16bit Gimp is still a long way away, but it is looking much more likely now. I'm hanging out for it myself..

Cinepaint is an off-shoot of the Gimp project. It does handle 16bit files and iirc does have some colour management options. If checking out Gimp, I would highly recommend looking here: http://www.cinepaint.org/

Cinepaint can be useful in a tight spot, but in general I've found it to be slow and buggy. Movie studios like it since it's specifically designed for their needs, photographers generally have issues with it tho'..

[DaveB]

Keep it in mind, although it's not publicly available NOW so that might put it out of contention for you. I'm not privy to a release date, but time is ticking by!

Ticking by so fast that Adobe announced today the introductory price of US$199 (approx AU$260) available Feb 19!

[owen]

Is lightroom just an organiser though? It doesn't have photoshop included in it does it? If not, then it would be lacking a lot of photo editing tools you'd think.

[DaveB]

Is lightroom just an organiser though? It doesn't have photoshop included in it does it? If not, then it would be lacking a lot of photo editing tools you'd think.

Just an organiser???

• It organises the photos.
  You can edit metadata, rate photos, and organise them in many ways.
• It develops the photos.
  Like Bridge and ACR tightly integrated, it allows you to develop the photos. You have a full set of RAW manipulation controls available, and your settings are associated with the files without producing rendered versions of them (other than the internal preview database).
  Everything that Photoshop's ACR can do (including cropping, rotation/etc) and more.
• Not only will this work with RAW files, but you see the exact same interface when processing TIFF/PSD/JPEG/etc files! You can tweak the WB of a JPEG, although the result mightn't be as nice as when tweaking a RAW...
• You can do simple cloning/healing (e.g. dust-spot removal) and that cloning information can be copied to other images (just like all the other develop settings). Thus if you have lots of images with the same dust in the same position it's easy to fix all of them.
• It will print the photos to local printers, including multi-image layouts.
• It will produce slideshows (with simple dissolve transitions: it's not a substitute for something like FotoMagico) either to the screen or to PDF.
• It will produce HTML and flash galleries.
• You can export the images (i.e. producing rendered versions) to TIFF/PSD/JPEG/DNG.

That's a fairly comprehensive list of abilities, and that's just 1.0.
Sure it doesn't include a traditional editor, but depending on how you work you might not need one with this. Seriously! I didn't use Photoshop itself for processing any images last week, just Lightroom (I have about a thousand photos that made it through my editing and culling, a take that I'm very happy with!).

Thus my question to Shoot regarding what his requirements actually were. For further LR-specific discussions we should probably use the separate LR thread rather than clogging up this one.

[Shoot]

Over the last few week ive downloaded countless programs, okay... if i wanted to pay $400 odd dollars for a solution fine... Im a tightass when it comes to software....

Just want something that i can do basic cloning, a program that i can adjust WB etc, works with RAW files, just basic stuff to begin with. At the moment, its like pulling teeth... loading this, then loading that, then closing down, then going back to the original program and editiing again.

Downloading Lightroom to have a look now.....


Surely there's an easier way.

[MattC]

Surely there's an easier way.

Photoshop Elements would probably cover everything.

Cheers

[DaveB]

Downloading Lightroom to have a look now.....

Lots of things have changed since the last publicly-accessible beta (4.1, which was released in mid-October) so don't read too much into it. But it will give you a general feel for LR in general. Keep an eye on the other LR thread for further info.

[MattC]

 PS: PSE costs around $150.

Cheers

[Shoot]

Oh, am running windows 2000 also.... Lightroom dosent support that, $150 isnt bad....

Maybe Elements is the way to go just gotta check if it supports win2000. i know 4 doesnt....

[MattC]

 PSE5 is no good on W2K. You will have to go back to PSE3 which will run on W2K SP4.

Cheers

[DaveB]

Oh, am running windows 2000 also.... Lightroom dosent support that, $150 isnt bad....

Restrictions upon restrictions...

Maybe Elements is the way to go just gotta check if it supports win2000. i know 4 doesnt....

Elements 4.0 does apparently run on Win2K, but the current Elements 5.0 doesn't. Elements 4.0 (and even 3.0 which also runs on Win2K) supports ACR 3 (same version of the RAW converter as CS2) so it's probably not a bad choice for you. You just need to find a 2nd-hand copy somewhere...

[Shoot]

Hey, thanks heaps Dave and Matt, and everyone else whos replied its very much appreciated.... PSE4 sounds like the way to go...

Cheers.

[Gordon]

I was happy using the Gimp, but its lack of 16 bit ability has suddenly become a big problem, I'm probably going to get some posters of a couple of my comet images printed, and working in 8 bit space with those images is a real challenge. My old ver4 PS has rather limited 16 bit ability too, so I'm going to have to fork out the $$ for the current PS... what number is it up to now anyway, or have they dropped the numbers and just call it CS2 these days?

cheers, Gordon

[DaveB]

It's Photoshop CS2, although internally (and in small text on the startup splash window) it's identified as Photoshop 9.

[Nogshale]

You could try Paint.NET.

A free editor, similar to PS, but not as good of course.

Needs XP or above.

http://www.getpaint.net/index2.html

[Matt. K]

Gordon
You don't have to fork out big bucks for Photoshop CS3 or whatever. I use Photoshop 7 at work, professionaly, and am more than happy to continue to do so. I use CS at home and couldn't be bothered upgrading to a later version. You should be able to pick up a secondhand version of PS7 for around $300 or less. It's all you will ever need. Try browsing the computer sale mags at the newsagents. They cost about $3....and often have secondhand software in them. I just E-bayed this.....http://cgi.ebay.com.au/brand-new-ADOBE- ... tem....but looks dodgy
But this one looks genuine
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Adobe-Photoshop- ... dZViewItem
And here's what you are looking for....grab it!
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Adobe-Photoshop- ... dZViewItem

[DaveB]

Of course, if you get a genuine copy of Photoshop that's at least v5.5 then you're eligible for the upgrade pricing to get CS2: AU$308 at CitySoftware.