wrote in message
...
On Dec 10, 9:15 am, Tom Francis - SWSports
wrote:
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 05:25:11 -0800 (PST), wrote:
On Dec 9, 4:32 pm, Tom Francis - SWSports
wrote:
Adobe has a free thirty day trial offer on the full version of
Photoshop CS4 Extended if you are interested in trying it out.

How do you like it? Is it intuitive? Workflow suck?

It's interesting. Adobe has their own way of doing things and it
isn't always "intuitive" in an open it up and go kind of way. However,
the 3D rendering is unbelievable once you can wrap your brain around
how they do things.

As to editing - can't beat it. There are cheaper programs out there -
notably PaintShipPro XI which has a lot of the same functions and
functionality. I've used PSP for years - since their very first
shareware version when they were JASC, but their recent iteration
****ed me off because it was exactly the same as the previous version
- they just changed the workflow a little. And it doesn't have a lot
of the plugins that Photoshop has available.

From what I've been able to determine, there's a lot more to PCS4 to
explore and tinker with and I really like to automated features for
tonal mapping and HDR.

I don't care for Lightroom at all, but I use it occasionally. I think
Elements as a base editor is much better than Lightroom - they are
practically the same program.

Did you try GIMPshop that someone offered up here?

Yeah, but it doesn't process RAW images as far as I can tell. I tried
it on a few .jpegs and it does a good job - you can do a lot with it,
I just don't think it's the same caliber as Photoshop or PSP.

I've been playing with it a bit, and I've not seen yet where it will
process RAW either.

I like Infranview as a quickie "take a look at" viewer, but it's
processing leave a little to be desired compared to the larger
programs. For the average user, I suppose it works just fine, but
anybdy who wants to get serious about working images, PSP, Photoshop
and/or Elements is probably the better way to go.

I think I'm going to pony up for Elements.

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