Basic Software Needs : Photography

This article consists of the basic Photography Software Candidates List for both Windows and Macintosh systems complete with URLs, a Brief Description, and Free Software Alternatives..

This was written at the beginning of Aug 2007, if significant time has passed (like a year or more) you might want to do a small personal lookup on the new software available.

Basic Software Purposes and Candidates

  1. RAW Editing and Toning: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
  2. Post Processing and Layering: Corel Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop
  3. RAW Accessibility: dpMagic
  4. Noise Reduction: Nik Dfine

Brief Descriptions (and links)

  1. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom [Xp, Vista | Mac Os]

    Provides you with a professional (very sexy) customizable workspace that you will never ever want to leave! Just try it once and you will be addicted for a lifetime. Scary, yes. All editing tools (anything you will need) included, except for post process layering. What makes lightroom special is that you will be never left with that “why doesn’t this software do that?!!!” feeling. It is complete. American photo magazine’s Editor’s choice for 2007. RAW editing heaven. It also had a lightbox feature that displays a complete dark screened image of your current crop when you press the button “L”. L like I Love that.

  2. Corel Paintshop Pro [Windows Only] Adobe Photoshop CS3 [Win | Mac]

    What lightroom doesn’t have and for a good reason (keeping life simple like it should be), luckily these programs do. Corel [Windows Only] is unfortunately only available on Windows! The post processing software that does it fast, accurately, and by all means as user friendly as it can get. It won’t eat up your RAM either or pocket money that is. Excellent for multi layering, composite images and warping. This is the program I use. The price was never one of my reasons of choosing this software, but it’s cheaper than Adobe Photoshop, so extra plus points. What it has over Photoshop is simplicity, and speed also accuracy. Accuracy you ask? The “eraser” is the number one tool I use, Photoshop’s eraser regions do not cover the real eraser margins and so you may be erasing some thing extra (not good!) when you are using it. But on the other hand if you “use” (and not just carry around) Photoshop actions, or brushes you may want to buy Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop CS3 [Win | Mac] isn’t exactly affordable software. Again unfortunately. So Mac users might need to organize their budget when considering post processing. This software has overcome considerable changes from CS to CS3, which all mean a happier more user friendly working environment and tools that work better and more attune to perfection. I was very surprised when I first used CS3, the panels and windows had became collapsible, great for maximizing the view. Though Adobe is usually very picky on available RAM so you may want to read the system requirements before deciding to buy this software.

  3. dpMagic [Xp, Vista | Mac does not need this software! :]

    These people are magic! One of the longest and waited for needs of the RAW shooting community. Ever wanted to browse RAW files just like JPEGS on your Windows system? Well this is the answer. note! If you use Windows vista; you probably won’t need this software either. All dSLR RAW image types are supported as an integrated part of windows vista for most cameras; read this short article (Direct link to Canon RAW codec ).

  4. Nik Dfine [Xp,Vista | Mac Os]

    The current solution to noise reduction + simultaneous sharpening. Noise reduction can be a very important step in how clean your images turn out, and if you’ve noticed not-so-satisfactory results with your photo editing software, you may want to try this software. Nik Dfine comes in Standalone and also Photoshop plugin versions. Exif and ICC profiles are kept. Increased image noise is inevitable at the high ISO settings so useful for low-light hand held shooting, and that’s where this program can help. It relies on the same U Point technology that Nik contributed to Nikon’s Capture NX — allowing one-click selection and automatic noise reduction of specific areas. You can vary the degree of reduction from one tone or color to another, according to how pronounced the noise is, keeping areas that look fine from acquiring artifacts related to the sharpening process. American photo magazine’s Editor’s choice for 2007. Other closely competing solutions include:

  5. Free Alternatives

    1. Picasa [Windows | Linux] (instead of Adobe lightroom?) iPhoto [Mac only] (instead of Adobe lightroom?)

      Picasa [Windows | Linux] is Google Software. Not really an alternative - so if you’re gonna save up on software, lightroom is money wisely spent. Picasa works under the same methods of lightroom, it saves your edits in a meta file and quickly applies them every time you open the file with this program again (it has master image files). For organizing photos, Picasa has file importing and tracking features, as well as tags and collections for further sorting. It also offers several basic photo editing functions, including color enhancement, red eye reduction and cropping. Other features include slide shows, printing and image timelines. Picasa is also a RAW editing program , but if you use Canon RAW, it’s most likely that your camera came with the free OEM software Canon Utilities [Win | Mac], like the ZoomBrowser Utility which is wonderful and has integrated RAW tweaking also. iPhoto [Mac] is a software application made by Apple Inc. exclusively for their Mac OS X operating system. It is part of the iLife suite of applications and comes bundled with every new Macintosh computer. iPhoto can import, organize, edit, print and share digital photos. iphoto also supports RAW images, as part of the Mac OS system .

    2. Gimp (instead of Corel Photo Shop) [Win | Mac | Linux]

      Most popular and powerful in the free editing software programs. The Gimp is a freeware editor that started off in Linux and was eventually ported to Windows, boosting its audience and popularity. It seems to include almost everything that Photoshop does: channels, layers, masks, more than 100 filters and effects, tabbed palettes, RAW support, editable text tools, and colour operations such as levels. And if the feature you’re looking for isn’t in the main program, chances are very high that someone has created a plug-in for it, including digital printing. Though the GIMP may be more difficult to install and start using than Photoshop, it takes less time to get it up and running once you’ve got it set the way you like.
      Note: use the link for download which says “Download Gimp” in it.

    3. dpMagic Community Edition (instead of dpMagic Plus) [Windows only]

      dpMagic CE provides basic Windows Shell extensions such as thumbnail support for RAW files. dpMagic CE supports RAW images produced by many digital cameras. They give dpMagic CE away for free to support the growing internet photography community. Even with basic functionality dpMagic is a great tool used by thousands of photographers world-wide. One of its notable differences compared to the paid for version is that it won’t show you Adobe DNG thumbnails, yeah.

    4. Noiseware Community Edition Standalone (instead of Nik Dfine) [Windows | Mac]

      Noiseware Community Edition Standalone [Windows | Mac] does not come as a Ps-plugin and can only save as ‘jpg’ and does not preserve EXIF date; it also lacks batch processing and the self-learning profile builder. Another solution is Ronald Pacheco’s RP DNR which comes with different strength levels. RP DNR is actually a Photoshop plugin that uses Photoshop filters in different combinations to achieve a more agreeable noise reduction smoothness combination. RP DNR will probably not give you the results a program like Noiseware community will but since it’s a Photoshop action all results can be exported in any export format that Photoshop allows. Both of these solutions will not allow you to use noise reduction as a brush effect like in the ‘un-free’ noise reduction programs available.

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