Photoshop - if I must

[Ian Grant]

The beautiful work we see in Ian's Media shows WHY he's happy with his approach.

I wonder if he finds his approach equally rewarding in color?

I rarely shoot colour film these days, but I've never been a Photoshop fan, I have used it. Originally I had Aldus PhotoStyler which came with a scanner but ditched it for Micrografx Picture Publisher 3 which was way ahead of Photoshop for sometime, but the programme disappeared after version 8 when Corel bought the company.

The problem with Adobe is the cost of the programs I would want to use is prohibitive, if I was still working professionally it might be different, but the Corel Draw Suite has been my main graphics tool for about 25 years and updates are very reasonable. I began using it for work in the 90's and have stuck with it.

Some LF E6 workers I know have switched to Affinity Photo from Photoshop because of the high cost, the programs I use are fine competitors for colour as well as B&W work.

Ian

 

[blockend]

I've always used the software that comes with the camera, with an ancient copy of Photoshop Elements 6 for tweaks. People complain about Canon DPP but it's quick and intuitive. Silkypix is slow but gets the job done. Gimp looked like the labyrinth when I looked a few weeks ago, after a day staring at the screen I gave up. Rawtherapee is intuitive, and while I'm not a fan of pre-sets it has some of the most film-like around.
Perhaps my needs are fewer, and folks working in multiple layers or on thousands of wedding photos need the latest PS. Even freeware blows my mind at its creative potential.