Photoshop? Gimp? Just Download From the Camera and Post?

This is a hard thing for me to post, since I admit I dont have Photoshop. OHHH MYYY is it a drag.... To make great photos you need it, no if's, and's, or but's about it! Yea there are allot of software out there, even free ones like Gimp that you can use to edit photos, but Adobe has done a swell job at making photoshop so if film guys need darkrooms to make their pictures great, we digital folk need the Photoshop to make the magic happen!

Personally I will get a copy of it soon in about a few weeks. Along with Lightroom since that is the work flow that I have been getting used to. Batch editing from sharpening, color and saturation, even sharpening can be accomplished in Lightroom. Where Photoshop comes into play is if you want to really fine tune your photos. There is allot you can do with just Photoshop and Bridge, but for me to do my craft is to really use Lightroom for its user friendliness.

So what do I use now? Gimp. Its free, and it has the basic things to make a picture pretty. Download it, and play around with it, you seriously can get allot done with gimp for free than thinking you need the legitimate photoshop to pull things off.

Just a tip to new photographers, if you camera can shoot in RAW, do so. If you don't you are missing out on allot of fine touches you can do to your photograph. If you shoot JPEG, and have been for years and don't see the need, the simplest way I can break it down is that you are editing a photo after the fact it was created. With RAW, it theoretically has not been developed, so you have autonomy over the end result. How you know if you have this feature? Its a picture size option, or a button. If you still can't find it, consult your manual and if it cant tell you squat well maybe you dont have it and should consider getting one that does! Well worth the extra dollars to make great pictures!

Here is a clip of something REALLY cool you can do to your photo's in photoshop if you ever consider it. This is one out of hundreds of things you can do to your photographs.