Photo editing

The blog is about DIGITAL Photography.  Many of the techniques came from and apply to film photography but as far as Im concerned, film is dead to me.  I can here the howls from "real" photographers everywhere who still use film.  Whatever.  Go to a film blog.  I think one of the reason some "real" photographers hate digital and cling to film is that they lost their one HUGE advantage over the rest of us - volume and a dark room (oops that's two).

When I first started in serious photography with my Pentax K1000, I was a kid with no allowance and a paper route that earned me $2 day.  A 36 exposure roll of Kodak ASA 400 cost $5-8 and developing it with single prints cost $15-20.  I couldn't even think about 800 film.  Taking a picture went something like this - find that thing you REALLY wanted to remember, spend 5 minutes framing, focusing and metering.  Click.  Wind.  Think hard if you want a second shot at a different angle.  Move on.  I can only remember few days I shot a whole roll and one or two days that I shot more than one.  I just couldn't afford it.  Film might sit in the camera for a week or a month before you finished the roll and then you sent it off for processing - another week plus.  By the time you got it back, you had no idea what you did wrong or right to make a shot look good.  The Pros on the other hand shot pictures like their lives depended on it (I guess their livelihood did!).  They had power winders and long rolls of film and a budget a bit north of $2 a day.  More importantly, they had darkrooms to process, select and then manipulate their pictures.  Digital has leveled the field and they don't like it.

The darkroom is now a computer and Photoshop. Oops, a "digital photo editing program."  Yes, I know there are programs that are not Photoshop just like there are MP3 players that are not iPods.  I use Photoshop because it works, not because I am a fanboy.  Or more correctly, Photoshop Elements.  "Real" Photoshop cost a mortgage payment and requires a pretty hefty computer.  Some day I might "need" the extra features and flexibility it offers but for now, Elements does 99% of what I need for a whole lot less money and time.

The most current version of Photoshop Elements (7.0 for Win,6.0 for Mac)runs $100 plus or minus $25.  Considering the latest version is roughly equivalent to the full version of 3 years ago, its a deal.  But blog this is about getting the most for your photographic budget.  One of the advantages digital Pros have is how they interact with Photoshop.  A mouse is fine for surfing the net but to get the most out of photoshop you need a tablet and a pen.  That means Wacom.  Like photo editing programs, their are other tablets but Wacom makes the best.  Even better, you get a chance to kill two birds with one stone.  Every Wacom tablet comes with a copy of Photoshop Elements (exception is the basic Bamboo which is sold with nothing extra - even the pen is separate).  The version depends on how much you spend on the tablet.  At the bottom end is the Bamboo Fun (Small).For $86 you get a tablet and Photoshop Elements 6.0.  Jump up too the Intuos4 Smallfor $199 and you get Elements 7/6 (win/mac) and a significantly more capable tablet.  But for the ultimate savings, go with last years tech - $100 gets you an Intuos3 with Photoshop Elements 5.0 and capabilities in the middle of the Bamboo and the newest Intous4.  Plus you get a wireless mouse and if you are like me with both Mac and Windows computers, you get a version for both computers - something Adobe hasn't offered in a single package since Elements 3.0.  Two copies of Photoshop Elements 5, a Tablet that was $250 last year and a wireless mouse.  Thats a lot of value for $100.

Im a big believer in buying last years tech.  I would love to have the bleeding edge stuff every time but its just too expensive.  But come to think of it, the thing I appreciate most about last years tech is letting someone else try out and identify the turkeys for me.  I don't have the time to waste on something with a fatal flaw or doesn't provide a significant improvement.  I still use Photoshop Elements 4.0 for Mac because 5.0 didn't provide enough new and it had some UI issues I didn't want to deal with.  When 7.0 for Mac comes out I will probably upgrade.  Besides the expense, skipping two upgrades has let me get good with the version I have without having to relearn the UI every year.  Its the same reason I got a Dell laptop just before the switch to Vista.  I wanted XP because it had been pretty well fixed and what flaws there were were well known (the exact reason the "death date" for XP keeps getting pushed back).  Ill talk a lot more about old tech when I get into camera buying strategies.