pipemakersforum.com

Looking at buying some better editing software and was curious what everyone uses.

I would suggest to learn Gimp. It's free and very powerful. Just a bit more of a learning curve.

andrew

Jep... The gimp for initial processing and then Lightroom from for final editing... Lights are the most important Scottie .... Check out eBay for some studio lights... I finally listened to Chris and picked me up a nice set of photo lights for about $60 ... Paid for them in euro ... But am more than pleased

http://www.ebay.de/itm/2x-Profi-Fotostu ... 58a8d89aca

Just look at the specs at the bottom...


Here's the closest I could find on US ebay. http://www.ebay.com/itm/300w-Photograph ... 4d03730792


James

Picasa is helpful, easy to use and free. It's not nearly as powerful or robust as one of the Photoshop products, but it will do 90% of what you need it to. I have Photoshop Elements, and it's great, but I will often mess around with Picasa just to see what it turns out. Usually, I can get very similar results in less time, but I admit, I'm not as familiar with Elements as I am with Picasa.

I was lucky enough to get Photoshop CS6 for free but I also use Lightroom and a bit of Photomatix & HDR effects pro. Gimp is great but it was too hard for me to get my head round.

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Lightroom for processing the raw image (I have custom presets to save time) and a bit of cropping. Then I switch to Microsoft photo manager, it isn't particularly powerful but its perfect for resizing multiple images for use on websites and the auto white feature is fantastic I think, assuming of course you shoot on a white background.

Lightroom or Camera RAW is where it's at. Period.

Photoshop Elements works well for me.
Chas.

Gimp all the way.

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I had gimp on my computer and couldn't figure out how the hell to use it. Anyone want to help me out and tell me how it works?

Microsoft Office Picture Manager - it does absolutely everything I need to do with my pipe photography, except for sharpening, but I don't really find it necessary.
Free, idiot proof and very quick.

Just to be clear, this is definitely not the best photo editing program out there. I just use it because for me editing photos is a chore, I don't enjoy it, I'm not into photography, I just know what kind of result I need and I find I can get there quickly and painlessly with this program.

The Smoking Yeti wrote:Lightroom or Camera RAW is where it's at. Period.

That's interesting, Micah. I have Lightroom too, but I don't care for it. You'll have to 'splain it to me.

scotties22 wrote:I had gimp on my computer and couldn't figure out how the hell to use it. Anyone want to help me out and tell me how it works?

It's kinda rough with the learning curve. You have to spend time with it. It's good software, but it's a bit like taking apart a carb for the first time... lots of little pieces to remember. The best way I found to learn was the manual.

andrew

Photo editing?? What's that? I don't have time for that, so I do absolutely nothing. Guess my photo's show it as well!

scotties22 wrote:I had gimp on my computer and couldn't figure out how the hell to use it. Anyone want to help me out and tell me how it works?

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/

You'll need to ask yourself what it is you are trying to do. Most good digital cameras will come with some sort of photo manipulation software that should improve one's pics unless they are really bad and in that case trying to fix them may make the pic look totally unrealistic. Good pics start with good composition and lighting.
Here are my steps (using PhotoShop Elements 10 which is really overkill for no more than I'm doing):
1. I shoot in the RAW format which makes HUGE file sizes (over 4 MB) but all the data is there. It's like having a good photographic negative.
2. Crop as needed.
3. Do an auto-enhance.
4. Make my own adjustments to brightness and contrast (and color if needed).
5. Apply un-sharp mask. This is a bit of a mis-nomer as it really does sharpen the pic. Caution: a little goes a long way.
6. Use the "clone-stamp" feature to remove dust spots.
7. Save as a .jpg file. If the pics are going on the internet, 800 to 1000 pixels wide is good. This will dramatically cut the size of the files from the RAW format and keep them from being gigantic when viewed on-screen. If you're going to Instagram save as 600 pixels.
I'm shooting with a Pentax K5, 100mm macro lens. Exposure is 1/125 at f22, ISO 200. I set up on an open table rather than a tent and use two 320 watt/second strobes with diffusers for lighting. Works for me.
Chas.

I agree with "oklahoma red". A good picture is the first step to reproducing or posting online. I sue GIMP for my wife's pictures she puts on ebay, it took a while to learn it but it is a good program.

Unless photography itself is a hobby for you (or you want it to become one), I think keeping things as simple and fast as possible is the best solution for pipe makers who want to share their work on PF and/or have pics for their website.

I use a 13 year old camera that I probably couldn't get $50 for if I tried to sell it tomorrow (Sony DSC-S85), and free, super-easy-to-use photo software (PhotoComplete) that hasn't been updated since 2006.

It's VERY easy to get pulled into a seductive and complex subject like photography deeper than is necessary, if a single task is all you're trying to do.

Keeping things simple doesn't mean having to put up with shitty results, either. These workbench pics were taken with the aforementioned $50 camera, hand held, using a junk desk lamp for illumination. That's it. They are literally "snap shots." Uploading and editing took 60 seconds, tops:

EDIT --- I pulled the fifty dollar figure out of the air as a guess, then checked Ebay to see what a camera that old is actually going for. I was off by a penny.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-Cyber-shot ... 258654de20

Here is a quick example of how fast editing can be to achieve and acceptable result for website/customer use.

The first image is the picture pretty much straight out of the camera, I shoot in RAW so I had to convert to a JPEG and I cropped it down to get rid of the light shades etc that would otherwise be visible but essentially that is the image as it would be before editing. One tip for doing this as well is to have a dedicated area for taking pictures if possible, that way every time you take pictures your lighting levels and shadows will be the same as well as camera distances etc, this all helps with step 2.
To get the image looking like picture number 2 I put it through Lightroom and used a custom preset that I designed myself, this did take me maybe an hour to get right playing around as I needed it to work with my camera, my lights etc. It was time worth spending! The preset adjusts lighting, a bit of colour balance and some sharpening. This is a one click process for a whole batch of images. The images are then put into Microsoft photo manager where I use the auto white feature to set the back ground. To edit the image you see took me a grand total of less than 60secs from import to final image. If I were doing a batch this would be my process:

1. Import RAW images into Lightroom.
2. Apply present to all images with 1 click.
3. Crop images individually, if required (I very rarely do this) remove dust spots
4. Export images as JPEG's.
5. Auto white individual images in MPM as mentioned above
6. Re-size all images as a group to 1200x900, my preferred size
7. Save images.

The above process takes less than a min per picture, probably more like 30-40secs.

Hope this helps.

I think the single most important part of taking photos is lighting. If you do that right, you really don't need to do all that much processing. That said, all I use is iPhoto. I crop, adjust angle if needed, and use the "remove shadows" function if necessary. The rest is done with lights and the camera - a first generation Canon digital EOS on manual control and set to slightly overexpose.

--K