| Graphically Challanged |
I just thought I would pass along a little something. I really enjoy taking picture and they are all digital now. It is the most amazing thing. You can mess up the pictures and, with a decent program and a little effort, you can end up with some OK pictures still. Not only that but you can also crop and combined various different things inside of pictures. And this is just the surface. So how do you do all this.
Well most any program can crop a picture or rotate them. Most any program designed to work with a digital picture can remove red eye, adjust the exposure, and much, much more. But where it really gets exciting is what else you can do.
The industry standard program for working with images is Adobe Photoshop. It is capable of doing a lot. The ability to extract images from a picture and paste them into another is huge. The program is just awesome but with it there is an awesome price tag. Well awesome to Adobe. I believe it lists for $660 or so. Not cheap at all.
Another program out there is Corel Paintshop Pro. Now I do not know much about any of these programs as I have not used them a lot but from what I could see it is very capable also. I am not sure about extracting images but it probably is there somewhere. The thing I noticed is I found the program a little more clumsy to use than Photoshop. Of course part of that may be I have been using Adobe Photoshop LE 5.0 for years which, even though it is very different than Photoshop, it still operates similar. Sometimes changing a mind set can be very hard thing to do. Anyway one very nice thing about PaintShop Pro is the price. It lists for something like $129 or so. Of course the prices are all relative as you can do much better then list. I have seen Photoshop on eBay for $350 or so. I am sure the same can be said for Paintshop Pro too.
The program that I just bought was Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0. Why didn't anyone tell me about this program? It is super. I was looking for a program that could allow me to put together a slide show and place it on DVD. Now Elements does a good and so so job of doing that. In order to put the slideshow on DVD you need Adobe Elements Premiere also. The things I miss in it (I downloaded several programs and tried them out) is not being able to put together a nice title slide. Also it had a little less options for working with the slide show. The other thing, and this is not fair, was the ability to add sound. It can do it but I have not found a program yet that goes far enough. I suspect that if I were to get one of the programs that are $400 or more they may be much more capable. The great thing about Elements is it brings along a lot of the features that Photoshop has. Some of them are not as easy to use or not as capable but I am most impressed what all I can do. The previous two pictures I posted were created with Elements. Now I did a very poor job but what I did was extract my face from a photo, remove the color since the other photo was black and white, and adjust the brightness since the original picture was sort of muddy. I also touched up the original to a certain extent. Finally I over laid my face on the original picture and adjusted the size so it fit into the different sized original picture.
Now the nice thing about Elements is the price. If you get the package of Elements and Premiere it lists at $150. I just got mine from eBay (yeas I do shop at eBay a bit) for $84. If you just want Elements I have seen it, also on eBay, for about $50.
For me I really am enjoying Elements. I am happy I have added it to my toy chest. I will get Photoshop some day but for now I think Elements is going to do just fine. Oh and I thought I would add one picture here. Now my brother in law did this using Elements and he did a great job. There was a lot of time an effort put in here but the thing I find interesting is he only had the program for about a week at that point. I came over and gave him a couple of tips and he ran with it. Anyway this is basically a group picture. Two people where added into the group that where not there for the picture. The individual pictures below were all done with the extraction tools of Elements and lot of effort. The layout, well that was all the BIL. Note I smudged out where they are from and reduced the quality a little so I could upload the picture.
Well most any program can crop a picture or rotate them. Most any program designed to work with a digital picture can remove red eye, adjust the exposure, and much, much more. But where it really gets exciting is what else you can do.
The industry standard program for working with images is Adobe Photoshop. It is capable of doing a lot. The ability to extract images from a picture and paste them into another is huge. The program is just awesome but with it there is an awesome price tag. Well awesome to Adobe. I believe it lists for $660 or so. Not cheap at all.
Another program out there is Corel Paintshop Pro. Now I do not know much about any of these programs as I have not used them a lot but from what I could see it is very capable also. I am not sure about extracting images but it probably is there somewhere. The thing I noticed is I found the program a little more clumsy to use than Photoshop. Of course part of that may be I have been using Adobe Photoshop LE 5.0 for years which, even though it is very different than Photoshop, it still operates similar. Sometimes changing a mind set can be very hard thing to do. Anyway one very nice thing about PaintShop Pro is the price. It lists for something like $129 or so. Of course the prices are all relative as you can do much better then list. I have seen Photoshop on eBay for $350 or so. I am sure the same can be said for Paintshop Pro too.
The program that I just bought was Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0. Why didn't anyone tell me about this program? It is super. I was looking for a program that could allow me to put together a slide show and place it on DVD. Now Elements does a good and so so job of doing that. In order to put the slideshow on DVD you need Adobe Elements Premiere also. The things I miss in it (I downloaded several programs and tried them out) is not being able to put together a nice title slide. Also it had a little less options for working with the slide show. The other thing, and this is not fair, was the ability to add sound. It can do it but I have not found a program yet that goes far enough. I suspect that if I were to get one of the programs that are $400 or more they may be much more capable. The great thing about Elements is it brings along a lot of the features that Photoshop has. Some of them are not as easy to use or not as capable but I am most impressed what all I can do. The previous two pictures I posted were created with Elements. Now I did a very poor job but what I did was extract my face from a photo, remove the color since the other photo was black and white, and adjust the brightness since the original picture was sort of muddy. I also touched up the original to a certain extent. Finally I over laid my face on the original picture and adjusted the size so it fit into the different sized original picture.
Now the nice thing about Elements is the price. If you get the package of Elements and Premiere it lists at $150. I just got mine from eBay (yeas I do shop at eBay a bit) for $84. If you just want Elements I have seen it, also on eBay, for about $50.
For me I really am enjoying Elements. I am happy I have added it to my toy chest. I will get Photoshop some day but for now I think Elements is going to do just fine. Oh and I thought I would add one picture here. Now my brother in law did this using Elements and he did a great job. There was a lot of time an effort put in here but the thing I find interesting is he only had the program for about a week at that point. I came over and gave him a couple of tips and he ran with it. Anyway this is basically a group picture. Two people where added into the group that where not there for the picture. The individual pictures below were all done with the extraction tools of Elements and lot of effort. The layout, well that was all the BIL. Note I smudged out where they are from and reduced the quality a little so I could upload the picture.
Posted by barman at 6:31 AM::
Geeze Bryan, why didn't you ask if anyone had it. Elements came with my computer for free and they even gave me the disk. I had it at the time of the Michigan get together. BTW. When you making your way to my neck of the woods?
I really need to get more into what all came with my camera and what programs I have. Im lucky to even include a pic in an email.LOL anyways if you really really must see a pic of me go to my archives and click on nov. it should be first thing there. (Yuck)
this sounds like a lot of fun.:)
hope you get out of jail.
Tc
What?
Awesome!! I need a new 'puter and software.
that's awesome. Don't delete this blog. Manny was telling how to download stuff from my camera and add it to my blog, but I needed to record it. I'll check the stuff you wrote and make her write down what she told me. I might want to include a pic of the puppies sometime, even if someone might want to kidnap them!! LOL
BTW, does everyone that blogs get up before the sun to do it??????
At the time I met you Tony I had not idea I wanted to get Elements. I guess timing is everything in life. You really got me thinking about a visit. I just know it would be great.
Gab, usually the software with the camera is a lite version or may not have a ton of functions but ... it also is pretty easy to use and I would bet it would do most things you would want to do like remove red eye. So good idea. Funny thing, I am looking for other software and I have not even looked at what came with my camera.
TC, I managed to escape and, at least so far no one is looking for me, go figure. Of course I can't help be expect that to change. I love taking pictures and working with the pictures afterwards, kind of like you and music. Of course I love music too.
Manny, When?
Signgurl, a new 'puter would be nice. If you ever do head that direction make sure you have at least 512meg memory. It seems these programs eat memory for breakfast and do better with more memory.
Idiansfan, I hope to keep this blog around. With people like Manny helping you (me too) I am sure you will do just fine. I would love to see pictures of you puppies sometime. I promise not to kidnap them but I am not promissing I wouldn't want to come and pet and play with them for a while. This morning I slept in but it does seem that at least some people try to slip one a post in or go visit people before heading into work. Hey good luck with those pictures. I look forward to the puppy pictures.
Oh by the way Gab and Indiansfan, I finally added you to my links. I keep forgetting to come visit. This way I think I am much more likely not to forget.
I have photoshop elements. It rocks. You all need to convert to a Mac. The Mac comes with software that allows you to make movies, store photos, do slide shows, web design, and garage band which is cool for anybody who is musically inclined. (I'm not) The best thing about a Mac is, they make is sooo darn easy to use my dog could do it. And I have a very dumb dog.
Crabbs, I used to support Macs for a while so I had to learn to use them. The two things I hated about them is they would crash at the drop of a feather and I hated that they hid the details about what was happening in the background. Having to write programs for them made that hard to deal with. Now a days, ever since OS X, the Mac is an even better machine and it is stable and not as expensive as they used to be. That sounds like a great machine.
Denny, you might be right. I posted something on two peoples blogs and I noticed it was gone. I was pretty upset at them. Maybe it is just blogger being dumb again. Everything you post is damn good Denny!
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