Answering a recent question about photo-editing

Here's a question that was emailed to me recently. I thought I'd share my response with you in case you're also interested in photo-editing and have ever wondered a similar thing.

'Can you answer me one quick question pretty please?, Do you need the full blown Photoshop CS6 version with the kind of work you do or would elements 11 cover it?'

My answer:

Hi there - I actually use Adobe Lightroom on a daily basis to process my digital photographs and very rarely use Photoshop at all.

 

Years ago before photography was my main income source I used to spend AGES on Photoshop fiddling with photos because I was dealing with one or two photos at a time and could do that for fun. 

 

But now, regularly having to process a something like a whole wedding of  a thousand-plus photos that I might be fine-tuning to my favourite few hundred you really need to use something that is designed to work with those numbers.

 

This is where Lightroom comes in.

 

Lightroom gives me a very smooth workflow - I can import all of my photographs, quick select the ones you want to keep in a collection, if you shoot in RAW (which I recommend) you can easily batch change white balance/contrast/exposure/cropping/ or create a signature preset effect (plus more). I can export direct to my online galleries, create back ups ... everything I need to keep the workflow running smoothly which is important when you're dealing with many GBs of digital files.

 

Having said all of the above, these days if you're doing digital photography you really need to know how to use Photoshop so getting a copy is handy. To be honest, I use it more for designing my marketing materials than actually digitally manipulating the photos themselves apart from in exceptional circumstances.

 

If you're totally new to Photoshop I would get elements, learn how to drive it, and when you start making money with your photography you might invest in the full version if you found it was going to benefit you. If you're dealing with many photographs and want a great piece of software to process them I would consider Lightroom (get a free trial download from adobe to check it out).

 

Lightroom and Photoshop free download 30-day trials can be found here: http://www.adobe.com/nz/downloads/

 

Hope this helps, good luck :)

 

Warm regards

Cat

 

The room of treasures

I was terribly honoured this week to capture a photograph like I have never captured before.

The goal - a single photograph of the entire group of residents at one of my city's elderly nursing homes.

The daughter of one 100 year-old resident, who had been visiting her mother for over nine years, said she had never seen everyone all together in one room - ever.

It took the group over one and half hours to assemble, slowly inch-by-inch, carefully, sometimes painfully and always stoically zimmerframing into position all gently guided by a team of almost eight amazing staff, family and helpers!

I had my own challenges, but only technical ones: 44 people, a small and difficult space, trying to get everyone's face from a tricky angle.

This was a once only attempt, it had never happened before - it may never happen again.

And finally - over 3500 THREE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED years of life and love, pain and joy,  all brought together in this one moment!

I tell you, it makes my heart melt.

If you've got a special elderly person in your life, give them an extra snuggle today from me :)

Thank you to Wendy, Nick, Ali and the whole team who made this happen.

Such an incredibly special moment (click the pic to make it bigger)                                ©catbrownphotography 2013