Photoshop, are they any cheaper alternative?

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Byronkirk

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Byron kirk
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Hi Guys
Im wandering if any of you lovely people could help me find a cheaper alternative to the incredibly popular/overpriced, photoshop.
Any help would be extremely appreciated
Thanx
 
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If it's just for processing photos, I'd highly recommend Lightroom. If you're on more of a budget then I wouldn't hesitate to buy Photoshop elements 9 (I have 8 and it's great).

I actually use both, but but if you've got neither, start with elements as it's cheaper and when you find it's limiting you, you can always get Lightroom. Also, you can get them MUCH cheaper on software4students, if you're a student or someone in your family is.
 
Photo.net is pretty good too for very simple edits
 
There's always what came with your camera, although as a Canon user I personally hate DPP.

I love Raw Shooter Essentials but it wont open newer camera RAW files but Rawtherapee will and it's free and can be used on JPEG's too.

I recently tried CD5, Lightroom and Elements 9. I found Lightroom too cluttered and centred towards organisation and I found that Elements frustrated me as I wanted user control and it offers auto fixes. I ended up buying CS5, probably because I have more money than sense.
 
Before spending money, let us know what you want it for - Photoshop is an incredibly powerful piece of software but requires a steep learning curve if you are to achieve its potential.

As above, PSE 9 is very good as is Lightroom although both do different things. I now use LR for almost all my development work but will occasionally use PSE for cloning etc.
 
Elements 4, my girlfriend wont use anything newer!
 
Gimp also has photoshop emulator plug in for those that prefer the interface.

also irfanview is also free

and older versions of serif photoplus can be had free too
 
You can get a used version of Elements 6 for under £15 on Amazon.

Elements tends to be massively underrated IMO. You can do all the important stuff - caption, crop, levels, layers, filters, blends, cloning and RAW (you may need to download the free .dng converter depending on your camera) on 6 and later. The only important thing missing is curves. Get a good book (try Scott Kelby) and/or some lessons, and you'll be away.

Mind you,I love processing, so I'm biased;)
 
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You can buy Elements 9 for £45 from Amazon - it'll do anything most people would want and if you're good enough at PS to need CS5 then you'll probably appreciate the hefty price tag.
 
Elements
Gimp
Pixelmator (OS X Only)
Paintshot Pro

and so on. There is a 2011 top ten at Top Ten Reviews and I would guess most do a trial download.
 
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I have PS CS3 on my Imac and Serif Photoplus X4 on my laptop.
Photoplus is close enough that I didn't find I had much to learn.
Main differences I have found are when it comes to saving files.
I don't use either package for much though, I'm not a heavy editor if you know what I mean.
 
I can do mostly all I require in DPP.

Otherwise I drop it into GIMP. Often I can follow basic Photoshop guides or howto's and transfer that method to GIMP.
 
Try "FastStone image viewer" will do all your Raw files and jpeg. Incredibly fast and simple to use. Oh and its FREE
 
jimbobc said:
I use Elements 9 couldn't geet used to GIMP
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Elements and lightroom would be my choice, Gimp is free but I've never got on that well with it, some love it.

I have tried paint.net and a couple other simple apps but never impressed. If your on a MAC aperture might be worth looking at, I am but I'm so used to LR and photoshop ive never tried it myself.
 
Gimp is free and undesirably awful, i wasted a year with it, no good for RAW with the crap UFraw plug in, elements 8 is only 40 quid, the old adage is quite simply - you get what you pay for and Elements is becoming better and better, i love it.
 
Elements 6 onwards, more than adequate.

GIMP ... tried that, could not get to grips with it, but it is free.
 
Martyn... said:
GIMP ... tried that, could not get to grips with it, but it is free.
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as I mentioned above - for those that cant get to grips with gimp , GNU soft have now released a plug in that gives more of a photoshop feel to the interface.

That said I principally use elements 5 largely because we arent allowed to install freeware at work
 
Gimp is awesome! It has nearly all the features of photoshop (and the ones it doesnt have can be easily added with plugins). It just takes a bit to find things sometimes (e.g. menu items have slightly different names to the ones in photoshop).
 
BTW I recommend the plugins:
UFRAW for raw conversion - the newest version can correct for lens distortion automatically as well)
Wavelet denoise for noise removal
and High pass filter
 
B16 VAS said:
CS5.5 is coming so don't go off and buy CS5
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I was under the impression that there wasn't a CS5.5 for Photoshop, just other applications in the CS suite...
 
lightroom 3.... and as your going to be a student soon, wait until then and its only £60 :)
 
I use Photoshop at work for non-photographic work, and only use it for my photography when resizing images (don't do much post-processing at all). I've used GIMP in the past, and although it has the potential to do everything I needed, I couldn't resist the version of Photoshop that I could use at work, so I just got used to it.

I would recommend giving GIMP a shot though. Try it for a month or so, to get over any learning curve you might find, and see what you think.
 
If you have access to a mac, then aperture 3 can be had for £40, I must say I find the mac so much better for editing and aperture seems quite good, especially if you are looking for something thats straight forward.
 
AndyB1976 said:
I can do mostly all I require in DPP.

Otherwise I drop it into GIMP. Often I can follow basic Photoshop guides or howto's and transfer that method to GIMP.
Click to expand...

Same as above. I find DPP more than adequate for 95% of PP work.
Tried many - Gimp - free but time consuming, Elements - better than Gimp, but not into photo manipulation in a big way, Lightroom - Better than the others, but not worth the money in my opinion.
 
You can get a cop of CS2 on fleabay for very little now - it'll work on modern machines and although not featuring as much stuff as CS5, it'll do image editing without a worry.
 
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