Which Photoshop, Or Adobe Product, Should I Get?
August 20th, 2009 | 
Author: i’m an amateur photographer but photography is going to be my career so i need serious software. i am getting into wedding photography and i just completed my first wedding job so, with the money from that, i am buying my first adobe product so i need help deciding.
i do portraiture, band promo shots, plenty of low light work, and pretty much anything else.
thank you!
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Getting into Adobe stuff is exciting and expensive so you are right in looking to buy once.
Lightroom is great for photo work. I like it as a standalone to help with the flow of pictures and editing from events. It seems to be a more streamlined way to push photos through and doing all the adjustments I like to do. Making sure the highs are right, lows are good, color is good, white balancing, capturing, etc.
Photoshop is going to give you everything else that you would normally miss from lightroom. Advanced retouching, more room to grow into the features of the program.
Best bet if you are starting out is get the education version of the adobe creative suite. Illustrator, photoshop, and all the tools that you need to learn. From there you’ll be able to move into other tools as necessary but these programs in the creative suite are the nuts and bolts to foraying into the world of Adobe products.
The software that comes with the cameras is usually pretty reasonable, providing you are with a solid brand like Canon or Nikon.
Shoot all your shots in RAW (I would hope you are doing that anyway!) and use the software that comes with the camera (Digital Photo Professional in Canon’s example). This will give you fine tuning over the exposure and white balance and also allow you to change picture styles should you so wish. The noise reduction capability on RAW images is also usually very good and can be applied before converting to JPEG for much more usable results at high ISO levels.
If you are good at what you do you and stick with the raw image editing software that came with your camera then you shouldn’t need to use Photoshop at all for your photos unless you are thinking of doing creative things with them, or you find you have some shots that need objects/people removing in which case go for Photoshop, it’s great! CS3/CS4 obviously great, but I still use CS and it does the job.
It’s also good to have a program like Adobe Lightroom or Aperture (mac only) to organise and catalog your shots (you can also set them up to be able to edit your RAW images too).
Rick
I’m not trying to be mean but that was VERY UN PROFESSIONAL of you to do. Saying that your career is photography and you do not have any software. I saved my *** off before hand to be able to get all the necessary programs before i began offering my services. The WORST thing you can do is go in assuming you’re prepared yet you don’t even have a basic editing program. Those photos don’t come off the camera the way they do in magazines, and you should have known better than to just run in head first. You should have waited until you knew you hed the proper programs. That is VERY VERY VERY Irresponsible and very very very unprofessional. You are lucky this wedding party allowed you to do their wedding.
What will you do if you can’t figure out photoshop. It took me a LONG LONG LONG time to figure out the basics and even then I collaborated with someone to make sure our work comes out 100% every time.
I would say that the most effective and powerful software is Adobe Photoshop CS4, although Adobe Lightroom does do a good job for less money. I personally use both: Photoshop for photo editing, and Lightroom for cataloging. Lightroom’s database-style organization is fantastic.
I WOULD SAY PHOTOSHOP IS HE BEST:D
Adobe Photoshop CS3
Adobe Lightroom would be more useful for you than Adobe Photoshop. But if you can get both, they do work together.