HI all
bought the wife a new digital camera Sony a550 what i need is a editing program that will cut out parts of the backgrounds
take out bits like when you do the silly fingers behind the head at a wedding sort of thing!!! but it must be idiot proof she tried photoshop and say its to complicated?
can anyone recomend anything.
many thanks
Mark

if she wants to take say, fingers out from above someones head, then what will she replace it with? thats the problem. to be honest, photoshop is probably the best one to use. the 'layers' you build up make it easy to move parts around, erase bits without affecting everything else.

but, whatever program she uses, its not easy to do. if photoshop is too complicated, to be honest, i think she'll struggle with any of them. don't mean that in a bad way!

Agreed. ^^
Photoshop can be a little daunting I guess if you're not used to that sort of thing. Tell her to look at a couple of online tutorials for it, she'll soon pick up the basics

Photoshop has a few different versions, Elements is the less complicated and supported by the majority of DSLR magazines which have discs and tutorials . For the removal of items you need to learn how to use the clone stamp which copies other sections of the photo and transplants them. It is far easier with a grahics pen and tablet rather than a mouse, there are a few of these on the market Bamboo appear to be one of the better ones. I have one which is around ten years old its still saves time and simplifies editing.


This picture was done with Photoshop CS3 the car was outside the MK workshop at the time and the picture of the Abbey taken later in the day a simple bit of edition and Voila



Description
Description


PS if she intends to get additional lenses the old Minolta one fit and are a fraction of the cost of Sony ones. I have managed to pic up 2 for my sony A200 the dearest one for around £65 for a 80 - 300 zoom also the Sony has a special flash mount again making them dear items I picked a new one up from Ebay for £35.00 non sony item

[Edited on 30/5/11 by austin man]

thanks guys just orderd a tablet and she will try that on photoshop and we found some youtube videos to use as tutorials

Most photo editing programs offer cloning, which would be a pretty easy way of removing intrusive fingers ( other than a good slap )

would also advise that she take a camera course to get the best from it. I paid £80 at a local college night course. I was well worth it I never really bother with the auto settings now anc choose to go for the manual settings which give you a greated control over what your taking. Therefore impacying upon the outcome.

If you havent a printer I would recommend one of the Cannon Pixmia range with 5 ink system the output is phenomanol

paintshop pro is easy to use, photoshop is far too complex for basic tidying/cropping of pictures.


http://tinyurl.com/3ljxu32

Crucial
Don't work on the original photos
Duplicate the originals, work on the copy's

quote:

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Originally posted by T66
paintshop pro is easy to use, photoshop is far too complex for basic tidying/cropping of pictures.


http://tinyurl.com/3ljxu32

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Hi Everybody,
All the above software advised, as good as they could be, are all "proprietary" which means that their code is closed, and you have to buy a licence to use them, if you don't want to use the illegally (everybody knows what I mean...)
There is a very good free alternative to Photoshop, it is called The Gimp. The gimp is an open source software, which means its sources (code) are open, and this one, on top of it is 100% free, legally downloadable and copyable (licence GPL).
The Gimp is almost as powerful as Photoshop, and so far, the only thing I noticed that can't be done as Photoshop, is recording a macro, but I am not a Photoshop expert, there might be some other advanced things it can't do... but to advanced for what you want to do, I'm sur The gimp is perfectly suitable to your needs.
Everything on the official website : http://www.gimp.org/
Of course, as it is free and open source, there are plenty of free tutorials and courses on the web.
It is of course available for Windows and Mac, and The Gimp is the photo editing reference software in the Linux World (where Adobe has no room)
Hope this will help.
Cheers.
S.

I use The Gimp, and it's very powerful. Works on Windoze, and usually comes built in to Linux distributions.

There are also some on-line tutorials.


(damn - too slow!)

Ive used gimp but always found photoshop cs4 better, takes an age to understand but the final outcome is generally a 3-5 times better picture although at a cost.

picassa is pretty easy to use

I've used Serif Photoplus for years and find it does all the things I need for a lot less money than Photoshop.

I use gimp both on windows and Linux, been using for years. also there is a protable version that runs from a usb stick .


Best bit is no License to worry about. That make all the difference and you get use to the quirks compared to photoshop. Only thing I found was the filters were not as cool.

The best bit about Gimp is that it's free, and easy to get onto your machine. If it doesn't suit you, then it's easy to get rid of and you won't have wasted any money.

Photoshop is the best - but it's expensive. If you find it too complicated, or you can't get on with it, then you'll have spent a lot of money that you'll never recover.

I know what I'd try first!

[Edited on 31/5/11 by David Jenkins]