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Berghof

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I'm new to DSLR and never shot any RAW.I know I'll have to study lots of stuff about dogital photography but I wonder if I have to purchase Photoshop first or is there any free program on the http://www which will help me to work on files from my new D80.

If photoshop will be the only way to go for me can I perhaps purchase somewhere an older version of the software and save some $$$ or do I have to buy new.I'm not sure whether to buy it eventualy over the internet and download it [I fear I may loose the program this way if something happens to my PC ] or should I go to a store and buy one there.

Basically I'm lost and I need to find out how should I go about this business of dealing with RAW,what should I read and where etc.Please,help.Thank you.
--
Berghof G.C.
 
First give this free Nikon browser a try. I just played a little and it's not perfect by all means and may even have some bugs, but it's free and gets you the feet wet.

If you want a full blown editing program, my suggestion would be Adobe Photoshop ELEMENTS 5. This is the little brother of the full blown Photoshop CS3 with 95% of the functionality at 15% of the price (around $90 street vs. $650 for CS3).

There are other free converters that others may point you too, but I don't really know them as I use Captrue NX (and have both Elements 5 and CS3 for pixel editing and other stuff).

But again, try the free Nikon ViewNX first.
--
Regards,
JH
http://www.jh-photography.net
 
Berghof said:
I'm new to DSLR and never shot any RAW.
Click to expand...
Although RAW is very useful, it is not a prerequisite to excellent images. I shot many thousand jpegs and still do off and on. But I shoot exclusively RAW with my D2Hs.

I would suggest shooting jpeg until you are happy with your exposures. Once you are comfortable with the cam, you will be able to spend the time working on RAW processing skills.
Berghof said:
I know I'll have to study lots
of stuff about dogital photography but I wonder if I have to purchase
Photoshop first or is there any free program on the http://www which will
help me to work on files from my new D80.
Click to expand...
Some excellent books to get you started:

Bryan Peterson "Understanding Exposure"
John Shaw "Field Guide to Nature Photography"
Bruce Fraser "Real World Adobe Camera RAW"

If you get the last one, you might want to consider Adobe Photoshop Elements 5, which is inexpensive yet quite powerful. And it comes with Adobe Camera RAW.
Berghof said:
If photoshop will be the only way to go for me can I perhaps purchase
somewhere an older version of the software and save some $$$ or do I
have to buy new.I'm not sure whether to buy it eventualy over the
internet and download it [I fear I may loose the program this way if
something happens to my PC ] or should I go to a store and buy one
there.
Basically I'm lost and I need to find out how should I go about this
business of dealing with RAW,what should I read and where
etc.Please,help.Thank you.
Click to expand...
You should probably work on your photography skills first, but if you insist on jumping straight into RAW then I would suggest the Bruce Fraser book and Elements 5. A very good pair for less than 200 bucks brand new.

--
http://letkeman.net/Photos
 
After trying around 100 photos "RAW" I have given up due to the learning curve is too big, too time consuming with both CS3 and NX.

I have downloaded some movies and PDF files (for both CS3 & NX) - hope will be back to shoot NEF's one day.

BH
 
You may want to take a look at Lightroom (you can get a trial version from Adobe). Great for catalogues of images, slideshows and processing of both RAW and JPEG.

One key thing Lightroom lacks is pixel level improvements (i.e. there's no selection tools and therefore changes you make such as contrast, HSL etc are applied to the whole image) but you could argue that this forces you to get it right more often in-camera. Alternatively, you can output as TIFF or JPEG and use something like Elements or Paint Shop Pro (much cheaper than Photoshop) for pixel level editting. I understand that Paint Shop Pro offers RAW processing but have never used it so can't comment however it is a very capable piece of software in it's own right.

Download a few trial versions and give them a try.

Spam
 
--Thank you all.Yes,I think I'll shoot mainly in FINE Jpeg or in Nef +Jpeg [I understand this configuration gives me instant Jpeg plus almost RAW qualities and I can come back to the images at a later stage and adjust them - Am I correct?]
Berghof G.C.
 
Hi there,

I don't know why but the jpg files come with NEF files are not the same as shooting JPG only.

BH
Berghof said:
--Thank you all.Yes,I think I'll shoot mainly in FINE Jpeg or in Nef
+Jpeg [I understand this configuration gives me instant Jpeg plus
almost RAW qualities and I can come back to the images at a later
stage and adjust them - Am I correct?]
Berghof G.C.
Click to expand...
 
Mike Chinnock said:
ACDsee 9.0 at about $40, or Adobe Elements 4.0 at about $40. Both can
work with Nikon Raw files.
Click to expand...
Elements 4 does not work with the latest ACR, so recent and new cameras are off the list.

I often wonder why cheap must mean dirt cheap? Adobe just released Elements 6, which has some great new features and is of course able to work with ACR 4, which is a free download for it (maybe it even comes in the box.) That's a lot more bang for not much more money.

--
http://letkeman.net/Photos
 
Before committing your hard-earned money to a program, make sure to do the free trials to see how they gel with your workflow. For Nikon I like Capture NX the best, but it's super-slow, at least on my computer, and at first that turned me off to it.
 
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