Rawshooter or Photoshop?

Ok guys and gals....turns out that the copy of Photoshop that I was given from a friend isn't exactly of the legal sort. So I'm having a slight dilemma. First and foremost I cannot afford to buy photoshop at this time, most likely not for a very very long time as I'm a full time student and can't come up with that kind of change. So a few questions if you all don't mind.....these are mostly constituting of RAW format probs by the way.

1. Should/Can I upgrade a copy of photoshop that I don't really think is legit?
2. If this is not possible then should I use Rawshooter essentials 2006 for my RAW photos (initial tweaking) and then put them into photoshop for further mods as JPEGs?
3. Should I just take my photos as JPEGS and just use photoshop?

I think you all get the drift, anything helps...thanks!!!!

Kyle

RSE is a good piece of software, and it comes very close to RSP when it comes to usability and features. My personal conclusion was that RSP only has a few new features that may or may not affect the quality of the algorithms and their processing.

My initial workflow was RSE followed by PS Elements2. I just bought RSP because I wanted to pay for such a wonderful program.

Secondly, shooting JPEGs is almost archaic in my opinion. With the cost of storage coming down continuously, it is almost pointless. A RAW file will always allow you to go back in time.

While I can't directly answer your questions, Kyle, if you are a student you should look into buying an educational version of PS. As a part-time assistant professor I was able to pick up a full CS2 version of PS for about $125. The only downside is you can't upgrade it. But if you wait for the new version you won't need to. As to saving in JPEG, I'm with Ashutosh, I save everything in raw and only convert to JPEG before printing or posting to the web.

How do I go about getting an educational version? I am a full-time student at UNC-Asheville as a matter of fact.

You should be able to get if from your school's book store, or they should be able to steer you in the right direction. If not, you may be able to find it on the web. You'll need to provide documentation. Just search on "Photoshop educational version" or some variation of that.

Another inexpensive option is the latest version of Elements. It uses Adobe Camera Raw to convert RAW files.

Kyle,

Your campus bookstore should have an educational version of PS for sale. If your camera supports it, you can take JPEG and RAW files and have fun with both...

Hello Kyle. I see you're at UNC-A, I live in Rutherfordton. I used a demo of RSE and was not pleased with it. I think the educational version of PS is a wonderful idea, I'm going to look into that myself (my son is in college). I certainly would not recommend using or trying to upgrade an illegal version. I'm using PS elements which is much less expensive, and for RAW conversion I use Capture One LE which I love, and it was also fairly inexpensive. So that's another option for you. Have fun!

I would think that the educational version is the way to go as well. The only question I have about that is whether future camera models will be supported - I simply have no idea what the answer is, but Adobe would be pretty good about answering that. I understand that it can't be upgraded, but for as much as that program already does, it really is not a short-time issue.

Elements, about $100, is also a great bargain. It won't do everything its big brother can, but for the price, you really can't do much better.

the educational version is the same as the full version. You're just not supposed to use it for "professional" work.
As far as supporting cameras, that's just a matter of installing the latest version of ACR, which involves nothing more than copying the file to the proper folder.

I'm not sure where folks are getting the idea that the educational version of PS can't be upgraded, but before I bought the educational version of PS CS, I read the license agreement (which indicated it was upgradable) and contacted Adobe sales and I was assured that it could be upgraded in the future. Of course, I haven't actually tried this yet, but I will when CS3 comes out. You should definitely look into getting the educational version though. Photoshop is a great program and I wouldn't be without it. Having said that, I also user C1 LE for RAW conversion. If it's just a RAW converter you're looking for, I'd recommend that.

I'm not sure who told me I couldn't upgrade my educational version but a quick look on the web seems to agree with Paul. I for sure going to try to do that with mine if the price of the upgrade is less than the new educational version.

Thanks for the comment, Paul.

I'm definitely in agreement about not using pirated software - in fact I told my son "no thanks" when he offered to get me an educational edition of PS. I assume that you've already determined that your computer has the horsepower to run PS effectively; if not PSE is really a very powerful program. OT: I upgraded from RSE to RSP in order to do my global color/luminosity corrections on the 12-bit original, since I was using PSE2 at the time. Turned out to be a smart move, since I now have Lightroom V1.0 for "free".

When is the new version of photoshop (CS3) coming out?

Ok.....so I downloaded the new CS3 trial version...which I can only use for 2 days since I don't have a copy of photoshop with a valid serial number. I can't really do much with it that makes my pics look insanely better than they do with rawshooter (save as JPEGs after this) and then in photoshop as the new JPEG file. Is there something I'm missing or is this just another "practice, practice, practice" thing that I'm going to have to work on? Thanks everyone, and CS2 is $399 right now....so I think I'll wait for CS3 to come out.

"Is there something I'm missing or is this just another "practice, practice, practice" thing that I'm going to have to work on?"

Abolutely! Photoshop allows you to make many corrections to your images in different ways. It is extremely flexible, but takes takes time and effort to learn. Your learning outcomes will show in your images, and thos outcomes will be very positive.

PES-2 is also a great program. Not as powerful as PSCS-2 or 3, but very, very useful.

-PB

I use RawShooter essentials and an older version of PhotoShop. RSE does a good job. I'd like a little more fine control, but for most photos its well worth the price (free). I use PS for cropping, resizing, and occasional levels or contast adjustments and the like, but many photos don't need any additional tweaking in PS.

I use RSE 2005 and PS Elements 5. For me this is a great combination and is very affordable. I have never tried CS...but for my current skill level PS Elements works great. In version 5 they have added the curves adjustment.

Nathan

Kyle, I'm going to make a departure from commonly accepted wisdom here and recommend an alternative to PhotoShop that is really excellent ... Corel PaintShop Pro. You can get version 10 or 11 for less than $150 registered. It will do everything that PS will do, at least what's useful to us as advanced image editors. I have found that even though it will recognize raw format from my camera, it doesn't have the sophisticated processing tweaks that a dedicated raw processer has but for tiffs and jpegs it's a terrific bargan for the price. Use it in addition to Rawshooter or whatever.

2. If this is not possible then should I use Rawshooter essentials 2006 for my RAW photos (initial tweaking) and then put them into photoshop for further mods as JPEGs?

Don't do your further mods on jpegs. Save your raw processed files as tiff's. NEVER save a jpeg twice. i.e. if you are working on a jpeg NEVER resave it as jpeg. Rather, save as tiff.


Bob