Graphics Software Talk ...

[Barman58]

Thought I'd start a thread to discuss graphics software - tips, tricks and other related gossip in one place rather than in the various request threads ....

 

[Barman58]

I assume everyone has heard of the Redfield Plugins ...

If not, they do a number of free Filters

They are Adobe .8BF format so work in a lot of packages

Photoshop Plug-ins by Redfield

They also have a nice selection of free seamless tiles, [Textures]

Download 3D Background Textures by Redfield Plugins

 

[Stephanie]

Thank you Nigel

Now Im going to upset the PS fans, I was lucky getting CS6 as an upgrade but there is no way I would pay £800+ this is because CS6 cant do every thing I want but I have found that using 2 GFX Programs apart from CS6 I can do just about all I need and they are

Chasys Draw IES - John Paul Chacha's Lab - Chasys Draw IES - Product Homepage

Paint.Net - Paint.NET - Free Software for Digital Photo Editing

 

[Boozad]

there is no way I would pay £800+

This is why I'm still using CS2.

 

[Barman58]

Steph,

I've used PS since the early days, I've tried other applications but can't adjust

I'm a Serious Photographer, and have yet to find anything that approaches Lightroom for getting work done - 95% of my images are fully processed in LR, and for those that do need something that LR can't do the integration with PS makes it a no brainer, though I did use elements for a while.

The CC Photographers pack gives me LR and PS for less that £9 a month [$10), so it's a lot less painful than it used to be

This took less than 30 minutes to process




this is a low res image for the forums it looks better in real life on my wall

 

[Stephanie]

Steph,

I've used PS since the early days, I've tried other applications but can't adjust

I'm a Serious Photographer, and have yet to find anything that approaches Lightroom for getting work done - 95% of my images are fully processed in LR, and for those that do need something that LR can't do the integration with PS makes it a no brainer, though I did use elements for a while.

The CC Photographers pack gives me LR and PS for less that £9 a month [$10), so it's a lot less painful than it used to be

This took less than 30 minutes to process


View attachment 324752




this is a low res image for the forums it looks better in real life on my wall

And very nice it is ..please don't get me wrong PS is great and my No1 app but I get more to choose from using 3 GFX apps .. and the Sig I made you some time ago was all made in CS6

 

[Stephanie]

Sry posting twice .. but

Has anyone tried Pixia a Japanese GFX program, its free and quite good

introducing Pixia

 

[Barman58]

Looks ok - would be ideal as an alternative for Windows paint

No good for me though, wouldn't open any of my master files, which are all .DNG Raw files or 32 bit Tiff

 

[Stephanie]

Hi Nigel

I tend to work with PSD and PNG, I convert Wallpapers to Jpeg for posting/emails

 

[Barman58]

My original images from my main camera body are 24+ MB Raw which i convert to DNG for future compatibility, of course this means that all work in LR is totally non destructive

I use a few plugins with Lightroom, these tend to use Tiff these days, as they are more compatible than PSD, and now that Tiff supports layers and masks within PS there isn't any real reason to use PSD, though I still do for direct edits from LR to PS. I obviously publish Jpegs or PNG for web work, and a Tiff for any external print work but most masters in DNG come out about 36 MB

BTW, the original image above is a 67MB 8 Bit Tiff, but during processing a single layer 32 Bit tiff came in at 270MB + after flattening

I may have to look at upping memory in my next upgrade to 16 or 32 GB

 

[Stephanie]

270MB + after flattening

Yeah thats big, Im not good with photos but do edit a bit

Family photo I made a bit lighter .. Im on the right

 

[Barman58]

The trick with any sort of photographic editing is to avoid JPEG totally, if possible, the fact that a lot of the data that is stripped out is tonal data means that you're starting at a disadvantage and of course more data is lost every time you save a file.

All my cameras except the compacts and phones shoot raw which means there is more data in highlights and shadows that is normally visible on screen, which means you can push things.

Of course there will always be a problem in getting an image to match what you see with your eye as the dynamic range available in digital media is a fraction of what we see, that's why HDR is such a useful tool

 

[Stephanie]

The trick with any sort of photographic editing is to avoid JPEG totally, if possible, the fact that a lot of the data that is stripped out is tonal data means that you're starting at a disadvantage and of course more data is lost every time you save a file.

All my cameras except the compacts and phones shoot raw which means there is more data in highlights and shadows that is normally visible on screen, which means you can push things.

Of course there will always be a problem in getting an image to match what you see with your eye as the dynamic range available in digital media is a fraction of what we see, that's why HDR is such a useful tool

Mmmm Max's photo album is all Jpeg (insert is only a small part of it) would I do better to convert to say PNG for keeping ?

 

[Barman58]

It wouldn't hurt, but to be honest if your camera only takes JPEG then the best thing is to set the camera to use the best quality available, (least compression ), at the largest size possible, cards and hard drives are fairly cheap these days, (it's actually a good idea to set all your original JPEGs to read only once you upload to PC)

Most importantly if you do any edits on an image, always use a save as not save, Saving as a PNG at this stage would be a useful thing in case you need to re-edit, or save in PSD/TIFF if you have layers or masks.

Leaving the original filename the same and only changing the file extension helps keep all related files together

If you ever need to try a different edit you can re-open the original untouched image

 

[Stephanie]

OK thank you for the advice Nigel

 

[Barman58]

Tip for users of Photoshop CC 2014 & Lightroom

One thought about uninstalling the older versions of Photoshop CC after installing Photoshop CC 2014 for Lightroom Users

the way that the installer works may cause issues

If you use lightroom and you install Photoshop CC 2014 then uninstall the earlier PS CC version(s) you may find that Lightroom loses some or all it's links to Photoshop CC2014, (Edit in .. Edit as Layers Merge to HDR pro Etc)

If you know that you do not need the older versions it's best to remove these Before you install CC 2014 .

If you do install PS CC 2014 and later decide to remove Photoshop CC and lose the LR links Uninstall both Lightroom 5 CC & Photoshop CC 2014 and then Re-install PS 2014 then LR 5 CC to reset the links 

 

[ThrashZone]

I never saw that coming,
All the updater said was a new version of photoshop was ready like it has done several times in the passed,
3d engine was rendered useless every little 3d attempt said 3-4-5 hours
Had enough of that update craziness,
Glad someone sees cc as a good thing

P.S.
Great idea creating this thread Nigel

 

[ThrashZone]

I did find out recently Windows Movie Marker has gotten pretty easy to use :shocked:
Not sure if there's any tricks to it though,
First step in was pretty
The only real mess is all of the different and specific mobile device options ?
Not sure what that's all about but I'm pretty sure it's to load to the device and not for actually viewing on youtube and stuff like that,
The youtube share bit never worked not sure why name and password were correct but I did end up with three freaking I'm not sure what they are sort of different accounts via the same gmail address lol

 

[Stephanie]

Free PS Nebula Brushes by ~FUZZJP~



Zip is to big to upload so here's the link > High Res Nebula Galaxies & Star Brushes (Free) | Free Brush Archive

 

[nommy the first]

Now this is a nice thread

One Photoshop extension that made my life considerably easier is PaintersWheel.

Sadly it's not yet supported in CC, but it's great for everyone using CS4, 5 or 6

Another great tool like that, which is IMHO even better, plus integrated in for as far as I know every version of Ps, is Kuler.


Related to Kuler, there is this online variant which also works great!

Now for advice I really only have three things; Groups, Layer Masks and Backups!
Groups are a great way to organize your layers and stop your project from becomming a mess.

Layer Masks are basically editable erasers Instead of cropping the background off of a layer, making it unable to use in the future, simply apply a layer mask, that way you can always access it later on.
And while you're working with layer masks anyway, take a look at the Refine Edge tool! It's virtually impossible to make a precise selection of hair or stuff like that, but with the Refine Edge tool you can get pretty darn close.

As for backups, I have hit myself in the face more than once late in projects when I wanted to edit that one rasterized text layer or that one shape, but didn't have a copy of it anywhere. I am sure that everyone who uses Photoshop, GIMP, CD, Cinema4D or any other (layer based) graphic program has had this. That's why it's essential to have a backup of all important layers.

A snip from the GFX Team subforum, courtecy of Julian;

And that's about it for now


Nommy