Burningbird

Lessons learned so far from the book:

• Photoshop, still king. After working with several photo and graphics editors, I can say with a great deal of certainty that Photoshop really does deserve the respect it's been given. Adobe's habit of re-arranging its products with every release, paranoia about stolen software (somewhat justified) and high price tags aside, the product is the best.
• There are other good photo editing tools. Having said that Photoshop is the best, there are other excellent photo editing tools, including GIMP. I tried out the new GIMP 2.4 and was very impressed with the application. What's important to remember about GIMP is that it's one of the few that isn't claiming to be a "Photoshop killer". It considers itself to be a unique photo editing product.
• Of the other products I explored, Paint Shop Pro has gotten a lot of flack for only being 8-bit, and deservedly. It still has an extraordinary number of photo effects, though. Paint.NET is not–not ready for prime time, that is.
• Photoshop Elements is fun Elements is more than Photoshop with much of the guts torn out. Elements really is focused at a different audience. It doesn't have much of the fine control that Photoshop provides, true. It does, however, support what most people want from a photo editor, and a whole lot of new functionality that most people would find fun. Since I have my TV hooked up to my computer, I adored Element's ability to generate a widescreen HD-compatible slideshow movie with music of a folder of photos.
• The next Photoshop will be an online tool. I'm amazed at the number of online photo editors. I'm doubly amazed with all the hyperbole surrounding them. These tools are described variously as the next Photoshop Killer or the next Photoshop, period. Even Adobe is coming out with an online tool. My first test for each of the online photo editors I looked at? Uploading and opening a RAW image file. Puts the whole 'online' photo editor thing into perspective.
• Colorful black and whites. I don't think I've realized how colorful black and white photos really are until I started exploring, in depth, the many ways one can convert a color photo into a black & white. This exercise should be a requirement for every class teaching black & white photography.
• Snag-It is great for screen captures and Skitch has an interesting social network facility, but my favorite screen capture tool ended up being Faststone's Fast Capture. I found it more comfortable to use then the other two products.
• I will accept software that dynamically resizes my photos for online display, only if you let me use my new Grease Monkey script that removes all the conjunctions from your writing.
• Most important graphics tools. The most important tool both for editing photos and creating graphics is the Gaussian Blur. You can do without most other things, but you can't do without the Gaussian Blur.

I'm looking at various RAW editors, including UFRaw and Adobe's Camera RAW but also downloaded a copy of RawShooter 2006. The company that produced this tool, Pixmantec, is no more having been bought about by Adobe. However, the tool can still be downloaded, though the registration process fails each time you open it. A minor nuisance, no more.

It's not the best of the RAW editors, but it is fast and one of the simpler to use. I like the batch conversion, but I also like the slideshow, similar to what you get with Lightroom or Aperture.

I was testing it out yesterday and started the slideshow for a set of photos I had taken of tulips at the Botanical Gardens this spring. No matter what tools you use in your photo workflow, nothing beats a slideshow to give you your first really good look at the photos as a set.

I keep most of my raw images after a shoot. Not the obviously bad ones that can't be recovered: too blurry, too overexposed or underexposed, or missed subject; but the ones I didn't especially care for at the time. You never know how much your perspective is going to change after a few months, and a picture you thought was uninteresting one day may suddenly seem to have potential another.

More importantly, when you're stuck inside because it's 108 degrees in the shade outside, and all the trees and lawns are baked brown, there's nothing more refreshing than sitting down to a slideshow of rain kissed tulips. It just doesn't matter if 99% of the photos will never see the inside of a web page or picture frame, or if the only person to see them is the same who took the pictures originally. It doesn't even matter if they're 'good' or art.

There is just something very satisfying about sitting down to monitor-sized slideshow of old photos.