That other thread on digital photography got me asking myself what other people are using for digital image processing software. So, why not ask everyone. What software do you use and why?

-- mark (mramra@qwest.net), August 31, 2001

Answers

Photoshop, of course! Though my email address probably suggestes why... Seriously, even for simple tasks, Photoshop feels right. It's been around for 10 years so there's been plenty of time to refine features.

Here's an example:

After scanning a photo, I noticed the horizon was down to the left a couple of degrees. Using Photoshop's measure tool, I clicked on the left horizon edge, then dragged the line to the right horizon edge. After releasing the mouse button, the status bar at the top of the screen showed the angle of the line. Remembering the number, I opened the Arbitrary rotate dialog. Much to my delight, the angle of rotatation was already entered! Over 10 years of development, there's been plenty of time for "wouldn't it be nice if..." features to be incorporated.

Fergus

-- Fergus Hammond (fhammond@adobe.com), August 31, 2001.

I have Photoshop (v5.0) but I rarely if ever use it. The PhotoDeluxe and LivePix I got bundled with something or other work just as well for my purposes and are much more intuitive. I have a friend who told me about Photoshop Elements, supposed to be a lot easier to use than Photoshop, cost under $100 yet have a lot of the most-used features of Photoshop. Sounds interesting to me.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), August 31, 2001.

While Photoshop or its derivatives are the likely #1 here, I would also be interested in the types of third party scanning software and/or plug-ins that people use.

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), August 31, 2001.

Photoshop, for three specific reasons:

1/ It's the only thing that works with Piezography software, which is essential to me

2/ For me, the curves dialogue is absolutely essential, since that's how I do almost all of my color and tonal corrections--many (not all) of the cheaper programs don't have a curves function.

3/ Layers are necessary for me, to enable me to do experiments and editing without making a final committment until I'm where I want to be. . . Aside from all the other tricks you can do with them, involving burning, dodging, etc.

If I didn't need #1, Paintshop Pro would ALMOST do the job, except I don't like the way that the eyedropper and curves functions don't interact (if I'm wrong about that, someone please tell me) to enable you to scan densities while you're working in the curves dialogue.

I'll say it every time digital comes up: if you aren't totally familiar with what curves can do, you're missing most of the advantage of digital processing. "Professional Photoshop" by Dan Margulis influenced me more than any other Photoshop book has.

-- Michael Darnton (mdarnton@hotmail.com), August 31, 2001.

The best scanning software I've found is Vuescan. It actually provides scanner functions that are not available using the scanner's own software (Nikon in my case) such as outputting 48-bit files and using averaged multiple passes. It has a slightly unpolished interface (emphasis on practicality rather than prettiness) but is very good value. You can download it, and a trial version, from www.hamrick.com

If you search photo.net there will be plenty of references to it.

Andrew

-- Andrew B (andrewboshoff@hotmail.com), August 31, 2001.

I use Photoshop (now 6.0, but I've been using it since pre-1.0) for 99% of all my image editing needs. I've used about a dozen add-on packages, the one that I'm going to buy is Genuine Fractals. Photoshop does so much more than I have ever put to it that I can't see outgrowing it anytime in my lifetime.

For scanning, I have a Minolta Scan Dual II. I use both the Minolta software and Vuescan.

The Minolta software does an excellent job with three minor annoyances ... It needs LOTS of RAM to work reliably (I open Photoshop in a minimum 500MB partition to scan things); their focus algorithm is slow and a little fussy .. I sometimes have to tweak the settings to get the best results; and heaven only knows when Minolta will rev the software for Mac OS X. Not a big deal, but it does very well with both B&W and color scans.

Vuescan is a tiny bit faster, has a much more accurate and very fast focusing algorithm, and scans quickly. It also has about the worst User Interface design of any software I use, occasionally does not initialize the scanner properly, and B&W negative scans are never quite as nice as the Minolta software for whatever reason ... they seem to have noise in them. That said, it has useful features and I use it when its strengths are more compelling than its foibles.

-- Godfrey (ramarren@bayarea.net), August 31, 2001.

Photoshop and Vuescan.

Photoshop is the gold standard of image-processing software. It can do more than I'll ever want, and if I need to do something and don't know how, hundreds of people on the net can offer help. I've tried Picture Window Pro, but Photoshop is infinitely more capable.

Vuescan because it's fast, cheap, produces great scans, and works on any scanner I'm likely to own. I've had it for my HP S20, the Polaroid SS4000 and now a Nikon LS-4000 and an Epson 1240. The same program worked on all of them and I paid no extra fees. Ed Hamrick is just an email away with advice, and he actually listens to his customer base and incorporates their requests and bug reports in new (free) versions. Not next year like Nikon or Polaroid or Silverfast, but next week, or even next day. I grew up on DOS command-line apps, so I'm not very whelmed with today's insistence on all-singing all-dancing GUIs - Ed's interface is very fast once you learn it, and the learning curve is, frankly, the flattest I've seen in a long time.

I guess you could say I'm a Vuescanfan :-)

-- Paul Chefurka (chefurka@home.com), August 31, 2001.

Another program worth considering is GIMP:

http://www.gimp.org/ (main page, originally for Unix & similar systems)

http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/ (Windows version - works, but still in development - there are probably still bugs)

http://www.macgimp.org/ (OSX only - works, but still in development, complicated installation!)

It's a lot more sophisticated than the typical consumer-level image editors (even comparing favourably with Photoshop in many areas), and is absolutely free to download, use, modify or distribute. Curves, layers, filters, plugins and automated scripting are all supported. On the minus side, it lacks features (e.g. Pantone and proper CMYK support) you'd need for working with a professional print shop, the interface may appear a bit strange to Windows (and especially Mac) users at first, and installation can be complex (particularly on a Mac).

-- Richard Williams (richardw@icr.ac.uk), September 04, 2001.