Developing Digital Photos

2011/06/08 in photography

What do you do with your digital photos?
I usually want to change the colour a little bit so I usually shoot RAW and develop them before I print.

Until pretty recently, developing digital photos has been for professionals and photo lovers. That’s probably because most cameras that let you shoot RAW were DSLRs. And as you know, DSLRs were for professionals and photo lovers. But things have changed. Lately, lots of people buy DSLRs. And software developers are smelling some cash there.

　Probably the most famous software for photos is Photoshop. It has become a verb now.
Photoshop used to be a professional tool but with Adobe Photoshop Elements, anybody can use Photoshop. And it’s pretty cheap as well. Sometimes, it comes with a digital camera.
I used a very early version of Photoshop Elements. I got confused with it because it is so much simpler than Photoshop.

　If we take a look at Mac only, Aperture 3 is pretty cool. I think it was made only for professionals, since it’s an Apple software, it is pretty easy to learn and use.
I’ve read some article about American wedding photographers using this from developing, album layout and printing. This was one of the reason why I wanted to use it in the first place.

　SILKYPIX is pretty major here in Japan.
For me, it was too “square” and I didn’t like it much.
It has a great noise reduction ability so I use it sometimes only to reduce noise in my photos. Also, this software works well with slower PCs, which is pretty amazing.
On top of that, the latest version comes with HDR effect, so I guess you can have some fun with it now.

The one I found recently is PhotoDirector, which seems to be a very entry level software.
You can join its beta program and if you answer some questions, you’d get a released version when it comes out.
Probably because this came out very recently, its GUI looks very familier. It’s ok. Because when the GUI looks familiar, you don’t have to learn how to use the software. You can get down to business straight away. Just like any other softwares, you can develop photos properly.
You can make a slideshow with some music and turn it into video files with this software. You can then upload videos to YouTube from this software. So, even if you have a technophobia, you won’t have trouble using it.
I thought this might be a software for quick and easy developing tool

I usually use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I use Lightroom for general development, and use Photoshop for photo retouch.
Lightroom is dedicated to photo development and is a very versatile and useful tool.
The one I find most usuful is “presets” where you can preset your development settings. If you google this, you can get so many different presets you can use.
Unfortunately, the software is getting bigger and heavier lately…

I guess only a very few would take photos with film nowadays.
I have cameras that use 35mm, 110, Polaroid and 120 but I haven’t use any of them for awhile now… Poor cameras…

Tags: aperture, Lightroom, PhotoDirector, Photoshop, SilkyPix, お得な情報