Which Photoshop?

[brooke]

Photoshop is over rated.

I have been using Fireworks for years. I brought Photoshop CS last year and the only time I use it is when I want to adjust shadows. Its pretty good at that. However it nice to have, but I do everything oin Fireworks still as I think its better.

If you want it work logos etc, photo shop is not the right tool. I have studied photo shop alot since I brought it, and the biggest thing I learnt is that it is an application for PHOTOS!!!! Amazing eh? If you want to do anything in vectors or create then its not the tool for you. You could use it, but its strength is in how it handles PHOTOS, hence its name. To shed some light on that, and this is important. Photo shop is a pixel based rasta program. so it is not vector based or anything else. So, in Fireworks if you create a circle and fill it, the maths draws an imaginery circle and fills it with uniform pixels the colour of your choosing. It has special rules for how to deal with the edge, ie, feather, anti-alias or sharp. Now photoshop does it differently. It actually looks at every pixel in your selection and modifies it accordingly, however, every pixel has a relationship with every other pixel, so modifying any pixel will result in modifying any pixel around it. I havn't explained this very well but its a significant difference. But this principle is unique to photoshop and is what makes it so great. Its this pixel by pixel interralationship that allows it to deal with shadows, depths, colour intensities etc. Fireworks has everything mapped out using vectors, so a gradient is calculated along a line in FW but in PS each pixel is looked at and modified accordingly based on its relationship with the pixels next to it.

You really need to read the book. But when you have, you'll realise that photo shop is ideal for PHOTOS, and not for creating a logo based on text and curved vector lines.

In my opinion, photo shop is great at messing up your pictures. I take alot of pictures and mostly after I photoshop them they look crap because you get lost. You can google photo shop 'tricks' and these tricks take forever and dont do much. Like how to blow an image up AND keep it in sharp focus. All sorts.

However, I use it once a week, and so its good to have.

Your a rich man Brian with your Google Ad Sense stash, by the full set, dreamweaver, video, flash, photoshop etc, its only £1500 or so, claim it off your tax return at the end of the year.

Actually one other nice thing about photoshop is the magic brush thing. Lets say you take a photo of yourself brian, and theres a bit spot on your nose. In photoshop you have a wand that you point at the spot. It then looks at all the pixels outside of the spot and replaces it with a smooth fill, but its entirely in keeping with the surrounding pixels so its smooth. You can do it with lines. So you could run it along the lines on your forehead and they would vanish. Its called healing? It looks at the surrounding pixels and creates a fill to match. I use it to clean nicley painted items that have blemishes, rust or dust and dirt etc. You can easily get rid of aeroplanes in the sky, its an amazing feature.

[brooke]

Originally Posted by Brian Turner

My main interest is to produce those nice mirror reflected logos and rounded two-tone buttons you see on a lot of Web 2.0 or aspiring Web 2.0 websites. I don't suppose that effect is available in Photoshop Elements?

Thats an easy effect Brian. You get an item. Copy it. Paste it upside down, (flip vertical) and ad a fade gradient to it. Easy as that. I do it all the time. Dont need photoshop. Anything with those simple features will do. Fireworks is good.

[bumfluff]

I love photoshop, but I wouldn't spend that amount of money if it's mainly to do bevelled buttons and so on. There's a variation on The Gimp called Gimpshop (still free), which is basically a branch of the program that's aimed at being more photoshop-like.

I wouldn't worry too much about the tutorial aspect, as the actual techniques used will be much the same across most programs and making buttons etc isn't a particularly technical exercise.. I'm sure you'll be able to figure out how to apply the techniques to your particular program.

Alternatively, there's a bunch of programs out there specifically for making web graphics. Most are quite limited, though.. wouldn't be much use for doing things like backgrounds or banners.

If you're set on photoshop, go for standard CS3 (or an older version if you can find it).. you're unlikely to need the extra features of the extended version. Be careful buying second-hand copies of applications - you never know if it's already been registered to someone else and if that person can transfer ownership. That can limit you if you need to be registered with the company in order to receive patches, upgrades etc.

[Shane McManus]

I'dd say you wouldn't need to go for the extended version. Unless you are needing those features on a daily basis.

[Arleigh]

It's better to buy Photoshop CS3 than CS3 Extended.. It's more practical because it is less expensive.

[Tinterweb]

The extended part is quite specialist, probably not really needed.

[Electro-Host]

I suggest getting CS2.

Much faster, more compatibility and much more easier to use.