Post Production Software

[johnske]

Like almost everyone, I currently use photoshop (i have PS6), but I've recently downloaded the trial version of Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom to try and I must say it looks quite good, with controls sorta designed to emulate what's on the camera, making it quite intuitive to make corrections. i.e. slider controls to adjust exposure, D-light, fill light, hue, saturation, white balance (temperature and tint), curves and levels, etc etc etc. with a side by side comparison with the original photo. It's even really very simple to tweak the controls (mainly D-light, fill light) to get a pseudo HDR effect in a few seconds.

I'm very tempted to buy the full version except they're asking a hundred bucks for it - does anyone use this software? If so - your opinion (good, bad, or indifferent) regarding it?

[SusanH1970]

Quite a few years ago I'd gotten ArcSoft PhotoStudio v5.5 (it came with a computer I had) and was NOT impressed. I don't know if the newer versions are any better.

Honestly, if you're going to spend $100 on software, I'd say to go with Photoshop Elements 9. You can download the trial version at Adobe.

[johnske]

Originally Posted by SusanH1970

Quite a few years ago I'd gotten ArcSoft PhotoStudio v5.5 (it came with a computer I had) and was NOT impressed. I don't know if the newer versions are any better.

Honestly, if you're going to spend $100 on software, I'd say to go with Photoshop Elements 9. You can download the trial version at Adobe.

Thanks Susan, but this is not Arcsoft PhotoStudio (I think I downloaded that some time ago to try and was also totally unimpressed) - it's Photostudio Darkroom 2 - a different product from them.

Unfortunately the specs shown for Photoshop Elements 9 would require a computer upgrade for me (or at least doubling my RAM) - and a trial download measured not in megabytes but in GIGAbytes? The enormously bloated file-size of all ADOBE products and their drain on system resources has always been my bug-bear with them - even their simple PDF reader is a 58MB download!

I do a lot of work indoors in poor lighting where flash use is inappropriate or forbidden. For instance, I took lots of pics of fencers in a poorly lit hall on the weekend and I'm sure if you were busy fencing someone you would be at a severe disadvantage if flashlights were going off directly in front of you, so i didn't use one.

I had to discard most of these pics simply because of noise and/or poor light (typically ISO 400 to 6400) but when I looked at them in Photostudio darkroom and tweaked fill and D-light and used Darkrooms chromatic and luminance de-noising they could all be made quite acceptable very quickly. It's just that this trial version wont allow you to save large copies for a 'real' side by side comparison - this is why i was asking.

Anyway I might just lash out and buy the (only 44MB) Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom and give it a try anyway and use it in conjunction with PS6.

Ta, John

[SusanH1970]

You didn't mention you had PSE6, why do you need something else? You could delete that off your system and download PSE9. For noise you can use the free version of Noiseware.

[johnske]

Thanks Susan, didn't know about Noiseware ... that's a pretty clever magician they got hiding in there eh?