Photographic Software

Photographic Software


These are computer programs that enables us to connect our cameras to computers or other devices to which allow us to manipulate,print,scan or view our images

Digital cameras nowadays come supplied with software that enable them to communicate with a computer. This piece of software enables you to connect your camera to a computer and perform a variety of tasks and functions to enable you to view,edit and manipulate images using digital photography.


I use a USB (Universal Serial Bus) 2 connection lead to download my images from my camera to my laptop. This is the industry standard method of data transfer reaching speeds of up to 480 Mbps. Firewire leads are used to download images from a camera to a Mac with similar speeds to usb

Canon Photo Professional

In my case, when I bought my first Canon camera it came supplied with a piece of software called "Canon photo professional" a very useful and easy to use program. I use this software all the time and I prefer this software as my main image browser program

Without this piece of software the camera and the computer cannot communicate 

Shown above here is a screen grab of my software which shows a file browser on the left,an image viewer on the rest of the page and tool bars on the top of the page which allow me to perform a variety of functions that can be applied to your images. Some of these include crop,rotate and alter such things as white balance if the image was recorded in raw


I have compared this software with Adobe bridge and feel that the Canon software is a lot more versatile and user friendly. Menu's are easy to follow and buttons are self explanatory. Canon opens all kinds of files including Raw,Png, Dng etc. Bridge tends to react far slower than the Canon software and is very restrictive at what files it can open






Photoshop


This is another piece of software that I use. This is the major software that every photographer uses. This software is absolutely brilliant and no photographer can afford to be without it. It is the market leader for image manipulation. This software is classed as the "Digital darkroom" by many because you can perform every single task that was performed in a darkroom in the old days apart from making your image appear in a dish of chemicals

I use version CS3, it caters for all my photography needs allowing me to manipulate and transform my images.It is renown the world over for it's outstanding "Layers" caperbilities which allow different images to be stacked and blended together to produce montages and very creative works of photography art.

Other great features of this software include masks,curves,filters,airbrushing etc which are all used to transform images and turn them into competition winners.

Every editor, publisher or web designer all use this software. I don't think there is a magazine in the world that does not use Photoshop to manipulate or airbrush their models on front covers of their magazines

The latest version of Photoshop is now version CS5

Photoshop Elements


This a cut down version of the big daddy Photoshop. It obviously doesn't have have all the features and functionality of it's big brother but it is a brilliant piece of software for the  price you pay


I bought version 6 on Ebay some years a go for £25.00 and that was the best £25.00 I had ever spent. It is great for image manipulation and transforming images,making montages, posters and editing your images etc.


This software too has the main editing program and a file browser built into it, 2 pieces of software for the price of one,brilliant!


I would recommend that any beginner use this software first just to give them a taste of how good the software is before shelling out about £500 on the full version of Photoshop

Bridge


This is a piece of Adobe software that comes bundled with Photoshop. It is actually part of Photoshop itself, it is Photoshop's file and image browser/ viewer. 


In earlier versions of Photoshop, photographers used to complain that their images took far to long to open and edit which wasted valuable time. Adobe's answer was to combine Bridge into Photoshop to enable workflow to proceed very swiftly within a fraction of the time older versions




Shown here is Bridge in action. It's very useful because it displays all your meta data on the right hand side of the screen,something that is invaluable to any photographer

Flicker


This is another piece of software that I and most other photographers use.This software is based on the internet and  is totally free to use.The aim of this software is to enable photographers to form an online photography community where they can display, discuss all aspects of photogrphy and upload their images which can then be critiqued upon by other members. This is a great way to gauge your progress in photography and benchmark your work against other photographers


I upload a lot of images onto this site to enable other photographers to view and comment om my work.I find this a great marketing tool to enable me to gain recognition and perhaps one day sell some of my images. 


Shown below is the website Flicker and a selection of my images