The digitization of photography has caused the launch of thousands of photo software packages, ranging from simple, anyone-can-do-it applications that come with simple, point and shoot digital cameras, to full professional tools. Not surprisingly the professional tools can be very expensive. When choosing photo software, you must first decide what you are trying to do. Do you just want to be able to sort and organize your snapshots? Do plan to professionally retouch and enhance images? Or do you plant to do something in between?
Also, one very important consideration is: how and where will your finished work be used? If you are uploading a photo to the internet the process and the finished file are very different than what you’d do if you were going to print a large photograph for an art show, which is in turn very different from preparing a photograph to be printed in a book or magazine. Is there one set of tasks you’ll do over and over, or do you do a wide variety of work.
One of the oldest and best photo editing software packages is Adobe Photoshop. Like your grandmother, Photoshop has been around so long it doesn’t count birthdays anymore. If your grandmother used version one of Photoshop, she probably wouldn’t recognize the versatile, sophisticated and complicated tool it has become today.
Photoshop is fairly easy to use—for what it is. That said, Photoshop is a complex and versatile professional tool. It does everything you could ever want to do to a photograph, but the learning curve is steep. Typically, the best way to learn the application is to figure out what you want to do in Photoshop and learn one task at a time, focusing on intended results. Be aware, too, that Photoshop is very expensive. If you do this for a living you may need to buy it, but if you don’t, you might look into a cheaper alternative, or take a class at a school where you can use the program to practice.
Photo software is considered graphic design software. It can be desktop publishing software also. The difference between graphic design and desktop publishing software is that the desktop publishing category includes some consumer level programs not typically considered professional graphic design software. In a sense, desktop publishing software encompasses graphic design software, in that graphic design software is a subset of desktop publishing software—a subset for graphic design professionals, although it can be used by just about anyone.
Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator are graphics software programs used for professional graphic design work, and are thus often considered graphic design software but are only for the most sophisticated home users—and the ones with the deepest pockets. There is no single best photo program. There are, however, programs that are particularly good at one task or another, better than the others. Before you ask which is the best photo program you have to consider what you want to do with it. Remember, photography is a very broad field.
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