Try Paint Shop Pro 10. It has support for layers, 16bit, and is now color
managed. It's cheap at less than $100 US and is very nice. I use Photoshop
CS2 and PSP 10 is the only cheap program I've found that I think works near
as well.
--
Chris Crawford
Photography & Graphic Design
Santa Fe, New Mexico
http://www.chriscrawfordphoto.com
http://www.plumpatrin.com Something the world NEEDS.
On 2/18/07 5:59 PM, "Brian Swale" <bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Recently I have been looking at making better photographic prints, in
> particular prints that might have appeal to the kinds of people who buy art;
> especially oil, acrylic and water-colour paintings.
>
> Any kinds of "normal" photographic prints have a negligible market in New
> Zealand, and most galleries refuse to hang them. A typical response when I
> show them an A4 print includes "Yes, but I would want to see a 'print' ".
>
> Whatever a 'print' is. Off-set; etc, yes. NO gloss. No photographic paper
> print. Maybe Giclee.
>
> It is very clear to me that composition, content, often simplicity, and often
> striking colours, are important in this area of art. And surface
> characteristics.
>
> The kinds of extremely fine detail that we as photographers are so fond of
> don't necessarily rate highly in the art world. The owner of the printing shop
> whose services I am considering using, showed me one very sharp image of
> the head of a mountain parrot (kea (wikipedia)) that one of his clients made,
> with the idea if showing me the kind of image standard he prefers.
>
> I think he and I will be having an interesting conversation about this area of
> printing. Printing *my* images.
>
> So I am looking hard at getting some prints done on Hanemuehle cotton rag
> paper and also on fine canvas; as previously noted.
>
> Many of my better images need some extra attention, such as highlights
> reduced / eliminated, fussy areas reduced or removed, faults including dust
> removed.
>
> Of course I also have to attend to general lighting level, contrast, colours
> and
> sharpness.
>
> So I have been looking for a program with brush / clone / "airspray" tools
> that
> can be finely tuned and which are capable of being adjusted to being applied
> very gradually in tiny steps.
>
> I have my W'95 8.2 GB machine but options there are running out as it fills
> up and programs do not have the free space to use. My laptop runs W'98,
> but it has limited space also, and its main role is to store (mainly) digital
> images prior to writing to CD.
>
> This last week or so I have had the luxury of using my son's XP machine,
> and I am now much more amenable to the idea of getting a 2nd hand XP
> machine with lots of HDD space and much memory. It is amazing that quite
> capable machines are available for ± $500 NZ; compare that with the $5,000
> NZ I paid for my W'95 machine with *two* 640MB HDDs 11 years ago and I
> thought I was (and was) getting a bargain. Two HDDs; what extravagance!!
>
> Embellish will run on all machines, has a small footprint, and can do small
> paint jobs quite well. Hopeless for sharpening. Has great save options.
>
> Irfanview is a great little program and I have two versions, including one for
> the W'95 machine. It does practically all the manipulation I need but cloning
> and painting etc are not available. Has great save options.
>
> Adobe Photodeluxe is very capable and I like it. However, I no longer have
> the space on the W'96 machine for it to run for big images, and it does not
> run well on XP.
>
> I have Photoshop 5.5, but it takes a lot of room and the paint tools etc are
> hopeless.
>
> Recently I downloaded Picture Window Pro trial, and was ready to part out
> with the $89US ($130 NZ) it costs. However, as far as I can tell the paint etc
> tools are far too basic and coarse for my needs.
>
> SilkyPix doesn't do any of these kinds of image manipulation. It works on
> what you've got, and that's it.
>
> Last night I downloaded all 12MB (two files without the Help) of the XP
> version of The Gimp. Download took about 80 minutes !!
>
> With a lot of experimentation over about 3 hours I was able to ascertain that
> several of the brush, clone etc tools can be screwed down low enough to
> make fine, incremental adjustments, and although they are small tools, if the
> image is at 200% or 300% when editing, that doesn't seem to matter.
>
> So, the way I am thinking is that The Gimp might well become my main tool
> for extensive manipulation, and that the $130 NZ that I was prepared to part
> out with for PWP will go a long way to getting me a 2 - 3 GHZ machine
> already loaded with XP.
>
> Contrast this with the likely cost of the 1400 dpi archival pigment prints I
> am
> considering - (which I would hope to recoup).
> Photo rag A4 $33, A3 $42, A2 $66
> 60-year fine art canvas A4 $43, A3 $$61. each.
>
> Interesting.
>
> Brian
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