WHICH PHOTOSHOP

[Anonymous]

I AM IN THE PROCESS OF DOING A 1/2 YEAR COURSE IN PHOTOSHOP TO TOUCH UP MY ARCHICAD RENDERINGS & POSSIBLY DO MORE HIGH END PRESENTATION WORK.

MY QUESTION IS - WHICH PHOTOSHOP SHOULD I USE AT THE END OF THE DAY? THERE ARE A HALF DOZEN OR SO TO CHOOSE FROM WITH VARYING DEGREES OF CAPABILITY.

I LIKE TO KNOCK UP A HIGH DEGREE OF PRESENTATION WORK, BUT THE INFO ON THE BACK OF THE BOXES DOES NOT GIVE ANYWHERE NEAR THE INDICATION OF WHAT EACH PARTICULAR VERSION CAN DO. AND WE ALL KNOW THAT ONLY AFTER A COUPLE OF YEARS OF WORKING WITH ANY S/W DO YOU BEGIN TO FULLY UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT PACKAGE CAN AND CANNOT DO.

THE PRICES RANGE FROM ABOUT $200 - $1,800

I DON'T MIND PAYING IF IT IS WORTH IT (IE ARCHICAD!), HOWEVER I DON'T WANT TO PURCHASE TOO HIGH END A VERSION IF HALF OF IT WILL NEVER BE USED.

DWIGHT, ANY CLUES? PS - I BOUGHT YOUR BOOK ON RENDERING IN AC!

[__archiben]

s2art wrote:
I gather that Photoshop Elements is a very basic version, that wouldn't necessarily have enough tools to do the jobs required for architectural illustrations. Great for Granny putting her photo album of the grandkiddies together though.

actually no. 'elements' still has many of photoshop's powerful tools - more than enough for the average user and probably far more than granny would need.

i gather you've not used it?

~/archiben

[Anonymous]

You gather correct, I'm just going on what I have been told by others in the industry.

[stefan]

Photoshop Elements misses CMYK, which is what professional DTP people require, but I doubt that many architects need this.

It has very usable selection, layers etc... although it misses some of the more advanced parametric layer settings. But I also doubt that many fulltime architects will miss this much. I know I haven't noticed many of the limitations, apart from some of the text-tools. Text layers stay parametric, but the Layer Styles are based on presets and not on fully parametric editable settings.

[Dwight]

Here's a review of the latest Photoshop Elements:

http://www.macworld.com/2006/03/reviews/pshelements4/index.php?lsrc=mwweek-0327

[Karl Ottenstein]

Elements and other Adobe software is available for download with free 30 day trial. Street price for Elements is around $60 and upgrade price is even lower.

Karl

[Dwight]

There's only one trick in my book that specifically uses the CMYK mode:

to reduce overprinted blackness (K=knockout) by reducing the black ink component of the image, restoring luminosity to the other inks.

In my seminar, I show a facsimilie of that technique in the RGB mode for users of Photoshop Elements.

Considering the price and the new features revealed by reading the review, Elements looks pretty good for ArchiCAD users.

[Jefferson]

Looks like a "register-able" version of 7 can be had for pretty not much more than Elements at the big garage sale [EBay]. Probably more than you need but when you want it.............think of it like RAM.

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&sbrftog=1&from=R10&catref=C12&satitle=photoshop+...