Picasa editing

[milkc]

hi i'm calling for all pro photography experts to help me with this.

i realise there is this basic editing functions on picasa and i find them pretty easy to handle minor changes. BUT is it advisable to use the picasa for editing photos? like is there a very big compromise in quality or stuff when using picasa instead of say...photoshop?
if there is a say... paid job or assignments... will it matter what you used to edit?
i believe photoshop can edit RAW stuff right?
can picasa do so too?
have yet to try taking raw photos... how will the differences be significant?
how will editing be more convinent?
i've heard alot of advantages like exposure and stuff to edit with raw... but i never learnt how to..
i've yet to figure out how to make similar changes using photoshop...
quite blur with the use of level curves and gamma...

 

[ssping83]

photoshop allows a greater deal of flexibility and functions to work with.. curves.. levels.. variations.. more filters.. etc etc..

for general retouching.. picasa will suffice.. at least for me..

as for raw.. picasa can read raw files too.. but i'm not too sure if using that to edit raw files has any impact on the quality.. (someone can enlighten..?! ^_^)

 

[geraldkhoo]

I just tried it out... but the Picasa I have (version 2.7 build 37.36) cannot seem to read the RAW file (NEF file) properly and cannot edit it.

Anyway... I've been shooting in JPEG and using Nikon's Picture Project and Google's Picasa to edit in the past... but recently, I've been shooting in RAW and using Nikon's CaptureNX to edit. There is a difference in the editing features, and I'm liking CaptureNX more and more.

With JPEG, it is best if you can get the "one shot kill" kind of shots... so minimal editing is needed... but if you want to do a lot of fine tuning, then shooting in RAW is the way. You can do a lot more with RAW files in adjusting white balance, saturation, hue, etc. But at the same time, the size of the files are huge.

 

[ssping83]

i juz realised that the ts asked for "pro photography experts" to answer.. haha.. should have stood aside..

lol! =)

 

[Gengh]

I'm not pro either, but I kaypoh a bit... :embrass:

I was using Picasa for simple touch up for quite a while, and only started shooting raw very recently. I think what you lose with Picasa is not quality, but control. The edited pics in Picasa look fine to me. But Picasa is made to be really simple to use and great for the casual user, so most of the touching up is just a single button and/or a couple of sliders with no numbers. With something like Photoshop, you get to really fine tune the effects. I'm not really familiar with Photoshop, but if I'm not wrong, eg. sharpening is a single button in Picasa, while there are different algorithms and parameters to set in Photoshop.

With raw, personally I feel that the greatest advantages are the gain in dynamic range, noise and white balance control. This gives you more leeway when you're shooting, though it's still best to get everything correct right out of the camera.

 

[adiknaim]

i find that the Microsoft Office picture manager also works well with JPEG IMO...

 

[geraldkhoo]

i juz realised that the ts asked for "pro photography experts" to answer.. haha.. should have stood aside..

lol! =)

Oops... yah hor... okie... I should step aside too ;p

 

[NeTHaCk]

sorry.. not a pro here.. but if you dont have much idea how to use PS , then i recommend photoshop elements 5. if im not wrong, it's able to read RAW.and its a simplified version of photoshop, which you can use auto correct ~

 

[skopio]

if you don't/can't use photoshop, check out gimp. it can do pretty much whatever PS CS2 can do. or at least almost all that mainstream users do.

 

[2ichigo2]

Not a pro as well but I using picasa all the time editing my raw files then export to jpeg.
Like what Gengh said, it has less control compared to other editing tools like photoshop.

One-click auto fix contrast and that means i cant do precise contrast control.
I feel it's easy to use and the it's faster to qiuck fix whole batch of photos.