I am so excited.

[Curmudgeoness]

I have found a local photography club, and have gone to a couple of meetings to see what they do. Two meetings a month are photo contests, and one meeting every month is tech support or training (depending on if people are in need of help with something or just go with lessons). They do only one outing a year, which seems a shame.

The only bad thing for me is that the training is for Photoshop, which I don't have and I am not sure that I want to spend the money on it....but I was really blown away with all the things that are possible with it. They went over several ways to work on a photo that I didn't know were even possible.

So I am intending to join this group, even though I am so far out of my league with them. I guess the best way to learn and improve is to hang out with the ones who know.

[flamin lib]

1. Wonderful! It's always good to have camaraderie

and any new education is good education. It's by discovering what we don't know that we grow.

You might want to try Corel Paint Shop Pro. Maybe get one of the Photoshop people to try the trial version for comparison.

http://www.paintshoppro.com/en/products/paintshop-pro/standard/?currency=en-US&sourceid=psp8-xx-ppc_brkws&promo=psp8-xx-ppc_brkws&gclid=CJqSuYuG7ccCFZI2gQod1LQJYA

It's $80 and as best I can tell does everything PhotoShop does. You can try it free for 30 days which isn't enough to really learn much of it's capabilities.

Anything you learn about PhotoShop should apply to Paint Shop plus there are educational videos available, some free and some subscription. Just learning the vocabulary will go a long way and both packages share that; raster, layers etc.

[Curmudgeoness]

3. I have already learned a few things

from the one tech meeting that I attended. I can't imagine how much there is to know!

I doubt that they would go to Paint Shop from Photoshop, since they all already have it. But they said that Photoshop could be purchased for about $60. I wonder if that is a special price that they got. The lesson that the instructor was giving was very specific, with what commands to use to do the things that he was using. Probably not smart to use another program, but I am finding that some of the available functions are right in the free programs that I use now...although the correction of color using the black, white, and gray to fix color had me in awe, and I don't have that in any programs that I use.

This will be fun!

[Fumesucker]

2. Try this...

http://www.redmondpie.com/download-adobe-photoshop-cs2-for-free-legally-while-you-still-can/

[Curmudgeoness]

4. Wow.....thanks. nt

[NV Whino]

5. I've been using On1 Perfect Photo

They're coming out with version 10 at the end of October. I like it better than PhotoShop, and I refuse to pay Adobe a monthly fee for using PhotoShop.
http://www.on1.com/store/


Go to the site and watch a couple of videos. The Effects module is a free download to try. You'll find that it is the module you will use most anyway.

It's really improved my photos, and it allows me to be a bit more creative with textures and some exotic settings as well. Has a great B&W conversion, too.

[Curmudgeoness]

6. Thanks.

The one problem I see with this is that I would get no tech help from the group with anything but Photoshop. I am not sure if there is a monthly fee or not, but the members of the group didn't mention it. I use Picasa now, and it has been adequate for what I used it for, but now I see the limitations. And again, no tech help.

[NV Whino]

7. Watch a couple videos

Plenty of help on the site.

[Solly Mack]

8. Sounds fun! Looking forward to seeing what you'll learn.

[Curmudgeoness]

11. I look forward to what I can learn as well. nt

[alfredo]

9. We have at least one here. Good folk. Look for Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photo walk. Oct 3

There might be one in your area.

http://kelbyone.com/photowalk/

[Curmudgeoness]

10. Nice. There is one in Erie PA

and that is not too far from me. I would have liked it to be closer, but this isn't too bad. I have already seen the name, Scott Kelby, on one of the photos that they were using as an example for the tech night session. (That was the first time I had heard of him.)

Do you belong to the photo group in your area?

[alfredo]

12. I orbit around the outer edges of the local group.

They are the ones that seem to show up for the photo walks.

[Blue_In_AK]

13. That's great!

I had the same challenge on my workshop - no Photoshop. But I learned enough from Carl's talk about it to translate it over to PaintShop fairly well. Once I go through all these photos and get them off my hard drive, I'm going to upgrade to Windows 10 and the newest version of PaintShop to see if it's more current to what he was talking about. There really are a lot of possibilities.

[Curmudgeoness]

14. It will be so much fun learning new things.

The problem is that everyone was sitting there with their computers and notebooks, and it was a step-by-step to work on a photo. Now hit Ctrl M or Ctrl L, now go to this, now to that. I can see that it might be translatable, but it will take much more work. I hate "much more work". We will see how I handle this as I go on with them.