Butterfly House

Over and over on the blog, I preach that the gear does not make the photographer. One simple way to elevate your photography is by upgrading your photo editing software. When I got started in photography, I used Google’s free editing software, Picassa. Its inexpensive and enables the photographer to make very simple changes to a photo (i.e. exposure, contrast, simple color adjustments, crop). It is good for basic snapshots, but doesn’t really do what a serious photographer needs. Photoshop is expensive, so my first upgrade was to Photoshop Elements ($74 on Amazon). While it is a step in the right direction, it is not easy to use. And, like Picassa you have to save a copy of every photo you edit which takes up a lot of space on your hard drive, not to mention its a pain when you want to re-edit a photo. Then, I hear about Adobe Creative Cloud, a $9.99/month subscription service in which you get Lightroom and Photoshop. I signed up for a 30 day free trial and never looked back. Lightroom is so much more user friendly than Elements and its Library function is a godsend in photo organization. All three of these programs have RAW editors, but I definitely recommend Lightroom. If you’re not interested in a subscription service, you can purchase Lightroom 6 on Amazon. Of course, you do need Photoshop for more advanced edits. I’ll have Chris write on that later.

About the Photo:
This was a single RAW exposure with basic edits done in Lightroom. In a future post I will detail what I mean when I say “basic edits”.

Camera Gear:
Nikon D3100 with 55-200 kit lens, handheld

Date Taken:
June 3, 2016

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