Photo and Video Editing Software Advice

[UnluckyXIII]

Hey,

I’ve recently started to get into photo and video editing, small projects for friends, footage from days out mountain biking, youtube stuff and the likes. Earlier this year I picked up Adobe Photoshop Elements 14 & Premiere Elements 14 (PC/Mac) from Amazon for £39.99, the software is simple enough to use and offers the basic tools I need to do my editing.

I’ve just placed an order for a 2016 MBP and wanted to know what people think of the Apple software offerings (Final Cut Pro X and Aperture (which I can’t seem to find anywhere)). I’ve used Aperture around 7-8 years ago when at Uni but have no experience with Final Cut Pro, would I be better making the “jump” now to these software offerings before I'm committed to one ecosystem and start to get more serious with my editing or would I be better to continue with Adobe Elements and moving over to their professional variant once my requirements develop?

Any help or advice would be much appreciated
XIII

 

[hanser]

why don´t you first try out the basic programs included in macOS for free (photos and imovie) to test if you like the approach?
Aperture is no more, but there are professional extensions available for photos if the functionality of photos is not enough. I personally find that both basic programs suffice for hobbyist editing. Others will disagree.

 

[Buzz_1947]

Final Cut Pro is a professional level program (i.e. it has been used to cut Hollywood films) and as such, it can be complicated to learn if you are new to video editing. While it is not a bad idea to "jump in" and learn a full featured program, especially if you see yourself really spending significant amounts of time editing your video projects, there is also something to be said--as mentioned above--for starting with a simpler program (like iMovie even), which allows you to get comfortable editing video before committing to a program like Final Cut. What you have will also accomplish most of what the average home user will ever really need it to do... but if you want professional results...

When it comes to photo editing, it gets really difficult to asses what someone needs. People use Photoshop (and PS Elements) for so many different things (from simple photo corrections to complete image generation). Only you know what you need a program to do. Again, PS Elements will do much of what the average home users wants to accomplish, but personally, I find it very frustrating to use--mostly because I miss the full functionality of Photoshop. If you find this too, I would suggest looking at Affinity Photo. It is reasonably priced and gets good reviews. It is a professional level (more or less) graphics program rivaling (almost) the full version of Photoshop (though it is not an industry standard and lacks a some of PS's functionality). You could also try Gimp. It is free and has much more functionality then Photoshop Elements--in fact it is incredibly robust for a free program.

 

[JamesPDX]

Hey,

I’ve recently started to get into photo and video editing, small projects for friends, footage from days out mountain biking, youtube stuff and the likes. Earlier this year I picked up Adobe Photoshop Elements 14 & Premiere Elements 14 (PC/Mac) from Amazon for £39.99, the software is simple enough to use and offers the basic tools I need to do my editing.

I’ve just placed an order for a 2016 MBP and wanted to know what people think of the Apple software offerings (Final Cut Pro X and Aperture (which I can’t seem to find anywhere)). I’ve used Aperture around 7-8 years ago when at Uni but have no experience with Final Cut Pro, would I be better making the “jump” now to these software offerings before I'm committed to one ecosystem and start to get more serious with my editing or would I be better to continue with Adobe Elements and moving over to their professional variant once my requirements develop?

Any help or advice would be much appreciated
XIII

What camera are you using? Are you shooting RAW or JPEG?

 

[maflynn]

and Aperture (

Aperture has been discontinued by apple, so I would stop looking for it.

Photo editing software is dependandent on what you want in terms of features.
Aperture for instance was a strong DAM (Digital Assets Manager) and had decent non-destructive photo editing capabilities.

What the majority of photographers use is Lightroom which has strong DAM features, but even better photo editing tools that are non-destructive. When I say non destructive, that means any editing can be rolled back at any time, the original remains untouched.

There's also Capture One, which offers superior photo editing (compared to LR), but seems lacking the DAM side of things.

Many of the apps offer trials on one form and another, but they're mostly geared to editing RAW images, there's more that the software can do with a RAW image because there's more data to adjust then JPG (which is lossy compressed image).

 

[Samuelsan2001]

To be honest if you are keeping it small and simple pixelmator is a cheap easy to use app.

 

[Booch21]

Hey,

I’ve recently started to get into photo and video editing, small projects for friends, footage from days out mountain biking, youtube stuff and the likes. Earlier this year I picked up Adobe Photoshop Elements 14 & Premiere Elements 14 (PC/Mac)

There are versions of both of those for Mac as well, last I checked. I have the Production Premium package for Mac, 6.5 is where I'm stopping unless Adobe can really, and I mean really, wow me into CC. I also have Photoshop Elements for when I need to do simpler photo editing and don't need Photoshop. It came free with something and I installed it even having Photoshop already.

Can't speak much to Premiere Elements, but if it's in a similar design to Premiere Pro, it would be all you will need.