Which one is best for editing?

[sneil2]

I take a lot of pictures of our dogs for our website (http://yuanpei.co.uk/) and I would like to know which software is best for editing out things like people in the background and the collars & leads?

The cheaper the better but it will have to be easy to use or easy to get the hang of as I've not much experience with editing suites?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Pixelmator via the Mac App Store, but there is also Gimp, which is free and a bit hard to learn, but able to do what you want.

 

[sneil2]

Pixelmator via the Mac App Store, but there is also Gimp, which is free and a bit hard to learn, but able to do what you want.

Thank you. Pixelmator is downloading and it's a snip at only £21!
I was going to download aperture tonight so fingers crossed Pixelmator will erase the leads and I'll save myself a few quid! Thanks

 

[OreoCookie]

Pixelmator (or any other photo editor) is not a replacement for Aperture, Lightroom or iPhoto. If you take lots of pictures, you basically want Aperture or Lightroom. A photo editor such as Pixelmator is just an additional tool that you won't need that often.

 

[gnd]

I would like to know which software is best for editing out things like people in the background and the collars & leads?

Pixelmator (or any other photo editor) is not a replacement for Aperture, Lightroom or iPhoto. If you take lots of pictures, you basically want Aperture or Lightroom. A photo editor such as Pixelmator is just an additional tool that you won't need that often.

You can't edit people out of the background and stuff like that with Aperture or Lightroom, you need a full featured photo editor like Photoshop. Which is basically a standard every other editor is compared to, but also expensive. You could try doing things like that in the free open source program Gimp ...

 

[Designer Dale]

I had a look at the web page in the original post and it would be difficult for even an experienced PhotoShop guy to remove the background around fuzzy and wrinkly subjects like this. Knocking out the collar on a dog is even more challenging. You can remove it OK, but then you have to rebuild all of that empty space by cloning the dogs fur. This works well in small doses, but hair or fur is a genuine challenge. My vote is for better photos to start with, no collars and a clean background.

Sorry to spoil the party...

Dale

 

[sneil2]

I had a look at the web page in the original post and it would be difficult for even an experienced PhotoShop guy to remove the background around fuzzy and wrinkly subjects like this. Knocking out the collar on a dog is even more challenging. You can remove it OK, but then you have to rebuild all of that empty space by cloning the dogs fur. This works well in small doses, but hair or fur is a genuine challenge. My vote is for better photos to start with, no collars and a clean background.

Sorry to spoil the party...

Dale

Well, most of the pictures are taken using my iPhone 4 or my rubbish digital 10megapixel polariod!
Do you think it's worth me spending £300+ on a decent camera then?

 

[MacDawg]

I would think money spent on a camera is money better spent than on software for the most part

But as stated above, taking the time to set up the best shot is also essential (and doesn't cost)

But I believe Photoshop Elements is now on the Mac App Store as well, and I think it does content aware

I have gone almost exclusively with Pixelmator as my tool of choice though since my old version of Photoshop doesn't run on Lion

 

[snberk103]

I had a look at the web page in the original post and it would be difficult for even an experienced PhotoShop guy to remove the background around fuzzy and wrinkly subjects like this. Knocking out the collar on a dog is even more challenging. You can remove it OK, but then you have to rebuild all of that empty space by cloning the dogs fur. This works well in small doses, but hair or fur is a genuine challenge. My vote is for better photos to start with, no collars and a clean background.

Sorry to spoil the party...

Dale

Well, most of the pictures are taken using my iPhone 4 or my rubbish digital 10megapixel polariod!
Do you think it's worth me spending £300+ on a decent camera then?

It's not the camera that will make the difference, it's the time taken to set the photo up. Basically, you can 15 or 20 minutes to take the lead/collar off the dog in a spot with nobody in the background, or you can spend 2 or 3 hours per dog using Photoshop or Pixelmater to do the same thing. Your first efforts at editing the people and collars out are going to look like cr*p too, unless you take some courses. Simply because it's a pretty sophisticated technique you will need to master...

So, like others have said previously... take the time to set up the shot properly first, then the editing work will be less than a 1/10th of what it would be otherwise. I would even suggest a basic photography course (in a class, or on-line) to learn about depth-of-field and shutter speeds, and colour temperature. I believe knowing these concepts will make your photography life much much easier.

Good Luck.

 

[Badrottie]

What about Adobe Photoshop Element - lite version of Adobe Photoshop?

 

[Chappers]

What about Adobe Photoshop Element - lite version of Adobe Photoshop?

Already mentioned along with the very good Pixelmator - great value for money. Gimp is great but a bit difficult to get your head around.

I looked at a few photos on your site and it is the composition of your shots that is letting you down. The site looks great but some of those shots need trashing. I'm being a bit harsh but a good example it the photo of Rocco running away from the camera and you are looking down at him and up his a*se.

So good shot choice and composition is vital. It doesn't matter how good your camera and editing software are - you can't do much to improve a photo of a dogs ....... well you get the idea.

Look around the net for great dog photos and try to reproduce them