Recently, a SLR digital camera (Digital SLR) can afford almost anyone. Different motives may push the purchase - the desire to impress others, the prejudice that the professional technician hides inside the settings “make a cool photo”, “make a very cool photo” and will soon be removed without a photographer at all. Maybe you are sure that you have already outgrown the usual “soap box” and are ready to play with different lenses, white balance settings, exposure, etc. I hope we all honestly confess that we have chosen the last option: then let me give you a couple of tips.

The question “a good soap dish or a simple little mirror” is not as obvious as it seems: a lot of copies are broken on this subject.

As a photo amateur photographer, I would like to share my vision of how to organize the workflow and which tools are better to use - I hope someone will find this useful.

The main idea is to divide the process of working with photos into stages , at each of which use a separate tool (program): this will greatly simplify and facilitate your life. Highlight viewing and deleting bad frames, editing and cataloging.

View

So, you returned from a trip, from a photo shoot, just took a few shots. We will use an easy and simple program that will not waste time on loading the editor, image database and unnecessary components: for now we will just see and delete the bad frames.
If you have enough thumbnails, download the Microsoft RAW Image Viewer (for Windows XP), as well as the corresponding codec for your camera ( download page ). I would recommend FastStone MaxView for viewing individual photos, since it works quickly and correctly, which is not the case with IrfanView. Other programs are easy to call easy, and software bundled with cameras most often considers the user to be completely incapable of a fool.
Delete only frames that are unsuccessful in terms of composition - the rest can be saved, especially since there will be a lot of wrong shots at the beginning, this is normal.

Editing

First, let's import from RAW files.
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There are many programs - paid and free, convenient and not very. Get free friendly Raw Therapee for free here . The only drawback of this program is the lack of the “Make everyone's hurt” button for batch processing of files; in the upcoming version 2.4 they promise to fix it: I bet that this is not the most important moment for the amateur. Its business Raw Therapee is doing great. Of the free alternatives, you can casually note UFraw , but the convenience of its interface leaves much to be desired.

Of the paid alternatives, the most famous and affordable is Adobe Camera Raw , a simplified version of which comes bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements. Given the low price - 1495 rubles , you can also consider this option. You will get a combine: a simplified version of Photoshop (with the filters most needed by the home user) and a photo cataloger. If you decide to explore Photoshop with online directories or the Digital Photo magazine and actively use pre-installed filters, this option is preferable. Minus - the severity of the program, the questionable convenience of the built-in cataloguer and the lack of batch processing of RAW.

What do we want to fix in the editor ? Make portraits prettier, add some simple effects and remove any small annoyances. To do this, quite a bit.
Any student can afford a Photoshop license. The rest, having driven the conscience into a corner, can equalize themselves in rights, simply by stealing it. The obligation of Photoshop is a great delusion from which I would like to dissuade you. How much does a regular photo amateur need him? It is a powerful and difficult product to master; in most cases, its use is “from a cannon on sparrows”: many of its functions will remain unclaimed and even unexplored.
I hasten to please the fans of GIMP: many of its functions will also remain unexplored - you need a much simpler tool.

There are two options:
The first is ArtWeaver or Paint.NET . For amateur processing, we have parity: both programs have a similar set of functions, the Russian interface and are fairly simple to use. However, the individual nuances of Paint.NET or ArtWeaver may lead the choice in one direction or another. Personally, I gave preference to ArtWeaver - it seemed to me more convenient, and the ability to use full-screen mode (with a resolution of 1280x800 is important) was one of such nuances when choosing. The advantage of these programs is a small consumption of resources, free of charge and relative ease of use. Minus - the lack of art filters and numerous how-to tricks of use.

The second option is Photoshop Elements . By version 6.0, it turned from a free camera application (Photoshop Album) into a friendly, but at the same time reasonably light version of the parent. In the arsenal - a set of filters with special effects, a bit of trimmed "adult" plug-ins and powerful functionality for publishing photos (for example, creating galleries). There are a lot of training materials and instructions for Photoshop, a good Russian-language help is included. Minus - resource-intensive program.

Cataloging

How many photos have you tagged? And how many photos did you rate on a five-point scale? I think you want to see, remember what you saw, show the shot to family and friends. Tagging and evaluation should be unobtrusive and optional - be guided by this when choosing a program. I suggest placing the processed images of a lighter format (PNG, JPG) in the hierarchy - Pictures \ [Year] \ Event: write RAW files to disk and put them on the shelf, you should not store such large files in a photo album. We have already edited everything, so the last thing you need is complex processing tools and displaying unnecessary service information: stop at Google Picasa or Windows Live Photo Gallery . Both have a moderate set of features, convenient and logical. Looking ahead: Live Photo Gallery is able to upload pictures to Flickr and MSN Spaces, and also creates panoramas from several pictures well, but Picasa works a little faster and knows how to create collages. You can generate galleries with one of these programs , or create panoramas with Hugin : except for your personal preferences, in general, Picasa and Live Gallery are the same.

PS Let me explain why I propose to organize the process this way, because you can use Adobe Lightroom, ACDSee PhotoPro, Paint Shop Pro and much more. "Combines" are often loaded for a long time, in the pursuit of buyers they offer stunning functionality and, moreover, they cost absolutely unreasonable money. Not for everyone, photography is a way of earning money: be indulgent to those who are just keen on it. Not everyone knows about color calibration, CMYK and other smart things, but everyone wants beautiful photos. The described option is a convenient way to organize and simplify non-professional work.

UPD: Comment on useful literature, please note.