Fao: All Techy Geeks - Win7 And Photoshop, Etc.

[Rab (bombero) Reid]

It's looking like my 7 year old laptop should be put out to pasture and time to herald in a new laptop with Windows 7. I have a ( ) copy of Photoshop CS2 and it'll probably not run on the new OS. I'm not really keen on uploading a copy of Photoshop onto the new laptop and wondered if anyone could suggest a good photo editing suite to me.

It doesn't have to be all bells and whistles as I only use it for the following main reasons:

Colour correction inc, red eye

Straightening horizons (tilting images)

Colour splashing

Layering and masks

Clone stamping/blemish correction/etc

Image resizing/cropping/flipping/rotating/etc

I'm familiar with the Photoshop UI but would consider other software. Not looking to spend bundles and wondering if anyone could tell me if Photoshop Elements or similar would be suffice for my needs?

Cheers!

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Not used Elements myself, but it's very good. (I know a few that do use it, with extremely good results).

Have to say these days though, very little of my stuff is done in anything but Lightroom, I only reach for Photoshop on quite rare occasions now.

[DerekJ]

Tried Gimp?

[kevip6]

Have to agree with Gadgetman, Lightroom does pretty much everything you need and is definitely worth buying if you shoot in RAW. It's a great cataloging tool for you photos too.

Only thing that sees CS for me is if its going in a competition or going to be printed

[Rab (bombero) Reid]

Thanks guys (appreciated, as always) and I've certainly heard of both Gimp (friend uses it on his Linux system IIRC) and Lightroom. I always felt that CS had more to offer than I was capable of using! Will check out Gimp and Lightroom!

[Blatman]

I have an old version of Photoshop (7 I think) running on Windows 7 Pro 64 bit and 32 bit versions. Can't see why CS2 wouldn't be just fine on Windows 7 unless Microsoft or Adobe have chose to not make them compatible...

[kevip6]

I think his problem isn't that it wouldn't run but that he wants to keep the new laptop fresh from maybe software downloaded for a trial basis shall we call it.

[Rab (bombero) Reid]

I think his problem isn't that it wouldn't run but that he wants to keep the new laptop fresh from maybe software downloaded for a trial basis shall we call it.

Ahem .. that's exactly it ;-)

[Blatman]

Clone the old O/S and run it as a virtual machine or dual boot machine on the new computer. I've had cause to do both this weekend.

Use Acronis free trial for the cloning and disc partitioning, install the older version of Windows first then Windows 7 after.

Or clone the old O/S using Acronis and load it to a virtual machine created using Virtual Box on the new machine.

[7sRWild]

Use elements 10. Has everything you need and doesnt cost an arm and a leg. Will handle raw files if you need that.

[GreigM]

For standard photo processing I also use lightroom - but it really is just a photo "developer" if you know what I mean....for any editing (layering/masks) you'll need elements - which is really very good.