Digital imaging software?

[bluepogo]

I am new to photography but I'm very excited about it. I am currently familiar with Picasa but I want more options. I have done some research and I have narrowed it down to two, Photoshop Elements 5.0 or Lightzone 2.0. Lightzone is new but it seems like more intuitive and Elements seems to have so many tools. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Rick

[ratcheer]

All those tools are very bewildering, at first, but you can get used to them.

I would also suggest the GIMP, which is free and has many (maybe even most) of the capabilities of full-blown Photo Shop. I tried both and have stuck with the GIMP for the past several years. I agree that Photo Shop is better, but the GIMP fills 99% of my needs.

http://www.gimp.org

Tim

[bluepogo]

Thanks for the tip. I am looking forward to see how my experience with GIMP goes. I wish you great photos.

[mokusa]

Thinking long term, if you have the budget Photoshop is a valuable tool to know. It's insanely powerful and a standard in many many fields. I've been using it for a long time and I'm still always learning new things. But I guess if you just need basic photo editing tools it is a bit much, and expensive too.

[shootem]

You may want to look at Adobe's Lightroom. Granted it is not the program that PS is, but it is easy and intuitive. Personally I use PS.

Carolyn

[Buddy4344]

Elements is actually a great program. It allows easy sorting of your files and also gives you some of PS's best tools. I think the only thing you lose is "curves" which is great, but is an advanced tool to master. You can start with just using the basic one's but should grow into using many of the tools. Until recently, I exclusively used elements.