Fishing Two Streams With The Same Hook

on February 18, 2020

Recently a member of my scale modelling club asked me for advice on tabletop photography and computer processing of artwork for kit building. He wants to make his own decals with a laser or inkjet printer. If you can get the specialised paper to do this, it's quite feasible. The results don't equal a good quality Italian or Czech decal sheet, but if no-one makes what you want, needs must.

The photographic point of the exercise became interesting when he trotted out the various image-editing programs that have been loaded into his laptop. I provided some initial images of club models and we tried to manipulate them. It was a disaster - the old and assorted programs refused to do what we wanted. I explained that I use the Adobe products - LR, PS, and PSE - and recommended that he purchase the PSE.

He did, but oddly enough, it is PSE 7. Rather an old version of the goods. His explanation was that it was the version that would run on the old software in the laptop. Umm...

Well, it does, and there are some similarities with the PSE 10 I used to use, the PSE14 I use now, and the PSE 2020 that I trialled for a month . ( No real need - the PSE14 does what I need perfectly. ) But it does the biz on a Microsoft system and we are going to have to have a serious hands-on comparison to see whether the shortcuts and measuring capabilities that make it work for me on a iMac are there in the old edition. Some will be, but some won't.

The saddest thing about this all is the interdependence of the program versions to the processors to the laptops. It seems as if we chase tails all the time trying to catch up to the cat. And when we do, it is a mistake to lift the tail...

All else fails, I'll recommend a fresh lappie and a fresh PSE 2020. It might seem a bit unfair to be spending someone else's money but that's what I do every week when I show goods from the shop here. At least with the Adobe product and his Nikon D750 camera he'll have instant compatibility and can start to get the advantages of aRAW processing as well as the metrics of PSE.

And yes, you can get the Adobe products at Camera Electronic - that's where I got mine. And yes, you can get processing advice from the sales staff - they do it all the time in their own photographic specialties.adobe, Phoshop. Lightroo

BACK TO TOP
x