Along with Aperture I use PSE. Mainly for digital scrapbooking although I’m trying to take my post processing to a higher level. One of my reasons for considering full PS is the file format is 16-bit instead of 8-bit in PSE. Now, I’m not really sure I understand what this means or if it really matters. The only thing I can find on it is that the 16-bit file will have more information. Can someone explain to me (in not too technical terms) why this would matter?
My other concern is that PS CC “limited time offer” of $9.99. I know this has been discussed before. I can do 9.99 a month but anymore than that, I wouldn’t be interested.
While there’s no guarantee that Adobe will keep the price at $9.99, Adobe took it on the chin last year when they first announced their Creative Cloud pricing. It took them quite a bit of time to come up with the Photoshop Photography Program. They lost a lot of users and support until they came up with the program. I don’t expect that Adobe will be raising the price anytime soon, given this.
Before you commit … take a look at both Pixelmator (currently $14.99) and Acorn (currently $29.99). They are both available in the the Mac App Store. Both have trials available and those prices are half-off sale prices that that could end at any time. Though they are a one-time price … no future billing. Either or both may offer all you need.
While I do agree that Ps is the Holy Grail for in-depth image editing (I’ve owned and used it since 1993) It’s been my experience that most photographers really never use more than 5%-10% of what Ps can do …
Ten bucks a month won’t break the bank, but if you didn’t need the Whole Enchilada before now … you may not need it going forward to advance your images to the next level.
To answer your “What does 16 bit mean?” question, in not too technical a way - Yes you have more information. It means that you’ve got more “headroom” in you files for doing edits. So a 16 Bit image is less likely to show artefacts than an 8 Bit image with heavy editing. By artefacts, I mean things like colo(u)r banding in a sky rather than a smooth gradation. Another common example is “blockiness” in shadows if you try and lighten them by a few stops. But it also means files are twice as big and would require a raw or TIFF based workflow rather than a JPEG one. As things stand, JPEGs are 8 Bit but 16 Bit JPEGs are on the horizon. TIFF files tend to be huge but can be compressed. On the other hand, these days, storage is cheap. If you are happy with your image quality for your scrapbooking needs, I’d say you don’t need to worry about 8 Bits vs 16 Bits. If you’ve wondered why your skies seem to jump from dark blue to light blue in discrete steps and you don’t like it, now you know why.
Russell
Thanks Guys. That helps. I think I’ll stick with PSE for now. If I see a need later on, I’ll upgrade then.
Katie S.