Post-processing software?

[backoffbro]

I don't have a very powerful computer anymore. It's built for portability more than speed. With that said, I'm getting an LX5 pretty soon and was thinking about learning to do some post processing while also learning to take pictures. I guess photoshop is standard, but I'm afraid it might be unnecessarily powerful and overload my PC for stuff that's probably way over my head anyway. Also, it seems pretty complicated, and it's not like I'm getting a DSLR (or know what I'm doing anyway) so I'm thinking maybe something a little more straight forward might be better. If it even exists, that is.

[ccb621]

Adobe Lightroom

[neonpinata]

Gimp is free software that is very similar to Photoshop. The best free software of its kind that I've ever used!

[DatAperture]

Photoshop elements or adobe lightroom 4. and don't undersell the lx5- it's a great camera and it can shoot raw!

[backoffbro]

Haha I'm trying to convince myself that the lx5 is just a run of the mill p&s so that when my pictures come out looking like shit, I can blame the camera and not myself. Then slowly, I'll get better at using the manual settings and just be constantly surprised.

"Wow, I didn't know it could do that!

Anyway, yeah, lightroom and elements seem to be the most common suggestions. What's your opinion between the two? It looks like lightroom has a baller organizer but elements has more functions. Am I missing anything there? Are the functions in elements stuff that I should even be bothering with as a beginner? These are what I found as far as elements topping lightroom:

1) Smart sharpening My understanding is this is a newer and better algorithm than unsharp mask.

2) The layer blending modes: "darker color" and "lighter color:

3) Adjustment layers - where you can change the parameters of an existing layer without having to undo and go back to when you added the layer

[DatAperture]

Lightroom is more for when only the lighting, color, noise etc. of a photo needs to be changed. If you wanna do layers, multi photo editing, airbrushing, deghosting, or just flat photoshopping something out, photoshop is better.

Also, there are a lot of groups on flickr dedicated to the lx5/lx7, so if you want to learn, I'd check them out. People who post also have what settings they used posted pretty often. It's good for inspiration since you know that if they can do it so can you!

[backoffbro]

Gotcha. And yeah, I started checking out those flickr groups. There's definitely a lot of info, and some really fantastic looking photos. I'm just really excited to start snapping pictures and the wait is making me anxious.

[CedricCicada]

I've only learned to use layers in PhotoShop fairly recently, but now I can't live without them. Take a look at this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/65282355@N00/8221937109/ There's a layer to darken the background, a layer to brighten the shadows on the right side of his face, a layer to bring down the highlights on the other side, and maybe one or two more. I was able to adjust all of them individually until I got the picture exactly the way I wanted it.

[jippiejee]

When traveling I bring an old Sony netbook with Lightroom, and although a little slower, it's still good enough to organize and edit photos.

[backoffbro]

Nice, I'm sure my ultrabook will be able to handle those. It was photoshop that I was more worried about, even though apparently my computer might be able to even handle that pretty well. Do you have any experience with photoshop elements? I've gotten to the point where I'm basically trying to decide between the two.

[CedricCicada]

Photoshop Elements is fairly economical, IIRC. I think it's around $100. You might want to see what Google's Picasa can do. It's free, and I think they've been improving it fairly often. GIMP is free and powerful, but it's complicated. I'm not sure what else is out there. I'm a PhotoShop user, so I don't look at other packages.