Postwork software
bobety316_c50224ad1f
Posts: 75
in The Commons
Hi, I was thinking of paying out for software that I can use to filter,enhance, edit my renders. Does anyone have any suggestions on what software would be good for this? I'd love to see some examples of renders before and after.
Thanks guys
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GIMP, it's free
I also have been playing around with BeFunky online https://www.befunky.com/
Photoshop is hands down the best but it has monthly subscription.
If you want to go cheap go with GIMP, it is the equivalent of Photoshop but with fewer tools.
I use Affinity Photo (and Affinity Designer, but that's because I also work with vectors). It doesn't have a artistic filters like paints etc. but you can get those in other, free software and it has "everything" else. It's a one time fee, and not a crazy high price either (at least from my perspective).
Clip Studio Paint has many of the more used features that Photoshop has and is much cheaper. Another good alternative is Affinity Photo or Affinity Design, depending on what you want it to do.
Krita is also free, although it seems a bit more geared towards drawing and painting than photo manipulation.
I used GIMP and Darktable for this image. Both are free programs.
"PhotoshopElements" (the cheaper, reduced functionality, non-subscription) version of Adobe Photoshop has (or had) most of the capabilities of Photoshop but without advanced professional ink and other media printer technicalities. PhotoshopElements handles RGB for display and basic printers well. i.e. if you're not a professional printer with car sized lithograph machines it's just right.
But I equivicate because I haven't used PhotoshopElements (i.e. PE) in many years, so they may have trimmed out even more. But if I were in the market, I'd get a free download copy (if there still is one) and try it. PE has a simple idiot proof primary user interface, but it also has (or had) an advanced secondary user interface that worked more like real Photoshop. I don't know if that is still true.
Anybody here had recent experience with PhotoshopElements?
One can tell if one is working with professional tools because they will let one shoot one's self in the foot.
I'm lucky to have access to Photoshop but if I didn't, I'd be using GIMP.
...been using Gimp eversince Iastarted in this. Also have Paint Shop Pro 2021,.and Krita but as mentioned the latter is more for digital painting than photo effects.
One other oftware produt I liked was Exposure X as it has all sorts of nice effects and filters the latter which includes ones that mimic actual film stock. You can also build your own filters as well. Sadly I'm still on W7 and they abandoned it a couple years ago so I need to wait until the I cna make systme upgrade for 11 to get it. Exposure X is also part of a suite of software tools, one of which alows you to create very clean high quality enlargements of images. whixch saves render time and system resources.
I was going to attach a sample image I did using a demo for Exposure-X, but seems that again we have that issue where images won't upload to forum posts.
Thanks for all your tips guys, have lots of options now :)
I'll give up my pre-sub copy of Photoshop when I'm dead.
Protect that installation carefully!! Last month, I uninstalled an old version of Photoshop (CS-4, 64-bit) from my laptop in order to reinstall it again. I was not able to reinstall it because it was legacy software for which Adobe no longer has servers to support installation/reinstallation. Adobe has abandoned support for many (all?) pre-subscription) versions of Photoshop. My installation of Photoshop would have continued to be usable had I not reinstalled it.
The advice to me from Adobe support was to upgrade to a subscription version of Photoshop. That will never happen! I have since installed Gimp and have been exploring a trial version of Paintshop Pro 2023 for about three weeks. I will likely purchase it with a nice discount offer that I received from Corel.
I haven't tried, but the Adobe site certainly says it iss till possible to install adn activate CS6 at least, and that was on a page updated this year. One the other hand they certainly ddi lose the activation servers for CS2 (and Photoshop CS).
This. +
Late to the thread; have a look at Darktable too.
https://www.darktable.org/
I use Photoshop, but if you're not interested in really in-depth compositing, I recommend Exposure X7 for filters and other effects. I use it as a plugin for PS, but it can be used as a standalone app. I also use Nik Collection a lot and really love their filters, but I haven't upgraded in a few years (and I'm pretty peeved that since they introduced a new version, the version I bought constantly prompts me to install an "update," by which it means "buy the new version"). I think I got Exposure on sale for something like $79 when they introduced X7. One caveat with them is that unfortunately there's been radio silence from the company since last year, with no updates to their social media or website, and comments from longtime users suggest that this is really unusual.
Procreate is my favorite app for overpainting on renders, although it's a pain to bring everything over from my iPad to my desktop. If you pick up Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, or Procreate, Bastien Lecouffe Deharme's brushes are the ones I use most often for postwork, and they're fantastic.
This is a quick edit showing some of the postwork steps I usually do with Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, and Exposure. Exposure comes with a plugin called Snap Art that simulates brushstrokes, and I use that in combination with Clip Studio's smart smoothing to create a "painted" version of the render. Then I use mask layers and texture brushes in Photoshop to actually paint that effect in on areas where I want less detail/focus. I usually use Nik for sharpening and their AnalogFX plugin for a textured film/matte effect.
I am using DxO, which is not free, but withousubscription, i.e. you pay once. It is the new home of the NIK filters, which you also need to purchase once.
I'll throw in another vote for Affinity Photo. One-time purchase (fairly inexpensive), there have been great updates to all the Affinity the programs just in the last year, and as someone who has used Photoshop professionally for more than a decade, I've found that it works every bit as well and has been easy to adapt to. Same for Affinity Publisher and Designer. I would drop my Adobe subscription in a heartbeat if I didn't need InDesign to work with a specific colleague. So it's well worth downloading the free demo and trying it out at the very least. :) But beyond that, sometimes it's worth trying different options just to see which one feels best to work in; everyone will have different preferences and it's important to find the program that you enjoy working in. There's nothing worse than forcing yourself to work in a program that drives you batty with the UI. I hope you find a program you like!
i use Paint Shop Pro. It does a whole lot. You can use Photoshop brushes in it. I also use NIK filters...Yes, DXO took it over but you can still get the FREE version that Google had acquired, and these are some of the best filters going. Corel has sales often so you can buy PSP straight out for under $100 ... I bought my copy for $35. I've tried Photoshop and I just like PSP a lot more.
I use the Affinity suite (Photo-Designer-Publish) for all my raster, vector, and PDF work. Occasionally I use GIMP and Inkscape to fill in any software feature blanks. :-)
BTW: The Affinity suite has a lot of compatibility with photoshop brushes and file formats. It has other Adobe products compatibility but you have examine that item by item or use workarounds. I use GNBD and Ron's (deviney) products with Affinity suite all the time.
Great for postwork, comics, and editing/creating PDF documents. You can use Publisher, Calibre, and Sigil for EPUB (e-book) creation. EPUB with LibreOffice is also good
https://www.libreoffice.org/
https://affinity.serif.com/
https://calibre-ebook.com/
https://sigil-ebook.com/
I (mis)use a mixture of Affinity, Rebelle (though that is really for 2D image creation than postwork) and Clip Studio these days.
I haven't looked at GIMP in a long time. I bounced off the user interface really hard, and then it couldn't handle professional printing. When Adobe when to subscriptions I switched to PaintShop Pro/Ultimate for a while, but it couldn't scale for large images (like 5000+ x 5000 for print), especially with a lot of layers. Eventually went back to PhotoShop. It's the king for a reason. Not sure how well Affinity or ClipStudio scales but I think they are both good alternatives. The user interface on GIMP is a deal breaker, and I'd personally recomend you go with something that has a more traditional user interface so it's easier to pick up other apps later on. I think the cheapest way to get Photoshop is still the photography plan -- $9.99 a month with a 1 year commitment. It has some poerful features (like finding people in a scene, fillin in missing parts in a scene, neural filters, etc.).
Buy the Adobe Suite CS6 if you can find it. It's way cheaper than Adobe's monthly cashgrab and everything still works great (I still have my CS2 and CS6 discs and they have been more than worth the price).
Clip Studio is also highly recommended. Thankfully, the upper management blinked when the community became very vocal after it was announced the next update would be subscription based. There's usually a sale for the EX and Pro versions at least 2x a year.
...that's not encouraging.
Gimp can also handle Photoshop brushes as well. The programmes been updates and laid out a bit better. I took to Gimp rather quickly when I first started working with it. though some features and tools in PSP are a bit easier to handle like working with text and images, modifying texture files, manipulating layers and creating photo masks..
I've been using a free program called Paint.net for years, it only ocmes in a Windows version, though, but it also does a lot of the stuff GIMP and PhotoShop does, with lots of pluggins available. Occasionally I have to resort to GIMP for some stuff, though, usually by following the step-by-step instructions about it on some blog post that shows screengrabs of what parts of the GUI to click now, because I don't use GIMP much and so don't have much experience in its too-different an interface.
And I thought the concept of "editing" my image was broad, but Postwork is probably more.
Let me categorize a few different types of image manipulation. Sometimes there is not a clear distinction, because a lot of software can do a wide range of things, but in general terms:
Image adjusting
The basic techniques of controlling contrast, curves, resampling, cropping, etc. In digital photography the concept applies to image development, this is, starting with a raw image, and making adjustments to get an output image like a JPG. This does not apply to most renders, because these are not raw images, but sometimes the sofware is an interesting option to make these adjustments on these renders. I am not sure at the moment which can process JPG files.
- Commercial Software: Adobe Lightroom, Corel Aftershot DxO.
- Free options: Darktable, RawTherapee
- And most of the software mentioned in the next category.
Photo Editing
This would be the process of touching the photo. On a render, they can be used to fix some intersection of the cloth with the geometry or fix some unwanted element.
But most programs are also used to add and compose elements, adding an element that was not there, adding effects like fog on a render, and light effects. One important thing to look for is if the software handle layers, and blending modes.
- Commercial Software. The most popular is Photoshop. Paint shop pro, Affinity Photo.
- Free Options: Gimp, Krita, Paint.net
Digital Painting
Probably you want to add things to your image, painting them with some drawing tablet. The software mentioned here "focuses" on that aspect, but again, a lot of the software can do different things.
- Commercial software Corel Painter, Paint tool Sai, Clip studio, Rebelle.
- Free options: MyPaint, Medi Bang.
One-click effects
This can be as simple as turning an image to black and white or adding a "Instagram style", to remove a flat sky to add some clouds.
There is a ton of these. Try not to use one online, but get one that clearly states the limitations of it.
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There is some other super specialized software, like enlargers, noise removal, masking, etc.
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Again, some programs can do a bit of everything. But I hope now you have a clearer picture on what to expect, so you can define what you need in Postwork.
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I do my compositing... on Corel Draw, which is a vector image editor. When you know what to do, you can get away with things you know how to do it. You can even do compositing in Blender (a 3d program) and add things there.
I do a lot of my image editing on iPad:
Clip Studio Paint
Procreate
Nomad sculpt for 3d sculpting and playing
on my PC and Mac:
Adobe Cloud subscription
Corel Paintshop Pro 2022
Corel Painter 2022
almost every application has a trial version to test and play around with feel and function. They all have pluses and minuses.
I use Photoshop for the most part, I also used to use Topaz Studio but can't seem to get it to work on my new computer :( Haven't found anything that can replace Topaz so far either *sigh*
I hold on to older computers for that very reason. Sure they take up a bit of desk space, but having use of a functional software that hasn't been updated is worth it. Topaz studio is a very intuitive one click postworker.