The Check is in the Post

I often finish taking pictures at a game and parents will enquire if I have got any good shots. My usual answer is that I will see when I get home. Whilst you can get an idea from the camera display, this is no substitute for looking in detail on the computer screen. Many times I have thought the shot looked good at the rink, but found that it was out of focus when I checked later at home.

This is the next key step of my work...check and sort all the pictures in my "post" processing...hence "the Check is in the Post" !

Post processing is another fun aspect of this project and one that I enjoy very much. I'll talk in other blog posts about the details of my workflow on the computer, but I wanted to use this one to talk about the options of the processing packages.

I use Adobe Lightroom and have done for a number of years. I used to use Apple's Aperture but when support was discontinued for this I switched to Lightroom. Lightroom provides an environment where I can sort and manage my libraries of pictures, decide which ones to work on and then adjust ("develop") them to improve the images.

Lightroom is promoted by Adobe as rental software and they provide a pretty compelling bundle for photographers with Lightroom and Photoshop. I prefer to pay in a single shot so I have the perpetual licence version...a few less functions (like Mobile access) but I don't have to pay month to month.

Lightroom is an excellent package and one that I'm used to, but if I were starting out now then other good options are also available.

I came across Polarr as a package running within Chrome. The web version is free, quite powerful and would even run on our Chromebook. I recently also looked into the Mac native version and there is a free "lite" version and also a fully featured version for less than $30. In fact, I snagged the full version this week for $2.79 as it is on special at the Mac App store. I don't know how long it will be there at that price...but that's a bargin if ever I saw one.

Other good contenders for your editor are...

• Adobe Photoshop Elements
• A good entry level editor
• Pixlr
• Innovative editor at a reasonable price
• Darktable
• Open source editor in the same style as Lightroom

And I am sure that there are others that I am not aware of. Given that most of these can be tried for free, either in a lite version or in a time limited form, it is worth spending a bit of time to see which you prefer and the you can settle into honing your workflow.

I'm happy with Lightroom and have no plans to switch right now, but there has never been a better time to find powerful image editors at very reasonable prices.

I'll talk about my Lightroom workflow in some upcoming blog posts and show how we can take a OK shot to being a great one.

Let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions or questions around editors and I'll do my best to answer.