posted on Oct, 3 2008 @ 02:51 PM
reply to post by chapter29
If you have the money, start your collection with Photoshop. There are others, cheaper or free, but PS is the best. If you are going to want to mess
with videos. Make sure you get CS3 Extended.
CS4 is available on preorder right now. You may save a little that way, I'm not sure. It could be a while before it comes out though. Depends on how
the beta progresses.
CS4 is designed to work with newer NVidia Graphics cards ranging from about $350 to $3,000. You will want to have a machine with at least 2 gigs RAM
but most important, plenty of disk space for virtual memory and multiple hard-drives for more. What you can do is limited by the available virtual
memory. It can handle up to many terabytes. Some NASA images are huge. This stuff is not needed by most people, but I mention it in case you are
interested enough to head toward Pro work.
You are going to go through storage media like crazy.
As to plug-ins. All they do is redesign how features already in PS are used for the most part. Each new release of PS seems to eliminate the need for
some of the plug-ins. The plug-ins I use are mostly for other types of work. Knowing how to use PS features is far more important than plug-ins.
Lightroom is nice, but not really needed unless you are going to do Pro Photography.
You won't find many photo's on the Internet that can be of much use. What you need to debunk is originals at original quality. Also, don't fall
into the trap of thinking that after filtering you are looking at what is in the original. Learn how the filters alter the image. PS filtering is
often used by hoaxers and overzealous advocates trying to prove something is in an image that was never there, but added by the software.