inexpensive photo editors and HD camcorders

johnbl wrote on 12/20/2003, 11:55 AM
IM really enjoying vv4 and am working on compositing with SPot's book and other online tutorials. Im looking for an inexpensive photo editor to help me with some graphics for title slides and for making some masks...any suggestions?? Again Im looking for something inexpensive..Paint shop pro??? My second question is.... Im looking to buy a vx2100..because of its low light capibilities to complement my sony dig 8 (which has been very fine for outdoors work) I am an amateur hobbyist. should I hold off on this camera and wait for the HD camcorders to come on the scene. VV4 can edit the HD footage , yes??? Thanks again guys... JOHN

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/20/2003, 12:29 PM
PIXL from Ulead is a great photo editor, second only to Photoshop, IMO. You can even use Pshop actions in it.
Vegas can edit the HDV stuff, to keep the quality happening and keep it flowing well, you'd want to look at the Cineform intermediate codec, which allegedly looks good. I ordered it last week, so I'll give you a response later, but the guys from Sony felt it was a pretty good thing when I talked to them about it. Of course, it's highly compressed, and so I don't know that you're getting a better image. I'd rather have a VX or a PD 170. It's not HD, but at the HDV compression rate, the stuff I've seen isn't all that impressive.
Paul_Holmes wrote on 12/20/2003, 2:36 PM
I use Ulead and PaintShop Pro. I find PaintShop Pro 8 the easiest program to tweak my photos to get the best results. I use Ulead for masks and creating various shapes and backgrounds. I think Ulead is the easiest and most intuitive when it comes to the latter but for photographic editing I love PaintShop.

P.S. One thing I'm finding very easy and fun to do in Paintshop Pro is to copy the photo and add it on top as another layer, then blur it, then use the erasure tool to bring out the foreground (usually a person) and create a cool-looking depth of field that wasn't there in the original photograph.