Triplets Loc: Reading, MA

Currently the only post processing software I have is ViewNX-i and CaptureNX-D that I get with my Nikon camera. I would like to concentrate on landscape photography so I'm asking which post processing package would you recommend?

MtnMan Loc: ID

Lightroom. Get the Adobe package with Photoshop. $9.99/month, although you can often find first year offers for $7.99/month.

It has a great graduated filter and haze filter. It also allows you to brighten shadows and subdue highlights.

You can easily build presets to apply what you did to other images. And you can synch as many images as you want to a set of changes.

You need to shoot in RAW to get full advantage. You can apply starting presets on import.

The package also includes Photoshop. If inclined to invest a lot of learning time you can easily go to it from within Lightroom.

rjaywallace Loc: Wisconsin

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

BebuLamar

Strong recommend Lightroom and Photoshop. They are free for 1 month so you decide if you like them and you also know that since they are the de facto software for photo editing today so anything else wouldn't be much better.

MtnMan Loc: ID

Alas one month with Photoshop is barely enough to frustrate.

You can make more rapid progress with Lightroom with a good book (Scott Kelby) and free online videos (Julianne Kost).

par4fore Loc: Bay Shore N.Y.

I'm a big fan of Photoshop. If you do one thing at a time it is not hard at all. Plenty of information on the internet to show you how to do whatever you want to do. I'm, not knocking the highly regarded Lightroom, so many of the greatest photographers use it but found it frustrating and lacking, you can read my opinion here. IMO Lightroom Sucks! http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-391956-1.html

Nice part subscribe to one and get the other.

MtnMan Loc: ID

We have completely opposite views. Photoshop is a disaster. No explanations, no help, completely non-intuitive, and permamently destroys your original if you don't take measures to prevent.

Lightroom is simple and logical and never messes with your original.

You may have noticed few agreed with your view in your thread.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Post a sample image with "store original" box checked.

Landscape photography is not just about software and post processing, though if everything else is in place - composition, picking the right time of day, NOT automatically going to an ultrawide lens to get a wider view, 100% familiarity with your camera, shooting raw, etc - then PP will help. But you have to understand landscape photography.

I suggest, in addition to considering Lightroom and Photoshop, you spend some time at a museum of fine art that has some examples of landscape paintings, especially some done in the Hudson River School style. Artists like Frederick Church, Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Asher Brown, Thomas Moran, George Inness, Sandford Gifford, William Trust Richards, etc.

Looking at their work will give you a sense of more modern viewpoint and style, and how they used perspective to create artwork of the places they visited. I was born and have lived my entire life in the Hudson Valley, and have traveled to and hiked many of the locations they have painted, and it's always interesting how each interpreted what they saw. The one thing that is missing is a viewpoint that looks like it was taken with a wide angle lens. What you do see are images that look like a photographer used a Widelux camera (a panoramic camera with a moving lens and film advance to make a wide negative, taking in about 150 degrees of view angle). So learning to do panorama is probably important. You can do this in Photoshop or Lightroom.

Take a look at some of my stuff:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/albums/72157681052964810
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/albums/72157668362742222
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/23133190835/in/album-72157661435907591/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/albums/72157660158626169
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/albums/72157657376971124
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/albums/72157659811849805

Most of these were shot with 45mm or 85mm or longer, as stitched panos. While you can get a pano "look" with a wide lens things in the distance will appear extremely far away, due to the extension distortion inherent in wide angle lenses, which gets worse as you shorten the focal length.

You'll see that using a longer focal length will give you a little bit of compression distortion, increase the drama and bring distant objects closer, and shooting panos will add "width" to the scene, without the undesirable effects of short lenses.

So to answer your question - yes - Lightroom and Photoshop. What's nice about Photoshop is that once you have done what you can to your image in a raw converter, there are many techniques that you can use to further develop interest and impact in your images. There will be naysayers that claim that is difficult. That part is true. It ain't easy. But every image I have posted either in this forum or online was finished in Photoshop. It's learnable, there are 1000s of resources that can help, most of which are free, and the results are stunning when you get good with the tools. A big part of learning Photoshop is taking the picture with the knowledge that you can do what you need to do to the image to realize your creative vision. And you can work your images to your style, which ultimately will develop as you learn.

So, yes to exploring panorama shooting and stitching, dodging and burning, exposing for highlights, using neutral density filters to smooth flowing water, etc etc etc. You are about to start doing some of the most difficult photography (if you stick to it and really try for excellence) - it is aside from birds, one of my favorite subjects.

BebuLamar

I hate LR possibly for the reason others love it. I hate having to import images into its library before use.

TheDman Loc: USA

Likely because those things didn't exist in their day.

MtnMan Loc: ID

Silly view. You can't work on images without importing them to your computer. Lightroom automates the process. It makes it easier.

TheDman Loc: USA

Not sure what could be easier than clicking one button.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

There are plenty of books and online tutorials for Photoshop. And all you have to do to make it nondestructive is use adjustment layers to do everything, either globally or learn basic selection and masking techniques.

MtnMan Loc: ID

That's what Lightroom enables.

I don't know of any other process that does that. Many of those ho dis Lightroom insist on using their PC file system to create folders and import images to them. That takes numerous strps.

Many of those who don't get Lightroom have refused to invest ten minutes to understand the catalog. It is a unique and powerful feature.

F8 Forever Loc: Lng Island, NY

I use PaintShop Pro, Aftershot and some other stuff from Corel, along with the Gimp. They're inexpensive, gimp is even free, and do most of what Photoshop does. But, that's not the point. As at least one other person said, or hinted, the most important thing about landscape photography is your eye. No program is going to give you the eye for composition or "the decisive moment" that experience and learning from the masters will. And no program will correct your viewpoint.

I subscribe to "Outdoor Photographer" magazine and every month it totally deflates any ego I might have left. I suspect Ansel Adams himself would be impressed by at least a little of the stuff in there. Linhof and Leica used to have magazines that did the same thing, maybe they still do, and the point was to show you the best of the best-- something to aspire to.

Anyway, I haven't been anywhere with great vistas in a while, but if I do get there, I have a panhead so a stitching program would be the first thing to get if I don't already have one buried in here somewhere. It might be nice to get brighter clouds through PP, but in the old days we used a reddish filter with b&w or chose which Ektachrome or Agfachrome had the "cloud balance". It's not really much easier these days, but it's faster and no wasted film.

And if I really, really wanted to blow people away with spectacular views, I'd go medium format. 4x5 and up is a bit much, but I'm thinking of one of those cheap film Hasselblads out there. Or a Pentax 6x7. Somebody still makes 120 roll film, don't they?