What is required to enhance crop and alter photographic images electronically?

Answer 1

A computer and digital camera of course. For software the market leader is Photoshop, which is expensive, but Elements will do most of what you want and will enable you to edit Raw files too. Photoshop CS4 needs a high end computer that has an Open GL graphics card with at least 1M of Ram on it, CS3 is a lot less demanding on computer spec. All photo manipulation packages work best with lots of Ram in your computer at least 2Gb and preferably 4Gb.

Hard drives for image storage can be installed inside a tower computer, but you can always use USB drives. For safety's sake fit two one for backup. Photoshop allows you to import your pictures to two drives simultaneously.

CD and DVD are NOT secure storage a lesson I learnt the hard way! Cards are not secure either for long term storage, they are for just getting the pictures out of your camera onto your computer.

Whatever computer you use I would strongly advise getting your monitor colour calibrated, the monitor is the hub of post processing and if it isn't showing colour correctly then you can't tell if any edit is doing what you want, and is the only way to go to get your prints to match the screen. You can't use an eyeball as the colour detector as it varies, a colourimeter such as a Spyder is needed for accuracy, I know its more expense, but it will save a fortune in ink and paper later.

For printers I would recommend any in the Epson R series, even some of the older models, they are cheaper to run and give superb quality. Some people omit this altogether and go with a commercial print house, but for full control from pressing the shutter to a print in your hand your own printer has serious advantages quality wise, its another learning curve though!

All in all quite a shopping list, but you only have to buy it once, running costs are just the ink and paper for any you print.

Tying all these things together is where the learning curve begins. Getting Camera space, Computer space, Photoshop space and Printer space to all work together takes some time and knowledge as they all use different technologies, at the very least you should get your monitor calibrated as I mentioned before, but its so important its worth mentioning again.

Answer 2

Bruh