Getting started advice for digital newbie

[Bob_T]

Hi, I'm interested in getting started with my digital darkroom. I have experience with photography, it was my uni arts major but only analog darkroom experience really. After I got back into it, and got a Canon T5i and Pro 100 printer, I tried GIMP but I wasn't that thrilled with GIMP, mainly used it because it was free, but it didn't shine for me, probably because of the lack of good instruction manuals.

I have two questions,

1. Is it better to get the new creative cloud versions of lightroom classic and photoshop, or will the old standalone versions do me just fine.?
2. Which books should I be reading to get me up to speed, and in what order?

Thank you for your time,
Bob

 

[fredfish]

As far as I know the older stand alone versions aren't available through official channels and they certainly aren't supported any more. I would strongly suggest CC versions of Photoshop and Lightroom (you probably already know that they are available together in the "Photography" package at about £10 pm).

It really depends on how you learn best - if it is through books one that I used way back (I think it was the CS2 edition - which dates me ) was the Photoshop classroom in a book series.

If you are fine with videos you could do a lot worse than looking at the Lynda.com website - you can get a months free subscription with them. The have all sorts of course aimed at people with differing needs - including ones aimed at photographers using Photoshop.

There are of course loads of videos out there on Youtube, some of them very good and others less so. One person I find to be very good (and who comes from a photography background) is Glyn Dewis ( Glyn Dews Youtube Channel ) and someone else is Aaron Nace ( Website ).

Best of luck

Cheers

John