I was just on the phone with a friend of mine, and we got into an annoying argument.

He used to be an editor at Mens Health, and for some reason we started talking about photo retouching(which btw he knows nothing about, he doesnt know much about computers either)

He kept insisting that photoshop was a low end program and that noone in publishing uses it. Yet I've always been under the impression that photoshop was pretty standard. (And I know for a fact that they use it at the Chinese branch of Cosmopolitan Mag, bacause last time I was in the offices, I saw them retouching.)

He kept saying they use a diffferant program at Men's Health, and I just said ok, maybe they were, but Im not saying everyone uses photoshop, im just saying its the most standard, most used image editing program, in the industry or not. And he kept insisting, no everyone in publishing uses another program.

Him being stubbern, and me being sure that I was right, ended the conversation in disagreement, so yeah. Someone help me out and settle this?

If anyone could, tell me a bit about what the leading programs are, and which are used by who mostly?

Lotsa Luv,
Jayce

well, whenever you run into someone like that, the thing to do is pin them down. who is 'everyone'? and what 'other program' are you talking about? always beware of the person who talks only in generalities.... 'they', 'everyone', 'all of them', 'everyone knows', 'everyone does it', etc, etc.

craig

well, whenever you run into someone like that, the thing to do is pin them down. who is 'everyone'? and what 'other program' are you talking about? always beware of the person who talks only in generalities.... 'they', 'everyone', 'all of them', 'everyone knows', 'everyone does it', etc, etc.

craig


lol, i did, he said hed find out what the program was.

he said he actually at one point(while he was working there) he looked the program up and it was 2-3 thousand, ring any bells?

Remember that things move very quickly in the computer and software world. There used to be several vertical software packages for magazines, but Photoshop has made most of them obsolete in the past 5 years. As recently as 10 years ago (http://seminars.seyboldreports.com/1996_san_francisco/HTML/SR540007.HTM), Photoshop was viewed as a "low end" solution. And there are still a couple of vertical packages that hang around, not because they produce better output than Photoshop, but because they might be better integrated into particular workflows.

You should have bet with him, big time. I've done work for Men's Health within the past six months. Their required deliverable was 300 DPI PSD's in CMYK. Page layouts were in Quark and they were migrating to Adobe InDesign.

We do a lot of magazine stuff at this office, about 1% ask for TIFF's, the rest require the original layered PSD files.

When your friend calls back, don't forget to rub it in..... :bigthmb:

I work for a pretty prominent ad agency in NYC, and when we send files to publications, they request Photoshop psd's (always 4/c) 300dpi, in case any minor corrections need to be made, the can do it right there on site instead of us going back and forth wasting time. we do a lot of booze and cig campaigns so theres always legal technicalities that get changed around.

also, quark sucks real bad.......i def reccomend Indesign!

Remember that things move very quickly in the computer and software world. There used to be several vertical software packages for magazines, but Photoshop has made most of them obsolete in the past 5 years. As recently as 10 years ago (http://seminars.seyboldreports.com/1996_san_francisco/HTML/SR540007.HTM), Photoshop was viewed as a "low end" solution. And there are still a couple of vertical packages that hang around, not because they produce better output than Photoshop, but because they might be better integrated into particular workflows.

This is true, though it was as much a function of Macintosh computers being viewed as underpowered and inefficient opposed to systems such as Scitex. (Remember, this was before the graphics world became cross-platform). But I've worked with Photoshop since version 2.5 and was using it for high-end ad work, magazine covers and internal photo spreads from the start. I'm in Manhattan, and I've never seen a retouching job advertised that asks for anything other than Photoshop.