RPS Digital Imaging Group

My local camera club invited the RPS South West Region Organiser to give a talk about 'Widening Your Horizons' where the representative, Janet Haines of Bridport, explained how it was good to expand your experiences and aim for a qualification. Her talk included the work of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) and the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain (PAGB) and the qualifications it was possible to earn and how to go about achieving them.

Janet is also the organiser for the RPS Digital Imaging Group (DiG) and as such puts on four sessions a year locally which features aspects of digital imaging pertinent to both photographers and designers.

The one-day session on Sunday, March 24th, included demonstrations on colour management, Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4. The first part of the original programme should have been on Photoshop Elements 11 but was replaced by highlights of CS6 as the presenter was unable to attend. 

The demonstrator, a professional photographer called Andy Mallows was well versed in CS6 and Lightroom and it was extremely interesting to see how he managed his workload when, as wedding photographer, he uploaded a completed web book for his clients within 2/3 hours of photographing a wedding. 

He also talked about the new concept from Adobe called Creative Cloud where, instead of buying a single programme such as Photoshop CS6 and replacing it every time there was a new version, you paid a monthly subscription of approximately £16 and were able to access the whole gamut of Adobe software as and when you needed it.  You were able to store your work 'in the Clouds' to give access whenever and wherever you were without having to carry it around on external devices.  This seems to follow the concept of Love Film and Netflix where you pay a monthly subscription and have access to the whole range of films, etc, rather than buying a DVD, watching it once or twice and just have it clutter up your storage area.

It seems a strange idea to hire a film or piece of software rather than owning a copy for eternity but this seems to be the way the world is moving.  Perhaps it's time to change my way of thinking and join the revolution. It would certainly seem to be cheaper to pay a monthly subscription (using the website Software4Students it came out at £16 for a recognised student for one year then rising to £22 per annum) than spend a whopping £224 to obtain a copy of just one programme, ie, CS6, which would be replaced by CS7 or 8 or 9 within 12/24 months.  Food for thought most definitely.