I'm not sure how I stumbled across CameraBag, but when I did they were offering it for $19 (€15/£12) with a free upgrade to CameraBag 2 which was following in a number of weeks.
What its not is Photoshop, but almost! What it is, is probably the best $19 I've ever spent!
I have been using it as my final pass for a number of images after I've prepared and cleaned the photo in Lightroom. I've even by-passed Lightroom and just processed a number of photos in here. Combing this with something like GIMP is the perfect and very affordable alternative to Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture etc.
The thing that stood out the most for me with CameraBag was how easy it was to use and get going with it straight away. The interface is clean, simple and very intuitive:
- Application menu down the right, with a sub menu for items inside each section
- Adjust menu along the bottom when an item is chosen from the application menu
- Both side and bottom menus can be hidden when required
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| Menus |
You get adjustment options (25 of them) - subdivided into Basics, Light, Color, Photographic & Utilty. Some of these adjustments include:
- crop
- rotate
- exposure
- contrast
- saturation
- vibrance
- brightness
- shadows
- various curves
- grain
- color correction
- tint
- RGB curve
- and a lot of other options
The amount of filters (like presets in Lightroom) it comes with by default is fantastic, a great start to processing your image. You have full control over these filters to adjust them and make them your own. You can save your own and share them, and add other new ones, other people have made.
The adjustment controls are a nice size and really easy to understand and use, the slider being big enough to tweak as necessary. It has non-destructive editing, and removing an effect is as easy as just closing the control for it, no need for Cntrl-Z'ing!
The adjustment controls are a nice size and really easy to understand and use, the slider being big enough to tweak as necessary. It has non-destructive editing, and removing an effect is as easy as just closing the control for it, no need for Cntrl-Z'ing!
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| Adjustments |
Inline Preview gives you a preview beside your original image. You are not limited to one preset, you can layer presets, adding them one after another.
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| Inline Preview |
Quicklooks is a nice feature which takes the Inline Preview a step further, where you get a page of thumbnails with all presets worked on your photo, see one you like click on it and adjust as necessary.
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| Quicklook |
Another nice easy to use feature is Batch Processing, its a cinch; adjust one image, then point the software to the folder you want to run it on the rest of your images which get output with an added _cb to the orignal filename by default.
The only things I found lacking were controls such as clone/heal, dodge/burn, watermarking, but as I've already said above, I've been using this as a last pass, and as I've said, combined with the likes of GIMP this is perfect for you. And for the cost of takeaway & DVD it is more than worth it.
For what it has to offer at the price I wouldn't be expecting anything more...in fact I would have thought it had a lot less.
For what it has to offer at the price I wouldn't be expecting anything more...in fact I would have thought it had a lot less.
Camerabag 2 is currently $24 - http://nevercenter.com/camerabag/desktop
Samples:
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