 Re: Dealing with Photos/Images
I decided I wanted to make the process of shooting garments not only as simple as possible but also obtain the highest quality. I did the following:
1) Bought an excellent camera--Canon G9
2) Bought good studio lights--soft boxes with diffusion panels.
3) Learned about the format called Camera Raw, which is available with the G9 and many better cameras.
4) Decided I didn't need Photoshop but Photoshop Elements would do fine. Although Adobe Bridge does not come with Elements, the Organizer within Elements is terrific for image organization.
5) Bought a top quality gray card (Whibal) and process all photos in Adobe Camera Raw (free with Elements). Batch processing the RAW images for color balance and cropping is very easy.
Don't skimp on the camera you buy. Much of the value of a good one is in the optical quality of the lenses. My daughter has two Canon "L" series lenses (used with her SLRs). The "L" series lenses are just about the finest lenses made--very, very expensive. And although I can notice a difference between them and my G9, the quality difference is far from worth the enormous price difference. In fact, in my opinion, the G9 quality is equal to non L series lenses used in Canon SLRs. | 
