photo editing
Dec 16, 2014 17:51:53 #
You can get PicMonkey for $4.99 a month or $50 a year!! The nice thing if you're not going to use them you don't have to pay for that month!! I like it for it's facial touch ups which I'll take over Portrait Professional any day of the week!! Also I use Smart Photo Editor which was a one time charge of $39 and I love it. Not sure if it's still available as a stand alone program or it might have been bundled into a package by OnOne Software. I had GIMP and gave up on trying to learn it even with tutorials which were available here on UHH. Good luck in your hunt......
Dec 16, 2014 19:40:36 #
I don't know how experienced a photographer you are, but Faststone image viewer is a great PP program that is free.
You can crop, resize, correct color and lighting, adjust curves and levels, sharpen or blur and other things.
Faststone is very intuitive and easy to use, and it's FREE.
Even though I have PS, Lightroom and several other PP programs, when I want to do basic editing on my images I almost always use Faststone as it is quick and easy with good results.
Here is the link to it......
http://www.faststone.org/
You can crop, resize, correct color and lighting, adjust curves and levels, sharpen or blur and other things.
Faststone is very intuitive and easy to use, and it's FREE.
Even though I have PS, Lightroom and several other PP programs, when I want to do basic editing on my images I almost always use Faststone as it is quick and easy with good results.
Here is the link to it......
http://www.faststone.org/
Dec 17, 2014 13:15:43 #
amfoto1
Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA
While there are some freebies out there, I think it's worthwhile to invest a little in a good editing program. This doesn't need to be very expensive.
The best freebie is probably the software originally provided by the camera manufacturer. Most offer at least some form of this as a free download on their website. Some manufacturers try to restrict this to "registered owners", but there are workarounds for this... depending upon the brand of your camera (which you haven't told us, AFAIK).
Also, depending upon the age of your used camera, some manufacturers' softwares no longer support older models of their cameras. For example, Canon's current softwares no longer support their earlier .CRW (the now ten year old 10D and earlier RAW files). Canon also might be cutting the umbilical cord with their earlier 12 bit .CR2 files (20D, 30D & original 5D RAW files, for example). More recent and current models using 14 bit .CR2 continue to be supported.
Independent or "third party" software manufacturers continue to support even older models of cameras. So, typically there are no worries there. They also support multiple brands of cameras, rather than being highly brand-specific (Nikon's softwares won't work with Canon camera files... and vice versa).
Some of the image editing softwares really aren't all that expensive. If you are relatively inexperienced, Photoshop Elements is user friendly and costs just over $100 (price might come down on it soon). It has three levels of control ranging from easy-guided usage to more advanced "expert", which is still considerably easier to use than full Photoshop CC or CS6.
If you are more experienced and do a high volume of work, need to maintain a large catalog of images, Lightroom is only a little more... about $150. However, I wouldn't recommend LR as a standalone. It has limited editing capabilities... mostly just global adjustments. Some folks manage to get by with this alone, but IMO it's really only usable to produce thumbnails and proofs. A more advanced, pixel-level editor such as Photoshop is needed to complement it, for finer finishing work.
The subscription-based Lightroom + Photoshop CC package is a bargain at $10 a month... But will end up starting to cost more than Elements if you continue to use it for more than one year. It also is extremely complex and not really designed for inexperienced users. There are college level classes, numerous seminars and online tutorial, and many "how-to" books that are almost mandatory to learn to use Photoshop, in particular, really well. Lightroom isn't as complex, but also is relatively advanced.
Elements borrows major features from both LR and PS, but presents them in a more user-friendly manner and really is more of a single-software solution than either of its two "big brother" programs.
The best freebie is probably the software originally provided by the camera manufacturer. Most offer at least some form of this as a free download on their website. Some manufacturers try to restrict this to "registered owners", but there are workarounds for this... depending upon the brand of your camera (which you haven't told us, AFAIK).
Also, depending upon the age of your used camera, some manufacturers' softwares no longer support older models of their cameras. For example, Canon's current softwares no longer support their earlier .CRW (the now ten year old 10D and earlier RAW files). Canon also might be cutting the umbilical cord with their earlier 12 bit .CR2 files (20D, 30D & original 5D RAW files, for example). More recent and current models using 14 bit .CR2 continue to be supported.
Independent or "third party" software manufacturers continue to support even older models of cameras. So, typically there are no worries there. They also support multiple brands of cameras, rather than being highly brand-specific (Nikon's softwares won't work with Canon camera files... and vice versa).
Some of the image editing softwares really aren't all that expensive. If you are relatively inexperienced, Photoshop Elements is user friendly and costs just over $100 (price might come down on it soon). It has three levels of control ranging from easy-guided usage to more advanced "expert", which is still considerably easier to use than full Photoshop CC or CS6.
If you are more experienced and do a high volume of work, need to maintain a large catalog of images, Lightroom is only a little more... about $150. However, I wouldn't recommend LR as a standalone. It has limited editing capabilities... mostly just global adjustments. Some folks manage to get by with this alone, but IMO it's really only usable to produce thumbnails and proofs. A more advanced, pixel-level editor such as Photoshop is needed to complement it, for finer finishing work.
The subscription-based Lightroom + Photoshop CC package is a bargain at $10 a month... But will end up starting to cost more than Elements if you continue to use it for more than one year. It also is extremely complex and not really designed for inexperienced users. There are college level classes, numerous seminars and online tutorial, and many "how-to" books that are almost mandatory to learn to use Photoshop, in particular, really well. Lightroom isn't as complex, but also is relatively advanced.
Elements borrows major features from both LR and PS, but presents them in a more user-friendly manner and really is more of a single-software solution than either of its two "big brother" programs.
Dec 17, 2014 17:30:28 #
When I need a quick edit, cropping, etc. I usually pop into ipiccy when I am shooting in JPEG. It is free and has a lot of cool things you can do to your photos on it.
www.ipiccy.com
www.ipiccy.com
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