Quantus5

Yes, really all of these are recommendations. :-) and even if you are familiar with all these packages (which I doubt anyone is) , "best" is very subjective in this area. Really it's about finding software that meets your needs.

For someone just starting out I recommend the following really powerful and inexpensive packages:

1) Corel PaintShop Pro X9 (Street price ~$50-$60). It is what I use and it does 16-bit processing.
2) Adobe Photoshop Elements (Street price ~$60-$70). Good option, especially if you want to standardize on Adobe.
3) Serif Affinity (Street price ~$50). Have not used it, but several friends have only good things to say about it.

I also recommend you do a search on UHH for more information. This topic (Photo software recommendations) gets covered about once every two weeks. :-)

Reinaldokool Loc: San Rafael, CA

Corel PSP is a good product. After years of using PS, I found it too hard to learn something so completely different. But that's on me.

I use and love Affinity Photo. It does everything PS will do and sometimes do it better. The cost is $50. And while there are not a hundred Youtube instructionals like for Corel, let alone PS, there are enough to learn it and new ones all the time. Mac users have had it for a year but windows only came out a few months ago.

Quantus5

I don't use Serif Affinity, but some of my friends love it. Plus Serif, the company that makes it, is a really great little company, that is based out of the UK.

I actually use two of their products WebPlus (for making web sites) and PagePlus (which is Desktop publishing software).

Note: They used to make photo editing software called PhotoPlus, but have discontinued it in favor of their newer product: Affinity.

Also -- I'm sure this has been said before on UHH. Affinity does support 16-bit editing.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Download the free 30-day trial of Adobe Elements 15 and give it a try. If you like it, you can buy for $100 it at the end of the trial... not a subscription.

If you work with a large number of images, Lightroom 6 might meet your cataloging and organizing needs better. But it's image editing and optimization capabilities are somewhat limited. It's designed to work hand in hand with Photoshop or another post-processing software. Lightroom 6 is still available as a perpetually licensed version ($142, last time I looked). Photoshop is not.... it's available by subscription ("CC" or "creative cloud") only. That subscription currently includes both LR CC and PS CC.

jamesl Loc: Pennsylvania

Photoshop Elements 15 or Corel Paint Shop Pro X9.

CO

I know that PSE does a lot in 8-bit. I'm just opposed to Adobe's business model. They just want to make sure they keep extracting money from people. I use Nikon Capture NX-D almost all the time.

Photo One Loc: Clearwater Florida

1. Lightroom 5, 6.
2. Photoshop Elements.
3.Photoshop CC.

Photo One Loc: Clearwater Florida

On1 Is a great program also.

Bigbeartom44

I have used Corel since they purchased PaintShopPro many years ago. I also used Adobe Elements. I found that Corel was more intuitive and easier to learn. The latest Elements has you jumping around to do the simplest things. I am sold on Corel. You might get both for free for a trial and then decide which you like the best.

Bigbeartom44

I have used Corel since they purchased PaintShopPro many years ago. I also used Adobe Elements. I found that Corel was more intuitive and easier to learn. The latest Elements has you jumping around to do the simplest things. I am sold on Corel. You might get both for free for a trial and then decide which you like the best.

Bigbeartom44

I have used Corel since they purchased PaintShopPro many years ago. I also used Adobe Elements. I found that Corel was more intuitive and easier to learn. The latest Elements has you jumping around to do the simplest things. I am sold on Corel. You might get both for free for a trial and then decide which you like the best.

popheizz Loc: berks co., pennsylvania

Google Photo, works quite well on jpegs.

marcshapiro55

Photoshop, PS Elements, Lightroom, Corel, Phocus, ACDSee,... Your head will explode just trying to identify all the options! I spent years sifting through different software in search of a program that could do everything what I wanted, and in that time I had to learn a lot of new programs. Ultimately, I found that many of the programs function similarly with similar commands -- Photoshop and the "PS clones" were my focus, although I dabbled in ACDSee which I liked enough to purchase after my free trial. (ACDSee offers some features that Photoshop did not at the time.)

I knew that Photoshop was the Mother of all Editing Software, but it was sooo not intuitive! I was spoiled by Microsoft Office and the "business productivity" software which featured a common set of commands. "How hard can it be," I asked myself. The truth is that I think it's nearly impossible to learn Photoshop on your own. So I decided to immerse myself in the program, took a few days off from work, combined the time off with a short vacation and enrolled in a Photoshop class at the Palm Beach Photography School. That was 2000 and I've never looked back.

Personally, I love Photoshop. I've barely scratched the surface but I now have a strong foundation in the basic skills to do almost anything. I ESPECIALLY have the ability to teach myself new techniques with the assistance of youtube.

My conclusion... if you have the money to spend Photoshop is the gold standard, and the monthly subscription with automatic updates is the way to go. You're better off spending $9.99 a month (which will give you automatic updates) than whatever the others might cost to purchase. Besides, after a few years, "the purchased programs" will be woefully outdated. (I owned PS v3 which I used faithfully until PS moved to the cloud subscription model (v9?), and then I switched. It was like buying a current model car after driving the same car for 15 years. Wow!) If you don't want to sign on to a lifetime of payments, try ACDSee. it's affordable and offers a huge spectrum of tools and options.

Finally, no matter what you decide to do, take a class. And I mean a real, in-person, class with a human being (not just youtube). You will actually learn from a human teacher and the discipline of sitting in a room is superior to youtube-based learning. Youtube is great, but you will have to demonstrate the commitment to actually sit through the lessons, and the videos tend to be inconsistent.

Here's a simple example of a photoshop-manipulated image that used to make a postcard I sent to my young son when he was at summer camp a few years ago.

Haydon

What OS are you running?

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

Amen, easier and does most everything, haven't found what it doesn't do yet, Bob.