Please..

Ok, so I got a DSLR for christmas, and fancy a play..

Can you recomend me some decent software for editing me photos..

Oh, and make it numpty proof… 😳

Thanks all..

How about GIMP? It takes a bit of getting used to but it is very powerful and there’s a whole forum of people ready to help.

Most of the the time I just use Microsoft Office Picture Manager to give photos a quick sharpening or a contrast boost, but for something a bit more detailed I use GIMP.

What do you want to do with it? Some of the online stuff, like Picasa, is pretty powerful now. Or how about Paint .Net? Brought to you for free from those friendly Microsoft folks.

Gimp is free and is worth every penny. Not a penny more…

Picasa is very easy to use but it’s very basic what you can do (the opposite of Gimp).

If you’re prepared to pay then I’d go for Elements (and have). Very powerful and very easy to use.

Got to say, although GIMP and some of the other free programs are quite good, Adobe Photoshop is still the ultimate photo-editing/manipulation package. Granted, way too many features for a beginner, and incredibly complex, but the best, by a long way.

Which is why I’d recommend P/Shop Elements; a cut-down version, which is still very powerful, and easier to use. Not free, but not too expensive, and worth it, imo.

Magix Movie Edit Pro 14 Plus – here

Adobe lightroom is really nice to use for simpler things such as contrast, saturation and things like that. And if you’re shooting in RAW, this program is even better.

Photoshop comes into play when trying to do more advance things with photos, with different layers, using a number of photos in a composition etc.

Elements is good value, and if you’re on a budget, it probably does everything you want it too.

Irfanview might be worth a look, but generally as above regarding Photoshop. No nothing about Gimp.

Picasa and Photoshop

any good with gimp ? I cant get it to do this http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Selective_Color/

Because of previous deal, I got into Corel Paintshop Pro.
It’s sort of equivalent to Photoshop Elements, but is what it is, not a cut down version of a more expensive programme. It always used to be said that PSP was about 85% of Adobe Photoshop but at a fraction of the price.
We’ve used that in our house for 3-4 years and it’s always sorted out our pic’s enabling us to tweak them before printing and produce good results.
Recently was wondering about upgrading PSP to it’s latest incarnation or dump it for Photoshop Elements – but never fully decided!
My daughters get on well with out older PSP so might go for the upgrade…..maybe!
cheers
Q

http://www.getpaint.net/ – Paint.Net is more numpty-proof than Gimp and has similar features to Photoshop.

http://picasa.google.com/ – Picasa is even more numpty-proof than Paint.net but not nearly as flexible.

“ufraw” if you need raw conversion. It plugs into the gimp if you use that for post-processing.