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Photo Editing Programs

16 years ago

What program do you use and why? Is it a free program?

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Comments (5)

lazypup
16 years ago
I use three programss

1. Pentax Photo Laboratory, which is a proprietary program that came with my Pentax DSLR

2. Photoshop Elements 7- Fairly inexpensive on Ebay.

Both of those programs have exceptional capabilities but they have a long learning curve to become comfortable with them.

I also have "Photoscape" which is a free download that works very well with general editing and corrections. There is only one slight fluke in this program. It will not read single photos directly from your computer "My Pictures". You must first put the photos in a file, then read the file in photoscape but that is not really a problem because it is easy to set up a new file in "My pictures" then drag and drop the individual photos into the file.

In fact, I find myself primarily using Photoscape because it is easy and I only resort to the Pentax or Photoshop program when I need to do more advanced editing or corrections.
pfmastin
16 years ago
Irfanview is very good for basic edits...resizing, cropping, etc. Picasa has some basic editing also. Both are free online.
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With Picasa the photos are not online unless you put them online. The program you download scans your computer in folders you designate and it indexes them, it doesn't move the files. You edit all the photos on your computer. You have the option to create an online web album account and send any photos you want to it. You can use the web albums without the program or the program without the web albums. It just is an easy option if you want to use both because they are designed to be easily integrated. They regularly update the program to integrate with new things. You can send them to a printing service, blogs, Facebook (I think)... even my Grandma's digital Ceiva picture frame. I have all my pictures on my computer and backed up to an external hard drive (there is a backup option in Picasa also). Then I just pick which photos I want to put online within the program and click upload to web album. Each web album can have different privacy settings: private with login required to view, viewable only with a direct link you give to people, or viewable to anyone from your main gallery. I actually have two web album accounts. One for family photos and one for my garden pictures. I can login/out from the program before I upload to my web albums so they go to the right one. Then there is also a setting if you want your public albums to show up in searches. You can set copyright info for the pictures and embed watermarks if you want to go that far too. I guess it would be easier if I put a link to it :) I would recommend reading the faq before installing. I had a family member install it without doing so. When it started scanning for all the pictures on her computer to index them and add to the Picasa program database on her computer, she started freaking out and thought they were all "online!". No I don't work for Google, I just really like it :) My only major gripe is that the web albums don't allow for sub-albums. If it did I might use private albums to backup all my photos and pay for extra storage space. You get 1GB free for web albums, but it is only $5 a year for another 20GB. Here is a link that might be useful: Picasa
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I sure came to the right place. Thanks to all of you. Each reply was different, but either would have probably worked.I did the easiest thing for me and that was to pull the plugs on the printer and scanner, reboot and uninstall the software, even after a stern warning that I would be doing irreversible damage. Then I turned the computer back on and tried the scanner and printer. Both work fine, so far. I may have done damage that has not shown up yet. If I have a problem I may try the system restore feature. I had forgotten I even had that. Have had this computer for about 3 years and never tried the system restore.Thanks again!! Ida
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Comments (33)
I found the info and will paste at the end of this post but the picture can be pretty big. salbwil just tell us what program you are using to resize and right click on the picture and click properties on the drop down menu and tell us what size it is. Here are the posting instructions from the webmaster at hearth.com: OK, so hereÂs the deal - your member photos (in your member profile) is limited to a small size - about 150 pixels (dots) square. The little Avatar next to your posts is limited to the same or maybe 100 each way..... Regular pictures, like in this forum, can be fairly large - almost full screen (1000 wide by 1000 high) and up to 200KB (200,000 bytes). But, many folks donÂt know the basics of email and web pics - IÂll try to explain. Pictures sent to the web and by email are best at what is called "screen resolution" meaning that they somewhat match the size od the dots on our monitors. For our purposes, this is aout 72 DPI (or dots per inch)..... What the average person needs is an "Image Management Program" and NOT the one that comes with Windows! If you are a PC user, download the free program called Picasa - This will organize and store all the photos on your disk and also allow you to export smaller copies (for web, etc.) and to even fix the photos up a bit! Apple users already have an image management program, iPhoto, which comes with every mac. To prepare web photos in iPhoto, simply select the photo or photos, go to Export (or it might say Share in newer versions) and when the dialog box comes up use the part that says "scale no bigger than" to select what you want the size of the exported photo to be. For purposes of this board, a photo with a width of 400-700 is ideal. Now, with Picasa, it is pretty much the same thing. Select the photo or photos and go to Export to Folder- the box shown in the picture below will come up and then you can select the picture size - say 480 wide as in this example. The other slider will compress the file size so the picture loads faster. In most cases, anything over 50% is good. If you want to learn more about this stuff, dig around on the links at: http://www.hearth.com/hcc/ - these are links from a course I teach at night school. If you are a user of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, use the "Image Size" dialog bx to convert your photo to 72 DPI and approx. 400-600 pixels wide (the height will work out automatically) - then use "Save for Web" and tryjpg "medium", file size should be really small. Of course, donÂt save changes to the original picture since you still want that big on your computer and for yourarhiving and storage.
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Are you on Mac or Windows? I use iPhoto for almost of my editing - it does just about everything that needs doing: cropping, levels, effects, etc. Also what kind of camera are you using? My Nikon Coolpix can do a number of those things right in the camera. Oh hhah - just noticed the date of the OP - imagine the class is over now... This post was edited by carolb_w_fl on Sun, Jan 25, 15 at 10:43
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zitro_joe
16 years ago
Ahh, man. I really dont care for photo editing program. Soem people turn into graphic artist rather than learning to take good pictures.

IF I want to adjust levels of any sort, I use Photoshop Lightroom
anna_lisa
16 years ago
I used photoshop and paintshop I also took a free online course in both program I have added filters to both programs I also like makeing birthday card for my children with the picture I have taken with my camera they also enjoy them I have not brought a birthday card in years
anna
juanital
16 years ago
I use Irfanview alot with quite a few added plugins, some free (Xero Graphics, Filter Forge,Virtual Photograher by Optik Verve)some paid for (such as TopazLabs plugins, some compatible PS plugins) something a little beyond basic editing...The only thing I don't like about it is it doesn't keep your EXIF data when you save RAW to JPG's.

As mentioned above-Photoscape is a nice Free little program, it recognizes raw files but when you bring them up in photoscape they are small...Most of the time I shoot jpg, but have been doing alot of raw's lately...

Paint.net is another free-doesn't recognize raw files-I use that to clone out any dust from the sensor if it shows up or some small thing...I'm not that great otherwise for heavy duty into editing-like layers, cuts, so on...it does have that capability...

I do have Capture NX that came with the Nikon I bought a few years ago...If the pics are shot in raw and I want to save the exif-I'll open with Irfanview as my viewer-then choose open with NX. that saves the exif when saved...I don't care for the viewer of NX-seems cumbersome for me-thats why I like Irfanview as my viewer...

I know this an older post-When I started photography it took me awhile to understand everything on what to get or to buy..So I hope this was helpful.

Juanita

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