Editing Programs for Digital Images

Editing your Digital Pictures has Gotten So Easy

The price of photo editing programs has fallen so much over the years to that now there are many Freeware programs available on the Web that do a very nice job of editing photos.  They don't have all the functions available in the more powerful programs, but they are very easy to use and you can achieve some amazing results.

For example, Microsoft has a program called "Picture It Express" which is free with some versions of Windows and it does a very nice job of viewing photos and making simple yet quality looking transformations.  You can Adjust Brightness & Contrast, fix Red-Eye, adjust Tint, Hue and Saturation; Rotate, Crop, Straighten, and Flip an image; in addition to changing the size and adding text on top of it.

A few things some of the better photo editing programs can do:

• Clone areas of a photo to cover up bad areas or to hide something you don't want in the photo (such as a flower in the background that looks like it is growing out of someone's ear).
• Replace one color with another color.
• Merge two images to create a 3D effect
• Use multiple photos to create an animated image to display on the Web.
• Change & Adjust brightness, contrast, hue, tint or saturation to just a selected area in a photo and no the entire photo.
• Stitch together multiple photos to create a panorama
• Cut and paste parts of one photo into another photo to create a montage.
• Convert a photo from one format to another.  Such as .jpg, .tiff, .gif or .png.
• Add filters that make the photo look like it was taken with a colored lens.
• Remove dust and scratches from old photos that have been scanned to make them digital.
• Use filters to make a photo look like a watercolor or oil painting.
• Apply a multitude of special effects that are too numerous to mention.

Enough said about Digital Photos and Editing, lets talk about the kinds of digital cameras that are available.

Editing Programs for Your Digital Photos

• Paint Shop Pro X from Corel: Digital Image Editing - Mid-level program, not very expensive.
• Photoshop CS2 from Adobe:  Digital Image Editing.  One of the best, used by Professionals. and pricey.
• Photoshop Elements from Adobe: The considerably less expensive consumer version of Photoshop CS2.

There are also many good FREE programs available:

• Picasa (picasa.google.com/index.html) - from Google, easy user interfaces. Allows you to edit, organize and share photos.
• GIMP (www.gimp.org) -  A powerful photo editing program, Mid-level to Advanced users.
• Paint.NET (www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net) - For Windows.  Mid level, very good.  A little longer learning curve.  Like Photoshop.  Does things like cropping and resizing an image, plus some special effects.  Requires .NET Framework 2.0 installation.
• IrfanView  (www.irfanview.net) - A Basic, but good, photo editing program. Doesn't have a lot of fancy special effects, but is also very easy to use.  Allows you to do simple picture editing, add text and save your photos from one file format to another.
• AutoStitch  (www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html) - A windows program that lets you stitch several pictures together to create a panorama scene.  Allows you to do blending and set the quality level.  With a little work, you can create a very nice panorama.  FREE demo available for download.

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