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Introduction
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I love digital photography. I also love when I capture one of those perfect pictures where the subject, composition, lighting, and color are just right. But let's face it, most of the time our photos need a little coaxing to get them to look like we want them. There is a proliferation of free image editing and photo correction tools floating around out there and trying to find just the right one can be a little daunting. After evaluating over 30+ programs, I narrowed it down to a handful. I broke these down into three sub-categories, basic, mid-level, and advanced. The basic category is for those little gems that help you quickly and easily make small adjustments to the overall lighting, colors, and tones of your images without the clutter of a lot of advanced tool sets. These also offer such tools as cropping, sharpening, and red eye correction. The mid-level category offers more advanced tools like layers, adding captions and shapes, the ability to select portions of the image and make ajustments to just those portions, etc. These will also offer filters for applying textures, artistic effects, edge enhancements, boarders and frames. The advanced category will include tools that are comparable to professional programs like Photoshop, or Paint Shop Pro. |
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Discussion
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Basic Editors
Mid-Level Editors
PhotoFiltre is a nice basic to mid-level editor with a good feature set. Simple adjustments can be made fairly quickly using the tool bar buttons, or you can make more advanced adjustments by delving deeper into the menus. There is a nice set of tools for selecting parts of images, doing simple painting, and smudging, drawing basic shapes, and adding text. PhotoFiltre also has a good selection of filters to add effects to your images, and can do batch processing of images.
Artweaver - If you don't want the .NET Framework, or simply would like another option other than Paint.Net you should have a look at this. Although it is more focused on being a painting program, it has a very good array of image adjustment tools. Artweaver also has a curves and levels tool that works a little better than Paint.Net, in my opinion. Other than that they are similar programs, with comparable functionality.
Advanced Editors
In A Class By Itself
This software category is maintained by volunteer editor Paul Lawrence |
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2.0 
Restricted Freeware (full commercial version available) 
Win XP, 2000, Vista
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May I suggest Rawtherapee as a good advanced program? I've used it to convert and edit my raw files, and found it easy to install and use. I'm NOT a 'power user' by any means, but it was straight forward enough for the simple things I wanted to do. My husband, who is a total digital photoist, said it compares well with professional programs for features. Worth checking out, I think. rawtherapee.com, free and open source.
Thank you for your suggestion. I actually use RawTherapee myself, and much like you said, it has some very powerful features. I have hesitated to recommend it here because of several reasons.
I am planning somewhere in the near future to expand the digital imaging section of this website. When that is done, RawTherapee will likely have a review of its own amongst other capable Raw editors.
Ritho
Editor
Photo Pos Pro? Dog slow, and intrusive as it tries to download and steer you to other stuff, interface is amateurish. It's too confusing to label as "easy" when there are easy choices to be had. I tried it and was not impressed and wondered, it must not sell so they took it in this "free" direction for a reason. That in my opinion is bordering on trickery. It can't do better than the programs it's designed to look like, and I hate the layout. The slide controls are about as precise as driving a Mac 18 wheeler around a closed course race track, because that's exactly what it feels like when you try to adjust or bump saturation up a little ... you're better off entering your own values then using the sliders on the settings across the board. So what's the point of even having sliders? No way would I recommend this to anyone, it's not good enough for advanced and would frustrate anyone new beyond belief. Gimp's layout is better and easier to follow and understand, that should speak volumes. Sorry to be so harsh, but if it wasn't free I would really trash it big time to be honest. I'm sorry I downloaded it and sorry I couldn't find something positive to say, but it's not even worth making the top 20 here and people should know this, especially those seeking what they think is more advanced editing software or good ware for that matter. It's a mess of a photo editor and that's where it should be placed in any rating. Unless of course free means you are excused from ridicule?
Pretty scathing review above. Is it deserving? I had not reviewed the Photo Pos Pro edition since it went free, so I thought I would look it over.
Install was no problem, but you do have to watch out as it does want to add a "tool bar" and change your browser's homepage, deselect those tick boxes to prevent this.
Upon starting the program I found that the complaints about the interface may have some basis, but it is really no worse than most of the other free or budget editors out there.
It has a well rounded set of editing tools, and image adjustment functions. Usability of the features could be improved upon. I could not find an option to give a visible outline to the brush-type tools, which makes it very difficult to precise edits. There is also no options for custom brushes. These two things alone cause it to fall from the professional category for me. I would never have paid its original $60 dollar price tag with no control over these two features.
One complaint above was about the sliders. I did find that the sliders were a little fiddly. The number values don't update in real time as you slide them, and you have to stop and let go of the handle before the "auto preview" updates. The thumbnail preview updates in real time, but is too small to see fine adjustment. This can be overcome, though, by clicking on the slider and then using the right or left arrow keys to do fine adjustment. Each of the adjustment features has an advanced section that allows for different blending modes and and opacity, which is something you don't find in most of the lower level editors.
Some of the more familiar functions especially curves adjustment, are very non standard. Although I still found them usable.
Layers are supported with blending modes, but it lacks several of the modes I find the most useful in other programs. It has an interesting ability to further adjust layer blending by using blending curves. Layer masks are also supported.
It has a fair set of filters and effects, but I found the frames to be very tacky looking, and un-fitting for anything called a professional photo editor. The border masks were better. Unfortunately I experienced some stability issues while using some of the effects.
It has a very good image resizing tool that includes many of the popular logarithms, and I think it even has the edge on several of the reviewed products here including the Gimp.
Photo Pos features a batch editor too that has the ability to be controlled by custom scripts. The batch editor can apply most the image adjustments available in the main program to a group of images. This means you could also apply color and lighting adjustments to video clips in standard .avi format.
Over all I found Photo Pos Pro, usable. I did not find it to be slow at all, but that could be entirely dependent on your set-up. It has some issues, especially the no brush outline issue, which is just silly, but it has some redeeming features like its image resizing functions, and batch editing. I give it average rating. Photo Pos Pro is Adware, and you have to put up with the nuisance of such, but I did not find anything overly annoying.
Ritho
Editor
Gizmo's Freeware Team
Lightbox is now called Sagelight Image Editor. I think is no more freeware.
This was only a temporary problem. The author is sorry for any inconvenience as he moves his website.
-Ritho
The free version of Lightbox is currently available for download from Brothersoft here.
I just discovered Photo Pos Pro. A powerful image editor that has become freeware. Its website also includes several add-ons and a panorama stitcher.
Here is their description:
"Photo Pos Pro Photo Editor offers powerful tools and functions which include among other things Support of many picture file types, Support of scanners and digital cameras, Advanced Image Enhancing and editing tools and functions, Tools for creating Computer Graphics Design, Rich Text Tools, Special Effects, Selection Tools, Layers & Masks, Gradients, Patterns and Texture, Script Tools, Batch Operations and also The Ability to expand the software yourselves!"
Home Page: http://www.photopos.com/
Download Link: http://www.photopos.com/Photo-Pos-Pro-Image-Editor.asp
Also available from Download.com
For those of us who cannot afford to buy Photoshop, or to upgrade Photoshop Elements or Paintshop Pro every year, this editor seems a reasonable alternative.
I just dropped by and noticed there was no answer to the question re an alternative pgm for raw images. With netbooks flying off the shelves small app pgms will be in high demand.
Just got mine and intend to use it as a temporary storage device while I am shooting (mostly raw) pictures in the field. (At the cottage really.) Returning home I'll port mega gigs of pictures to my desktop and work on them in PS.
A small browser pgm that displays RAW files would be a nice compliment. Any suggestions? Nick
Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer for Windows XP might do the trick. I use it on my eeePC 7g and it works fine
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D48E808E-B10D-4...
I recommend UFRAW. This provides a GUI interface to Dave Coffin's DCRAW. Although it is not as intuitive as the commercial alternatives I find it a great freeware package. It can be used as a stand-alone program or a a plugin with Gimp. A user guide is also provided on the site.
Home Page: http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/index.html
Download Link: http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Install.html
I found this one: http://www.photopos.com/Photo-Pos-Pro-Image-Editor.asp
Seems to be quite advanced, now freeware.
I've been using Photofiltre for all my editing needs. I recently found http://hornil.com/en/products/stylepix/ (Stylepix). Testing it out it's an incredible tool. Recommend this application for review. It's free! :)
Have a great day.
paint.net 3.5 is out
Paint.net has to be the most advanced free program available. 250+ plugins including 3d editing and unlimited undo (photoshop doesn't even have that).
Gimp just sucks.
Is there a photo-editing programme which delivers automated lossless rotation and straightening?
I use FastStone Image Viewer to organise my photos and do most editing - and it's very good. It can do lossless rotation. But it cannot automatically straighten pictures to get a level horizon or a true vertical.
If I want to do more complex editing, I use LightBox. But that offers no "straightening" option.
Picasa has a very easy "straightening" tool. But I don't like Picasa because of the way it takes over and manages all your image files and folders.
I have just tried Photo! Editor. It has a great set of features, including Straighten, and is very user-friendly. But any editing results in serious loss (an edited 1MB photo goes down to less than 500kb).
Hence the question at the start of this post!
JPG has can less lossy if you choose lower compression ratio
Do you still lose quality if it's a lossless format like bmp?
I have tried over 2 dozen image editors & paint apps. Evidently transparent GIFs have gone the way of DOS. None of the editors I have tried can create a transparent GIF like I used to be able to do with a couople clicks in a few editors, like earlier versions of Paintshop.
Does anyone know of an applications that can convert an existing flat-image GIF to one with a transparent background? They may not exist any longer.
Thanks.
I remember photofiltre has that transparent tool
I have just downloaded Gimp 2.7, as yet untried, but I am sure you will be interested to see what the differences are as I am. But I thought I would point it out to those who like to keep up with these things
Tony
Really surprised that Arcadia's PhotoPerfect Express is not listed.
Actually it is listed under products that where reviewed. It just did not make the cut.
-Editor
Take a look at https://inmail24.com/Login.aspx :
"Each registered user gets a copy of Zoner Photo Studio 9 Classic. This application is a great way to get started in the world of digital photo-graphy. Learn more in the feature tour."
lloonn
Photo Pos Pro became a FREEWARE!
Another couple of interesting freebies to add to the list:
IMAGE TUNER
http://glorylogic.com/
MOBA PHOTO
http://mobaphoto-en.mobatek.net/
By the way, I popped for the full version of Lightbox...
...VERY nice. Can't wait for the new version to come out.
It's just my opinion, but I'm not really sure it should even be categorized as it is here. To me, it's almost more like a plug-in to a larger piece of software. I can imagine, for example, doing some basic manipulation of the photo in PaintShop Pro Photo X2 (or something else kinda' commercial and high-end), and then putting the finishing touches on it with Lightbox. It's very interesting, I'll say that. I'm glad I got it...
...though I emailed the maker about something (after purchase, which meant that I was a PAYING customer), and never heard back from him. That's disconcerting.
__________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
gregg [at] greggdeselms.com
Napa, California
About what i put with Vicman:WOT is stupid because after instal i make a scan of entire computer and i don't find malware.People who vote in wot have different interestig and not all ar good people,they can to be a busniss man and a free soft that was before comercial(good)to became now free is not good for bussines.Soo who are afraid to install a good post commercial soft,don't install it.You don't know what you lose.For what is antivirus?
Some things in life should not be decided by popular vote. That is just one of the nearly half-dozen reasons that I dislike WOT and prefer McAfee's SiteAdvisor.
But that's just me.
__________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
gregg [at] greggdeselms.com
Napa, California
Thank you for this amazing site. Very informative.
Hello everyone! I use Cylekx. http://www.cylekx.net - this is a really good free photo editor. It has many features and is a freeware application.
Picassa. Simple, effective, reliable, free.
HD2
What's wrong with Picassa?
For basic photo-retouching, including resizing and straightening, there's nothing better - waaaay better than PhotoShop!
It indexes all your photos too (I've 50,000, so I find that a great help!).
Some of the tools are useful for special occasions ('soft focus'), and, whilst the 'touch-up' tool is much less powerful than PS 'clone' tool, it works well enough for small blemishes.
It also has batch editing - vital if you have 500+ theatre shots that need colour-correction!
HD2
Yes Yes Yes! I know Picassa contains a good simple photo editor. But Picassa is not a photo editor. It is a Photo Organizer. It is already reviewed on this sight in that category, so no need to duplicate it here. See above under heading "Related links"
-Ritho
Editor
I must agree, For easy editing (and for me 99 % of my photos just need that). Red eye, crop, color adjust etc, Picasa does the job and is of course my photo album to (how convinient ;-). So here is another wote for it to go on top of the easy editing list =)
Here we can find a very powerfull free editor:
http://www.rw-designer.com/image-editor
There is a lot a free software at:
www[dot]vicman.net
Was commercial and now is free.
Edit: This site receives a warning from Web of Trust (WOT). Use at your own risk
Gizmo's
Is very good like an editor,free and simple.
About Picasa is the subject.
it's my decision to where i put my images not picasa.
I've found "Paint.NET Megalo Effects Plugin Pack - Over 385 Effects" and "Paint.NET Megalo FileType Plugin Pack - 48 FileTypes" for my favotite app - Paint.net. Just want to share it with you. Easy to install and easy to loose hours in trying all the effects and adjustements :)
This is really great, check it out:
http://paint.net.amihotornot.com.au/Download/PluginsPack/
Cheers, M.C.
Looking for a simple to use grahics editor that you can add drop shadows easily to photos? I just need to be able to resize, crop, and add drop shadows or maybe borders of some kind. What would you recommend?
Give FrameFun a try.
Which is best for working with raw images?
Thanks for the detailed reviews and comments feedback.
However, because of your interest in photography, this category is more "Best Free Photo Editor." I came looking to recommend a Digital Image Editing program to a friend of mine (I use Photoshop) but he wants to do graphics stuff like layered images (cover design) and web output. One can assume such functionality in the mid to advanced sections but you don't really cover that.
I appreciate that many people now seek such programs for photos, but they have a far broader use than that. Or at least, they might. It would greatly enhance the review if you touched on support for layers, vector (not raster) text, and web resolution output.
Thanks!
David
Hi there! What do U think about Icon studio on falcogames dot com?
Your opinion is interesting! )
What do you think here about TwistedBrush Open Studio
(http://www.pixarra.com/)? The feature set looks quite impressive - at least
at first sight.
I've just noticed it was mentioned on the
"Best Free Paint Program" Gizmo page.
Someone mentioned Cylekx so tried it and got my free key, awesome! not looking back now and will be happy to avoid ps in future, Jacky
I tried it and it does seem like a capable product but I believe it's meant for experienced users, it's a bit confusing for hobbyists imo especially with the awkward interface.
I'd like to suggest "StudioLine Photo Basic", it's the FREE version of their commercial "StudioLine Photo Classic", I'm not an expert but it looks like a decent program with interesting features if anyone would care to review it.
http://www.studioline.biz/EN/products/overview-photo-basic/default.htm
~Yaser
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