Photo Editing Software

There's a growing variety of photo editing software available on the market today. How do you know whether you need one, which one is right for you, and what do you do with it?

A good friend of mine argues that the perfect photograph is one that requires absolutely no adjustments after the shutter is released. Another friend who is enrolled in a degreed photography program had an instructor who insisted all photos taken with digital cameras require sharpening. My own attitude toward using photo editing software is that your actions should enhance, but not significantly alter, the original image to achieve the desired result.

Sometimes this means a little cropping and increasing the contrast. Other times I may use the cloning or healing tool to remove a distracting element. And sometimes adjustments to the levels are required so the final image more closely resembles the colors I saw when I was taking the photograph.

Below are a just a few examples of photo editing software available. They basically can be divided into three categories: purchased software you install on your computer, freeware or shareware you install, and web-based programs where you upload your images and work on them in cyberspace.

Adobe Photoshop
The standard by which all photo editing software is measured. Photoshop comes with steep price tag (about $650), and probably has more features than you could ever imagine using, but you might find older versions at a deep discount, and know that it will meet all of your needs. So ubiquitous is this program, that it's become a verb ("yeah, that picture was Photoshopped.")

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Adobe Photoshop Elements
Sometimes called "Photoshop Lite" because it contains a fraction of the functionality of the full version, Elements probably has all the features you'll ever need at a greatly reduced price (about $100).

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
As a photo editor, Lightroom offers less functionality than Photoshop, but it is very useful for organizing your photos. Professional photographers like it for the ability to handle a large volume of photographs. The price point is between Elements and Photoshop (about $275).

ArcSoft PhotoStudio
The first image editor I used was PhotoStudio, because it came with an HP computer I bought. It met most of my needs and was very easy to use. Ten years later, their newest version ($80) has a host of features and can handle workflow too.

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Corel PaintShop Photo Express
PaintShop Photo Express is popular with many photographers because it has a small price tag (about $40), yet contains all the features most photo editors will need.

Corel PaintShop Photo Pro
PaintShop Photo Pro is Corel's full-featured product. At $100, it's more than their Photo Express, but less than Adobe's Photohop. The new version handles RAW images, creates HD slideshows, and more.

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Google Picasa
When first released, Picasa was merely an organizer. The new version contains the editing functions most commonly used by photographers. Oh, and it's free. If I'm using someone else's computer to edit my photos, I'll often download Picasa for them. One thing I really like about it is how well it handles importing and workflow. Editing a photo in the same program that you use to view them is much simpler than viewing them in Explorer and making notes of which ones to open in a photo-editor.

GIMP
GNU Image Manipulation Program is another free program. I recently tried using it to edit a dozen or so photos and found that it had more functionality than other free programs, but was a little more difficult to use. If you're familiar with Photoshop, then you'll recognize many of the tools and terms, but will need to access the easy-to-use help feature to learn how they work in GIMP.

PhotoScape
Another free photo editing program, PhotoScape also has batch processing features popular with photographers shooting many images. Download Photoscape.

Picnik
A web-based photo editing tool, Picnik has both free and premium versions. One advantage of Picnik is that you can edit photos already uploaded to many photo-sharing sites (e.g. flickr, photobucket, webshots), while the biggest downside is that they resize all images to improve the site's performance. Try Picnik.

FotoFlexer
Another web-based photo editing tool. I tried this one and found it very easy and versatile. It also works with both uploaded photos as well as photos already on the web. Try FotoFlexer.

Browse some Photoshop tutorials I put together for you

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