When you purchased your first digital camera, you no doubt quickly learned the basics of photo editing such as:
* Cropping – the process of removing unwanted areas from a photo.
* Rotating and straightening – the ability to flip, rotate and straighten a photo that was taken at an odd angle.
* Red-eye removal – the ability to correct the eye color of a person or pet.
* Contrast and color enhancement – correcting for poor lighting or washed out color.
* Organize and rename – downloading your photos to your PC or Mac, then filing photos into folders and renaming important photos with meaningful names.
Basic digital-photo editing software is free and usually comes packaged with your camera. There are also some free basic programs available on the Web such as the popular and easy to use Picasa™ from Google, and Apple supplies iPhoto, the image manager, free for all Mac users. iPhoto has a basic image editor that provides cropping, scaling, rotating, brightness, red-eye removal, importing and exporting, and photo management. Although both iPhoto and Picasa are handy, helpful and nicely designed for basic operation, both are also too limiting for the digital photographer who is ready to move beyond this basic level of image editing.
For both Windows and the Mac, there is a free advanced photo-editing tool called GIMP. GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It's a freely distributed open-source software program for advanced editing tasks such as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. The website is not fancy, but it provides enough information to help you find your way to the user manual and the downloads. You should feel pretty confident about your computer skills in order to successfully work with GIMP. The menus in this application have icons that are somewhat intuitive, but you may want to print out the user manual in advance of starting to use this software.
For a more user-friendly software interface and support, the popular Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 5.0 is available for Windows at an affordable price. Some of the editing techniques you will be able to accomplish with this application are:
* Edit out flaws – edit away wrinkles and unwanted objects in your photos.
* Simulate painting – transform photos with paintbrush effects to simulate oils, watercolors, charcoals, pastels, and canvas textures.
* Fine-tune exposure – get the perfect exposure with adjustments that fine-tune color, brightness, and contrast.
* Adjustments – adjust the exposure of specific areas in your photos using professional darkroom tools like dodge, burn, and sponge.
* Combine photos – add ancestors to a family portrait, place yourself on top of Mt. Everest, or create other clever photo combinations.
* Add sound and animation to photos and more.
For the Mac user, Apple's iPhoto 6 is available for purchase. It has many of the same features and powerful advanced editing tools as Adobe's Elements, can manage up to 250,000 photos, and has other unique features such as photocasting, a clever ways to share photos with friends and family. Both Elements and iPhoto will let you create calendars, gift books and greeting cards from your best photos.
If you're ready to go beyond the basics in photo editing, there are several solutions for PC and Mac users that can fit your pocket book. The advanced editing tools in these applications, including the free open-source GIMP, will give you the power to combine, manage and share your photos like a professional as well as the opportunity to unleash your artistic side.
