You may have heard others talking about how with photo-editing software you can enhance family photos and create images like a professional photographer. But maybe you haven't taken the plunge yet because it sounded expensive and complicated. Well the good news is that you can experiment with photo editors without spending a fortune on software and explore the options you'd like to have in such a package before you buy one. That's because a wide variety of photo-editing software is available at the amazingly low price of - FREE. To be sure, with the free programs you won't get the fantastic array of options you'll find in (very EXPENSIVE) Adobe's PhotoShop for example, but you'll certainly have enough to generate clear and even exciting images.
So what can this free stuff do? With these programs you can fix up a photograph so that it will be perfect for your holiday cards, develop a slide presentation packed with dynamic digital images for your next family get together or your child's school report, create unique artistic designs, publish your own books, make photo-calendars, and get your imagination going with a plethora of digital options. Be warned, however, that not all free photo-editing software has all of these options. You may have to try a few different programs to get the options you are looking for ... but then that's what FREE is all about.
These free programs seem to come in two varieties: very basic or loads of editing and design options. If, after trying them, you find that these programs won't work for you, take a look at a more robust program such as Adobe's PhotoShop Elements for Windows or PhotoShop Elements for Mac. These programs generally cost less than $100 and are quite similar to the powerhouse photo-editor, Photoshop. Some of the for-purchase programs such as PhotoShop Elements for Windows include a 30-day try out period during which you can test the software.
Free Photo-Editing Software for Windows Users
Let's suppose you want to create an online slideshow featuring a family vacation. When you look at your photos on your computer, you see that several are overexposed, some are sideways (because you held the camera that way), and very few of them look centered. All of which are a great excuse to look into a photo editor.
What to try first? Take a look at a downloadable software package such as Picasa, a free photo-editor for Windows 2000/XP that is available from Google. Besides giving you options to find, rename, and organize your pictures, Picasa lets you do basic fixes such as cropping, straightening, doing away with red eye and adjusting brightness and contrast. You can quickly tune up your photos and give them a new life with a number of special effects.
You can even add captions to each shot explaining what is happening and who is in the photograph. Still in Picasa, you can arrange your photos into a slideshow ready to show to everyone in the family. Try loading them onto a flash drive. When you go to visit your relatives, you'll have the flash drive ready to plug into their family computer just in case anyone wants to see your vacation photos.
Picasa is just one of the free photo-editing programs for Windows computers. Here's a list of other free software you may want to try. Be sure to check to see if the software will work with your version of Windows.
Free Photo-Editing Software For Mac Users
You shouldn't be disappointed that you don't see a long list of free photo-editing software for your Mac. That's because Macs come loaded with iPhoto, a program that has just about everything you need for photo editing. With it you can crop, resize, enhance, prepare photos for publishing in books, make slideshows, and store and organize your photo collections.
If your computer is running OSX 10.4 or later, you'll want to head to BeLight Software and download Image Tricks. It's free, unless you opt for the Pro-Version, which will cost you $9.95. You are probably thinking that this program can't possibly do much. After all, you get what you pay for. Right? Not in this case. It's one of the best, if not the best, of the free photo-editing products.
and download . It's free, unless you opt for the Pro-Version, which will cost you $9.95. You are probably thinking that this program can't possibly do much. After all, you get what you pay for. Right? Not in this case. It's one of the best, if not the best, of the free photo-editing products.
Just open one of your photos in the program, and you are ready to begin. There's no learning curve even if you don't consider yourself a computer whiz. Your photo can be from one of twenty different image formats such as JPEG, TIFF, GIF, or PDF, so just about any type of digital photo should work. Once your photo is on the screen, you can do the usual photo-editing tricks such as crop, rotate, enhance, and size. If you want to create special effects with your photo, there are about fifty different filters including color, style, focus, distortion, halftone, tile, overlap, and lighting options.
Let's suppose you've got this great photo of your new baby. The problem is that it's way too dark to use. Just open the photo in Image Tricks, select Filters, and choose Color Control to adjust the brightness, contrast, and saturation. Experiment with Exposure Adjust and Gamma Adjust to see if either of these work for you. You'll probably be tempted to roam through all of the Filters just to see what they'll do. You can twirl and blur and do all sorts of tricks with your photos. It's addictive.
With Image Tricks you can also generate your own designs. The designs are created using mathematical algorithms, which may impress your children if you can explain how you've completed your creations. Click on Generators to find lots of styles to choose from. You can create unbelievable designs using the lines, shapes, colors, distortions, and adjustments in the Generation section.
Image Tricks is a perfect complement to iPhoto, for while iPhoto helps you store and organize your photos, do basic editing, and the creating of slideshows and books, it doesn't have the filtering and generating options available in Image Tricks. So if you put the two together, you'll be ready for unbelievable photo wizardry.
For Windows & Mac Users
Snipshot might be called a "back-to-basics" photo editor, for it includes just a few options-the ones most amateur photographers use anyway. To try it out, go to the site and import a photo from your computer or a Website. Once you see your photo, you can crop, rotate, and resize, and save as a GIF, JPG, PDF, PNG, or TIF. Snipshot is a handy online tool for those of us who don't need more advanced editing features.
You may want to consider the free photo-editing program called The Gimp. It works on Linux, Windows, and Macintosh systems and offers a host of options to enhance your images. Although reviews of The Gimp praise the options provided, they mention that it is not for beginners and that it can be confusing to use. Mac users will need to install X11 (a special option on Mac OSX system disks) on their computers before they can use The Gimp.
