Editing Software

joel222

joel222

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Name
Lee
Edit My Images
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I currently have Gimp software for editing pics but i'm finding it very hard to use. Can someone recommend another program that is easier to use or should I just persevere with this?
 
If you want most of what Gimp offers, including selections, layers, masking, filters, and so on, then I recommend Photoshop Elements 10. It's a lot cheaper than the full-sized Photoshop and is more flexible than Gimp, and is currently marked down to £50 at Amazon.

If you're willing to give up selection, layers, masking, and filters, and process your photos using sliders for tone and colour, adjustment brushes, spot healing tool, gradient tool, etc, but don't want to pay a lot of money for Photoshop Lightroom then Cyberlink's PhotoDirector is a mirror image of Lightroom and is currently £48 down from £80.

There are lots of online photo editors that don't cost anything but you have to upload the photo to edit it and then download it again so you need a cheap, fast connection. One such is Adobe's Photoshop Express. A search for "online photo editing" should give good results.

There are also lots of other photo editors at various prices (starting at free) but Photoshop CS, Elements, and Lightroom are currently about the best you can get. You might like to check out Bibble for an editor that in many ways is similar to Lightroom but has a different design; and Picasa is a great way to process photos and do simple editing, though it's fairly limited.

Alternatively you could search for "Gimp tutorials". Gimp is an excellent program that just takes a bit of time to learn.
 
Plus 1 for elements :-)

What camera do you shoot with ? Canon supply software with their bodies which is well worth a look at
 
Thanks for the help. All I really want to do is put blank backgrounds on portrait photos and maybe take out certain things on landscape photos. I have a few wedding photos with gravestones in and i'd like to blank them out. I'm just using a samsung wb700 compact as i've just started out and to be honest havn't got a clue what i'm doing.:bang:
 
Most photo editing, such as changing the tonality, colour and contrast of an image, is fairly easy but it's when you want to put things in or take things out that it starts to become complicated, and this is why programs like Gimp and Photoshop were invented. And because it's complicated, at least to start with, there can be a steep learning curve.

The jobs you want to do sound simple when you put them in words, but take a lot of processing to carry them out. For example, to put a blank background on a portrait photo: what is a blank background? Is it black, white, or another colour? Or would it be better to replace the background with another, less complicated one? In any case, you'll need to tell the program what you want to keep, by selecting it, then either erase the background or replace it or fill it with a colour. And if you try to 'blank out' gravestones, you'll obviously need to replace them with something or leave holes in the picture.

So you'd need to get to grips with selections, layers, and masks. And you'd need Photoshop CS, Photoshop Elements, Gimp, or something very similar. CS costs at least £280 (from one cheap site - usually nearer £500), whereas Elements is currently £50 from Amazon, and Gimp is free.

My recommendation is that you check out these tutorial sites and also search for "Gimp" on YouTube:

http://www.gimpguru.org/Tutorials/
http://meetthegimp.org/
http://vntutor.blogspot.com/2007/08/10-gimp-video-lessons-online.html
http://www.unixmen.com/linux-tutorials/1583-30-great-tutorials-for-gimp
http://www.scottphotographics.com/40-best-gimp-tutorials-of-2010/
http://gug.sunsite.dk/?page=tutorials

You might also like to check out the online book, Grokking the Gimp, though it's for an old version, so you'd have to search the newer interface for the features you want.

But if you decide at any point to get more serious about photography, I'd say get Photoshop Elements while it's cheap. There are far more tutorials, many more users, and much more support.
 
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