What is the Best Software for Fixing Pictures?

Marty Fremen wrote:
Barry Goodthrall wrote:

What is the best software to quickly fix photos.

Before rushing to say Photoshop, while I agree for more complex
digital photo manipulation it can't be beat, I want something that
does common corrections the average novice often needs, such as red
eye, bluring , dust removal, lighting adjustments, etc quickly.
Ideally what program has the best "one step fix" function?


Irfanview will do red-eye, blurring/sharpening, and has an auto-levels
control which in one click will try to optimise the
brightness/contrast/colour, however this somewhat hit and miss, sometimes
it's great, sometimes goes too far, and sometimes not far enough. Usually
worth trying though since you can always undo the result and fix the shot
manually.

Dust removal is a much trickier thing as it needs some intelligence on the
part of the software. Polaroid did a free dust & scratches removal program
which can be used by itself or as a plugin from within photoshop. It
highlights what it thinks is dust and lets you deselect the stuff it got
wrong before fixing the image. That's about as good as it gets I think
unless you have a scanner with an infra red channel. Unfortunately I don't
have a specific URL for the program but their site is
http://www.polaroid.com and the program is also known as PDSR.

The best software for photography is the one that you will use. That's
an over simplified answer.

If you do not currently not using any software, then I would suggest
Photoshop Elements. The reason being, if you turn Pro, you will want to
switch to Photoshop CS3. The learning curve will be shorter in this
scenario. Otherwise find a program that corrects the problems that
occur in your photographs...red-eye, color correction, etc.

I hope that this helps.

This could get to be a long news thread.

Michael