What's the best photo editor for non-professional?

I'd like to start learning how to do some basic photo editing.

A friend of mine who does a lot of digital photography has Photoshop.
I go to him from time to time to get a photo fixed or get a special
print. He suggested I get a copy of Photoshop Elements. He has the
complete Photoshop product, but says that Elements is all I am likely
to need.

Since I've never used any of these products, I don't really know what
I will use them for, but I some of the things I think I might want to
do include red eye, color enhancement, contrast control, scaling and
cropping, etc.

If I get any good at it, I might like to make Christmas cards or even
prepare a photo for framing.

I saw a collage of digital photos that were fit into the letters of a
name. The letters were make very large and overlapped some and the
photos were scattered inside. Nice effect. I might like to do
something like that.

I've done quite a bit of work with Visio. Mostly for software
flowcharts, but some simple graphics work.

I see that Elements is available for $80 from Amazon. This seems like
a good way to start. If I really get into it, I can always uprade to
Photoshop.

Any better suggestions?

I also see that there is something called Premiere Elements, which
appears to do some kind of add-on to Elements. The pair are $115.

Is this something I should get now?

Thanks for any insight.

In article , Square Peg wrote:
I'd like to start learning how to do some basic photo editing.

A friend of mine who does a lot of digital photography has Photoshop.
I go to him from time to time to get a photo fixed or get a special
print. He suggested I get a copy of Photoshop Elements. He has the
complete Photoshop product, but says that Elements is all I am likely
to need.

Since I've never used any of these products, I don't really know what
I will use them for, but I some of the things I think I might want to
do include red eye, color enhancement, contrast control, scaling and
cropping, etc.

If I get any good at it, I might like to make Christmas cards or even
prepare a photo for framing.

I saw a collage of digital photos that were fit into the letters of a
name. The letters were make very large and overlapped some and the
photos were scattered inside. Nice effect. I might like to do
something like that.


I have used Ulead Photo impact for this. I have been using an old version
of that for a long time. My version does not work well with newer
opperating systems, but I'm sure the current version will work.
Off and on I have used some version of Photoshop. I would say
its much more intuative than orginnaly. I still had to search on how to rotate view.
They make it confusing, like you have to go to rotate CANVASS instead.

I orginally used Photo Magic from Micrographix and they
still have products you could use.

Try some of the free downloads for testing products.

greg


I've done quite a bit of work with Visio. Mostly for software
flowcharts, but some simple graphics work.

I see that Elements is available for $80 from Amazon. This seems like
a good way to start. If I really get into it, I can always uprade to
Photoshop.

Any better suggestions?

I also see that there is something called Premiere Elements, which
appears to do some kind of add-on to Elements. The pair are $115.

Is this something I should get now?

Thanks for any insight.

On Mon, 12 Jan 2009 08:32:47 -0800, Square Peg
wrote:

I'd like to start learning how to do some basic photo editing.

A friend of mine who does a lot of digital photography has Photoshop.
I go to him from time to time to get a photo fixed or get a special
print. He suggested I get a copy of Photoshop Elements. He has the
complete Photoshop product, but says that Elements is all I am likely
to need.

Probably true. Why not just go the Adobe website and download the
free trial of Elements? http://www.adobe.com/downloads/ (use "Try")

You'll be trying Elements 7.0, the newest version, but you will
probably be satisfied buying Elements 5.0 or 6.0. Either offers a
good basic package for a newcomer, and they are available for less
money.


Since I've never used any of these products, I don't really know what
I will use them for, but I some of the things I think I might want to
do include red eye, color enhancement, contrast control, scaling and
cropping, etc.

If I get any good at it, I might like to make Christmas cards or even
prepare a photo for framing.

Dead easy with Elements.

I saw a collage of digital photos that were fit into the letters of a
name. The letters were make very large and overlapped some and the
photos were scattered inside. Nice effect. I might like to do
something like that.

I've done quite a bit of work with Visio. Mostly for software
flowcharts, but some simple graphics work.

I see that Elements is available for $80 from Amazon. This seems like
a good way to start. If I really get into it, I can always uprade to
Photoshop.

Any better suggestions?

I also see that there is something called Premiere Elements, which
appears to do some kind of add-on to Elements. The pair are $115.

Premiere is used to edit movies. Jeez...Google and read about it.



--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida

Square Peg wrote:
I'd like to start learning how to do some basic photo editing.

A friend of mine who does a lot of digital photography has Photoshop.
I go to him from time to time to get a photo fixed or get a special
print. He suggested I get a copy of Photoshop Elements. He has the
complete Photoshop product, but says that Elements is all I am likely
to need.

Since I've never used any of these products, I don't really know what
I will use them for, but I some of the things I think I might want to
do include red eye, color enhancement, contrast control, scaling and
cropping, etc.

If I get any good at it, I might like to make Christmas cards or even
prepare a photo for framing.

I saw a collage of digital photos that were fit into the letters of a
name. The letters were make very large and overlapped some and the
photos were scattered inside. Nice effect. I might like to do
something like that.

I've done quite a bit of work with Visio. Mostly for software
flowcharts, but some simple graphics work.

I see that Elements is available for $80 from Amazon. This seems like
a good way to start. If I really get into it, I can always uprade to
Photoshop.

Any better suggestions?

I also see that there is something called Premiere Elements, which
appears to do some kind of add-on to Elements. The pair are $115.

Is this something I should get now?

Thanks for any insight.

I've gone this route myself. First forget the full version of PhotoShop,
it's terribly expensive and while it's needed by professionals the
features they need aren't what you would ever need plus there's a
learning curve. That statement will evince a rash of responses, polite
or otherwise, but I stand by what I said.
There are at least three very capable photo editors that will satisfy
your needs and basically all do the same type of thing but in different
ways. They are PhotoPlus, Paint Shop Pro and PS Elements. I've tried all
three but not the latest versions.
Here's the rub, while as I said all are good and adequate, due to the
wide use of the full PhotoShop product there are more books, web
tutorials, Popular Photography Tips etc. for PhotoShop and Elements than
you'll ever be able to digest, contrasted with a distinct lack of same
for the other candidates. Most of the time, a photo tip for the full PS
will work with Elements. I've just picked up Elements 6 for $28 from
Price Grabber. It's an OEM version but comes with a product key. I quite
like it, but it is a bit slower to launch than the others and is slow to
load an image compared with others, but this is the one I would
recommend. I believe the latest version 7 does more for cards then my
version 6 but a dedicated program for greeting cards is better if you
want to do a lot of this type of thing.
For your case there is another plus, you can load your saved PSD images
in your friend's PS and the other way round (with limitations). The only
thing lacking in Elements but available in the others is a dedicated
mask capability. However, there are tricks to overcome some of this.
Note: there are a lot of freeware and shareware packages that will do a
good job of basic editing needs, but for advanced operations you need
layers and masks extraction tools etc.
Dave Cohen

In article , wrote:
The bad news is, there are literally dozens out there, and the best way
for you to determine which works best FOR YOU is to try them yourself.
Others can expound on what THEY like about their favorite programs, or
regurgitate the marketing spiels until they're blue in the face, but
ultimately you need to decide for yourself, the one that suits YOUR needs.

The good news is that a lot of them are free, and the ones that aren't,
are generally inexpensive, and all have free demos available, so it
won't cost you anything but time and disk space to test them.

Others have suggested Elements, which is a good program, but I
personally didn't like its workflow. For more advanced editing, I've
used Paint Shop Pro for years (originally made by Jasc, now owned by
Corel), and really like it. A free demo version is available from
www.corel.com

For probably 95% of my editing, tweaking, organizing and uploading,
though, I find Google's free Picasa to be sufficient, quick, and easy to
use. I'm particularly a fan of its integration with their (also free)
Picasa Photo Web online albums, and a handy plugin for uploading to my
Facebook albums.

As a quick photo viewer, I use Irfanview (it's set as the default viewer
on my systems). It has excellent batch and scripting functions and does
a lot of basic editing as well.

I have used Acdsee for ages. Its an older version. It does not rotate
pictures at all. I sometimes need 1 degree or less rotation. Its
still my prime tool for image modification, and what could better
in a browser ?

I used to have an old version of Paint Shop Pro in shareware form.
It had a screenshot capture feature I used. Now I use Screenshot Captor.
I used Ulead photo Impact for a long time with little need for anything else, except
it would not do GIF.

First I used Photo Magic then MicroGraphix Picture Publisher.

Go to a school and get software at discount or free.

greg


greg

On Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:57:20 -0800, Matt Ion
wrote Re What's the best photo editor for non-professional?:

Others have suggested Elements, which is a good program, but I
personally didn't like its workflow. For more advanced editing, I've
used Paint Shop Pro for years (originally made by Jasc, now owned by
Corel), and really like it. A free demo version is available from
www.corel.com

Ditto on PSP.

In article , wrote:
On Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:57:20 -0800, Matt Ion
wrote Re What's the best photo editor for non-professional?:

Others have suggested Elements, which is a good program, but I
personally didn't like its workflow. For more advanced editing, I've
used Paint Shop Pro for years (originally made by Jasc, now owned by
Corel), and really like it. A free demo version is available from
www.corel.com

Ditto on PSP.

I just noticed PhotoImpact is now a Corel product.

greg

I'd like to start learning how to do some basic photo editing.

A friend of mine who does a lot of digital photography has Photoshop.

If you think you might eventually need photoshop, then starting with
photoshop elements is not a bad idea.

If not, then try the free ones first.

paint.net is pretty simple and free. Too simple maybe.

GIMP is free and pretty full-featured. But it is harder to use than
photoshop -- at least for me.

GregS wrote:

I have used Ulead Photo impact for this. I have been using an old version
of that for a long time. My version does not work well with newer
opperating systems, but I'm sure the current version will work. Off and on
I have used some version of Photoshop. I would say its much more intuative
than orginnaly. I still had to search on how to rotate view. They make it
confusing, like you have to go to rotate CANVASS instead.

That seems intuitive -- changing your view of an object and changing the
object are not the same. If I tilt my head and look at my desk, nothing
slides off it.

I used PSP for a few years, when I was doing Windows. I think it was
pretty good.

For the last several years I've been using The GIMP.


--
Blinky
Killing all posts from Google Groups -
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org

GregS wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
The bad news is, there are literally dozens out there, and the best
way for you to determine which works best FOR YOU is to try them
yourself. Others can expound on what THEY like about their favorite
programs, or regurgitate the marketing spiels until they're blue in
the face, but ultimately you need to decide for yourself, the one
that suits YOUR needs.

The good news is that a lot of them are free, and the ones that
aren't, are generally inexpensive, and all have free demos
available, so it
won't cost you anything but time and disk space to test them.

Others have suggested Elements, which is a good program, but I
personally didn't like its workflow. For more advanced editing,
I've
used Paint Shop Pro for years (originally made by Jasc, now owned
by
Corel), and really like it. A free demo version is available from
www.corel.com

For probably 95% of my editing, tweaking, organizing and uploading,
though, I find Google's free Picasa to be sufficient, quick, and
easy to use. I'm particularly a fan of its integration with their
(also free) Picasa Photo Web online albums, and a handy plugin for
uploading to my Facebook albums.

As a quick photo viewer, I use Irfanview (it's set as the default
viewer on my systems). It has excellent batch and scripting
functions and does a lot of basic editing as well.

I have used Acdsee for ages. Its an older version. It does not
rotate
pictures at all. I sometimes need 1 degree or less rotation. Its
still my prime tool for image modification, and what could better
in a browser ?

I used to have an old version of Paint Shop Pro in shareware form.
It had a screenshot capture feature I used. Now I use Screenshot
Captor.
I used Ulead photo Impact for a long time with little need for
anything else, except
it would not do GIF.

First I used Photo Magic then MicroGraphix Picture Publisher.

Go to a school and get software at discount or free.

Do you know of a school that will sell Adobe software to non-students
at the student price?


--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)