What photo editing SW?

So, SWMBO wants a decent photo editing software for Christmas. Photoshop is a little on the spendy side. What are some good alternatives....for beginners?

Thanks, David

adobe PS elements will have about everything she could want as far as editing...

$50 if either of you are a student (or know someone who is ;-) $99 for full normal version... it's easy to use and does A LOT

lightroom is nice to have and does most things a basic photo editor would want and is much more streamlined for photo editing... but I'd prob stick to elements

if you want even cheaper then check out GIMP... it's FREE ;-) pretty much anything you can do with PS you can do with gimp... just need to figure out how

heck I use googles picasa for the very very basic... it's free but it is simple and does basic stuff and reads RAW without an issue

Pictures?

berkeleying LightRoom. End of discussion.

What sort of work does she plan to do?

I've been using Photoshop since... version 2.5 I want to say :) It's gone well beyond what most people need. Elements is surprisingly robust and doesn't feel at all neutered. But I've been playing with Aperture recently (I believe it's even cheaper than Elements). What I really like is it isn't really a pixel editor, it's more of a "whole image" editor. A lot of what I want in an editor is: take the camera image, tweak contrast/exposure a bit, maybe play with a color channel or two, and boom, move on to the next shot. Easy as pie.

Does she want to airbrush the zits off a teenager (Photoshop Elements) or just take a vacation snapshot and really make it pop (Aperture)?

If your wanting to go freebee try GIMP

I just got Elements 10 for $50 off Amazon and so far it looks like I won't be missing too many features of my regular "old" Photoshop - I've got a Windows-only PS CS2, but I'm mostly using Mac OS X these days for my personal computing.

What operating system do you have? If you have XP, I have a legitimate copy of Photoshop CS2 Student that you're more than welcome to have for the price of shipping. I now run Windows7, which doesn't run CS2.

Google has Picnik for free. No experience, but the price is attractive.

Gimp can be skinned to look like photoshop & several PS can be used as well.

http://gimpshop.com/ (skinned gimp)

gimp.org (official)

I'm a big fan of GIMP for my photo-editing needs, but I'm just a hobby photographer.

I've never really understood why so many people pirate photoshop when GIMP is out there and legally free.

Not implying that this thread was in any way talking about software piracy, it's just an observation I have from my many years on the interwebs.

Shell probably be cropping snap shots and removing red eye. Nor sure what she might do beyond that. We just git her a new HP laptop with Widows 7 Home. While she works with computers daily, she isn't very confident with new applications. So, easy to use is a must. So far, PS Elements seems like a good choice.

Thanks.

BTW, amazon.com is still showing PS Elements 10 for $50. Just sayin'.

Osterkraut wrote: Pictures? berkeleying LightRoom. End of discussion.

berkeley yeah, I rarely use anything else, lightroom ftw.

ReverendDexter wrote: I've never really understood why so many people pirate photoshop when GIMP is out there and *legally* free.

Generally speaking: many of us got hooked on PS or its lighter variants before it became morbidly expensive. And the Gimp is not photoshop. The paths to tools, usage scenarios, etc are not (or at least when I tried it, were not) anywhere close to the same. The sort of re-learning curve that makes doing things frustratingly difficult for someone who "knows what they're doing".

Elements is a good step in the right direction for Adobe: a non-braindead version of Photoshop that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, yet offers everything a non-professional needs. Probably a good bet here.

e_pie wrote:

Osterkraut wrote: Pictures? berkeleying LightRoom. End of discussion.

berkeley yeah, I rarely use anything else, lightroom ftw.

I'll say it: If any one who just needs a program to do photo touchups pays money for anything but LightRoom, they're retarded.

There's an online Photoshop site that's absolutely free. I use it to upload photos into a gallery and add metafiles that are needed by one of my outlets. But - there's a host of editing tools in the gallery... and it's free.

http://www.photoshop.com/tools/organizer?wf=uploader

In reply to MitchellC:

Re: the CS2, I have sent a PM

Aperture & Lightroom aren't really "photo editing tools", they're "workflow" tools. They're designed to solve the problem of a photographer who arrives home with a couple thousand images on his flash cards, and wants to cull out the best hundred or so and apply some fairly simple processing to them (exposure, levels, noise reduction, white balance, crop, etc). They're also optimized for managing and organizing large photo databases.

A photo editor like PS or Gimp, on the other hand, is intended for more in-depth editing of a single photo at a time. It'll do all of the edits that Aperture/LR will, plus a whole bunch more, but it's going to be a lot more time-intensive to try to use it to do simple stuff to a big pile of images.

The two complement each other.

SillyImportRacer wrote: Shell probably be cropping snap shots and removing red eye. Nor sure what she might do beyond that. We just git her a new HP laptop with Widows 7 Home. While she works with computers daily, she isn't very confident with new applications. So, easy to use is a must. So far, PS Elements seems like a good choice. Thanks.

if that is really all she needs to do then picasa is great (and free) http://picasa.google.com/ if you want to do a little more intense work click on the "PICNIK" and it will do some very good basic photo editing all from directly online

honestly I really like picasa... it has a nice face recognition feature so with a little work you can sort photos that way if you'd like... and then 1 click upload online.... it's dead easy to use... I still use it even though i've got elements and lightroom on my computer... I really need to spend more time with lightroom but thanks to picasa i'm lazy lol