Randy Cornelius Report post Posted February 1, 2008 I have been looking at buying Photo Shop to help me work with my digital photos. That seems to be the program most talk about when they want to reduce the file size, crop, change or work with photos. I have a photo program that came with my computer but it does not let me reduce the file size. I try to set my camera to take reduced file size when I know that I may email or download to my website but sometimes I forget then I have a time trying to figure it out or just retake the photo. Photo Shop is about 80.00 and the price is not that expensive for me but I thought I would ask if there is another program out there that is better, cheeper or free. Thanks Randy Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Beaverslayer Report post Posted February 1, 2008 Randy, this little program is free and it works real well, there are lots of us here on the forum that use it. Maybe try it and see if you like it and you can save 80 bucks. infraview Ken Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rdb Report post Posted February 1, 2008 Most of us do use irfanview (check your spelling beaverslayer...lol), it's a goldilocks app...just right The simplest app is from MS: image resizer, found on this page. It gives a choice with a right click on a pic to resize from small to large. For quickies, this isn't too bad... http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloa...ppowertoys.mspx For a free equivalent of photoshop, download gimp (do a google). For most people this is a darn good freebie. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Kevin King Report post Posted February 1, 2008 Photo Shop is about 80.00 and the price is not that expensive for me but I thought I would ask if there is another program out there that is better, cheeper or free. Thanks Randy If you can get photoshop for $80. Buy it. Which version? Is it new? Thats a very good price for photoshop. KK Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Art Report post Posted February 1, 2008 Hi Randy, If you can get Photoshop for $80 definitely get it, I think that is cheaper than the academic price. There is another program called Gimp which is a very good and very free editor. It has a fairly steep learning curve, but Photoshop is not the easiest thing to learn either. Photoshop has become the standard of the art industry along with Illustrator (they run well on Mac and Intel) so you can't go wrong there. If you want to try Gimp, look here. http://www.gimp.org/windows/ Art I have been looking at buying Photo Shop to help me work with my digital photos. That seems to be the program most talk about when they want to reduce the file size, crop, change or work with photos. I have a photo program that came with my computer but it does not let me reduce the file size. I try to set my camera to take reduced file size when I know that I may email or download to my website but sometimes I forget then I have a time trying to figure it out or just retake the photo. Photo Shop is about 80.00 and the price is not that expensive for me but I thought I would ask if there is another program out there that is better, cheeper or free. Thanks Randy Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
TomSwede Report post Posted February 1, 2008 Hello Randy! When you say Photoshop I'm thinking PHOTOSHOP and that's way expensive for just some casual photography touch up's and managing. If you really desire that program you can buy an older version second hand (the license is important) and later on use that license to buy a newer version with some nice discount. However there is another option and that is Photoshop elements and tha'ts a pricey proggie with lots of sharp functions from the bigger brother. I got my element's bundled with a flatbed scanner. It has that nice little file saving function that is called "save for web" wich drops the 32kb exif file and let's you control the compression with a slider and you do get to see the actual result as you make the adjustments. I love that function but I don't know how other proggies perform on this. I use the big brother PS and don't really feel the need for another program except for when extracting jpeg's or TIFs from the RAW files. And remember always do your adjustments on copies from the original files and have backups aswell. Tom Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JustWakinUp Report post Posted February 1, 2008 The only program that comes close to the full potential of Photoshop is GIMP. It's free but the learning curve is a tad steep as well as with Photoshop. If you're just wanting to resize images and nothing else than any of the programs mentioned in this thread will suit your needs. Photoshop $80.00 , I'd check into the vendor before I bought that one. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rharris Report post Posted February 1, 2008 Paint.net is another free program. I use it and also Microsoft Picture It. The paint.net will take a photo and make a pencil sketch to use as a pattern. It will do a lot of stuff that I haven't figured out yet. RussH Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bcurrier Report post Posted February 1, 2008 It's probably Photoshop Elements, which lists for about $100 and retails variously from $60-90 or so, depending on the deal of the moment. Full-blown Photoshop (CS3) is mucho $$$$$ - starts at $1,100 list and goes up dramatically from there. Bill Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mikeymoto Report post Posted February 1, 2008 I used the GIMP for years before touching Photoshop. Nowadays I have GIMP installed, and Photoshop. I do light retouching with Lightroom, and only whip out Photoshop if I'm doing extensive retouching or creative modifications. For simply resizing photos you can't go wrong with the GIMP. I have heard good things about irfanview, but have not used it myself. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jordan Report post Posted February 1, 2008 Not sure on price but Paint Shop Pro (win) is a program I used alot and it does all kinds of stuff not just photos. Irfanview (win) is one of the greatest free programs out there for what it does, view resize etc. not much in custom retouching but does have alot of effects. it is quick and easy. Gimp (linux) is what I am trying now because it is free and I switched from Windows $$$ to Ubuntu Linux 0.00 about a year ago. Got to love the free stuff, had to comit to learning new ways but so far is worth the price (couple of books like Ubuntu for non-geeks) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
TwinOaks Report post Posted February 18, 2008 For a lot of photos that I've uploaded to boards like this, I use photobucket.com. It allows the user to link to the image hosting site instead of uploading the file to the message board itself. I know that isn't an issue here, at the moment, but if you're posting to other boards, you may face restrictions there. Photobucket basic membership is free, and does include a resizing function. There are presets available for point and click interface- one of them is "message board- 800x600". A few of the first items I posted here were just hot links to photobucket. There's quite a few of them online, but this is the one I'm most familiar with. As far as programs, if'n you're getting Photoshop in a full and current version for $80 USD, then you're getting scammed, or you're buying a pirate version, possibly both. I'll let your morals decide on that. I use MS Digital Image Suite for a lot of my editing work. It's great if you're working with an exisiting image, like a photo, or a scanned/downloaded image, but I find it a little weak in the creative side of things. Of course, that could just be that I haven't found out how to do it yet. Gimp. Lordy what a program. I'm still low on the learning curve with this program, but since I've set up the laptop for dual boot -Windoze and PCLinux, I figured I need to learn it. So far, it seems every bit as capable as what I have, and the reports that it rivals photoshop don't seem to be unwarranted. Good luck choosing a program, Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Johanna Report post Posted February 18, 2008 Just so everyone knows, Photobucket is fine, but you don't need to complicate your life with it, unless you want to. After the board crash, we made some administrative changes that will allow us all to upload as many pics and files as we want, a theoretical "no-limit" for this site. We figured since we're here to stay, we'd need it. I've not used GIMP, but it has a great reputation. I'm an Irfanview user. I have PhotoShop, too, but Irfanview is more "user-friendly", in my humble opinion. YMMV Johanna Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
8thsinner Report post Posted September 24, 2008 I have been using photoshop since version 3, all the way upto CS3, it's a fantastic program for serious heavy duty photo touching, schematics, art or what ever you want it to be, but it is very costly. I have started an addictive like behaviour with portable apps using an archos as a drive and I have installed gimp in that because it's free and portable. To be honest they are both high end programs. irfan too is a great and small program which sounds like it would suit your needs, but I would recommend trying to learn to use gimp also. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
howardb Report post Posted October 1, 2008 Randy, I've used irfanview for years and it's perfect for doing resizing, cropping, color adjustments, sharpening, lightening, etc. All the tools apply to the whole image. Irfanview does not do any pixel by pixel adjustments - for that you need something different. I have also tried Photoshop and could never quite figure it out. My photo magazines have articles every month telling me how to fix things in photoshop. The more I read, the less I want photoshop and the more I want to take the pictures right the first time... I'd save the $100 if it were me. Ask Riley how many bales of hay that is... Brent Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Roger Report post Posted October 1, 2008 i use picasa for a photo album and basic editing and resizing. it's free from google. been using it for quite some time and see they have a new beta version out http://picasa.google.com/#utm_source=en-al...p;utm_medium=et Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gunfighter48 Report post Posted October 9, 2008 Photoshop Elements 6 is about $80, Elements is a stripped down version of the full Photoshop program. But many of us find Elements is all we really need. Photoshop CS 3 or 4 is somewhere around $600. Paint.net is free and works on Windows computers, it uses Microsoft Framework. It does a great job of resizing photos along with simpler editing tasks. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bree Report post Posted October 10, 2008 I use Photoshop CS3 and have used Photoshop since version 2 back in about 1993. I can tell you that Infraview or the freebie image editors are definitely NOT Photoshop or in any way equivalent. Photoshop is a high power, image editor. It blows away any and all of the cheap programs. There is really no comparison. Of course, if you don't need that kind of power then you can get away tweaking photos with something inexpensive. But don't make the mistake of thinking that because you can do some resizing, transforms, or apply a few filters that you have a Photoshop equivalent. That just isn't true. If you can afford a copy of Photoshop... get it... you will never be sorry. It is one of the greatest pieces of software ever invented. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BigAlC Report post Posted October 10, 2008 Hi This will be a topic that will be a tumbleweed; rollin' along forever and never reaching a destination. I love CS3. I have used many other bits of software for image processing but I always end up back with CS3. It does me for everyday small adjustments but when I need to push things a bit more - it is ready and waiting. I took a very ordinary photo of a Hustler at the Pima Air Museum, messed a bit and out came :- PHOTO1 At our county show in the photo section there was a catagory for snapshots. I could not resist entering Photo 2 If you can manage the price, go for CS3 even if this means spending less on the camera Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
eirenealetheia Report post Posted November 28, 2008 (edited) If you want a program that's free and *apparently* as good as Adobe Photoshop, you could always try Gimp: http://www.gimp.org/ I have friends that use it and seem to be able to alter images pretty much with equal quality to what you can achieve in photoshop. I personally use photoshop and love it... To be honest, though, if you're only wanting to resize images and that's pretty much it, like people have mentioned you can do that with Photobucket or other image hosting sites such as Tinypic (http://www.tinypic.com/) or ImageShack (http://www.imageshack.us/). I've used them on the odd occasion I've simply wanted to quickly resize an image for posting and haven't wanted to retouch, etc. Edited November 28, 2008 by eirenealetheia Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wadeh Report post Posted January 29, 2009 I realize that this thread is about a year old but the program irfanview is not free anymore or at least when I went to the link it wanted to charge me to download the program. Not that is was real expensive, just wanted to let people that I could not get it free. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rdb Report post Posted January 29, 2009 it's still free...you must have landed on one of those scam pages or something... http://www.download.com/IrfanView/3000-219...cdlPid=10993915 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dags3777 Report post Posted January 30, 2009 it's still free...you must have landed on one of those scam pages or something...http://www.download.com/IrfanView/3000-219...cdlPid=10993915 Thanks for that link, I must of also followed the mastercard road. Darryl Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rdb Report post Posted January 30, 2009 Glad to help. Don't forget to add in all the plugins !! http://www.irfanview.com/plugins.htm Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BobHall Report post Posted February 10, 2009 I have been looking at buying Photo Shop to help me work with my digital photos. That seems to be the program most talk about when they want to reduce the file size, crop, change or work with photos. I have a photo program that came with my computer but it does not let me reduce the file size. I try to set my camera to take reduced file size when I know that I may email or download to my website but sometimes I forget then I have a time trying to figure it out or just retake the photo. Photo Shop is about 80.00 and the price is not that expensive for me but I thought I would ask if there is another program out there that is better, cheeper or free. Thanks Randy I realize this is an old topic, but there may be someone who needs similar info. I've used PhotoShop for years. I've tried other applications but PhotoShop is definitely the best. You CAN change file size, and anything else for that matter, with full-blown PhotoShop. I may be going out on a limb here, but I'd be happy to help others who have questions about using the software. Bob Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
