Photo Shop or other program

[Randy Cornelius]

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

[Beaverslayer]

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

[rdb]

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.

[Kevin King]

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

[Art]

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

[TomSwede]

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

[JustWakinUp]

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.

[rharris]

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

[bcurrier]

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

[mikeymoto]

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.