Photo Shop or other program

[Jordan]

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)

[TwinOaks]

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,

[Johanna]

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

[8thsinner]

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.

[howardb]

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

[Roger]

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

[gunfighter48]

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.

[Bree]

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.

[BigAlC]

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

[eirenealetheia]

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