Notes on life, art, photography and technology, by a Danish dropout bohemian.
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Saturday, September 19, 2009
PS on the cheap?
A friend wants to know, what is a good and cheap alternative for Photoshop, on Windows? I think she just needs the basic corrections and printing, no fancy stuff.
15 comments:
Pat McGee
said...
GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program
www.gimp.org
My ex uses it all the time, and really likes it. It is kind-of a memory hog though. She liked it a lot more after she added memory to her machine.
Gimp is great. If he realy likes Photoshop my advice goes to Photoshop Elemets. It's cheap and very good. For organizing, printing and very simple corrections - Picasa, from google. It's very light and fast.
Adobe Photoshop Elements. Less than USD$100, most of the features of Photoshop, plus an image organizer (in the Windows version). Easier to use than GIMP (IMHO), more features than Picasa.
Elements was my first thought. Haven't tried it myself. But the first review I found said that features are oddly selected, and the interface is not very intuitive?
I use Photoshop Elements 7 and would second the recommendation for it. But if cheap is a criterion then there is nothing better than free, so have your friend take a look at Paint.net. It has good basic photo editing features, is free (open source) and is a tiny download at only 1.5MB or so.
There's really not enough information available to answer the question intelligently. "What will you use it for?" is what I always want to know before I make a technology recommendation. For basic photography tasks, Picasa is hard to beat. When somebody graduates from Picasa, I tend to recommend Lightroom. If somebody is doing graphic design work, then I would say there is no substitute for Photoshop and InDesign.
GIMP is a great alternative, but might still be more than needed. Paintshop Pro is a great program - for cropping, color correction, and placing text on images. Since GIMP is free - one can use as much or as how little they need. www.rcmedia.com
There's really not enough information available to answer the question intelligently.
True. Anyway, for all basic operations I'm using IrfanView (it's freeware) including the plug-ins available for it. (You can even include Photoshop plug-ins.) It's amazing how much you can do with that software. And it's fast, too, even on older hardware.
I recommend very much to take it into consideration.
If she can live with the privacy issues, my recommendation is Picasa.
Adobe, these days, is the new Microsoft. The software is bloated and they want to install all kinds of auxiliary crap on your hard disk. Also, their apps phone home all the time, not to mention a general attitude of hostility towards their customers.
Because of this, for the Mac, I recommend Aperture over Lightroom. And before buying Photoshop, I recommend checking out Pixelmator. It doesn't do everything Photoshop does (yet), but it is so much faster and nicer that you may never go back to Photoshop.
Irfan Skiljan's Irfanview is also very handy for batch resizing/renaming, and other basic chores, and it's a freebie if you choose not to send a donation to him.
Really intuitive and not too expensive while being able too control every aspect of a picture (burning, dodging, selective contrast) is Lightzone by Lightcrafts.
15 comments:
GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program
www.gimp.org
My ex uses it all the time, and really likes it. It is kind-of a memory hog though. She liked it a lot more after she added memory to her machine.
Gimp is great. If he realy likes Photoshop my advice goes to Photoshop Elemets. It's cheap and very good. For organizing, printing and very simple corrections - Picasa, from google. It's very light and fast.
Google Picasa
Or just download photoshop. There's nothing cheaper than free.
Adobe Photoshop Elements. Less than USD$100, most of the features of Photoshop, plus an image organizer (in the Windows version). Easier to use than GIMP (IMHO), more features than Picasa.
Elements was my first thought. Haven't tried it myself. But the first review I found said that features are oddly selected, and the interface is not very intuitive?
Elements is great - very much like regular Photoshop. It's all 99.8% of us truly need.
I second GIMP, too, it's an outstanding free program, very fully featured for what you (don't ) pay.
And I also second Picasa, it's an easy organizational tool, and the one-button thing really does improve most images.
I use Photoshop Elements 7 and would second the recommendation for it. But if cheap is a criterion then there is nothing better than free, so have your friend take a look at Paint.net. It has good basic photo editing features, is free (open source) and is a tiny download at only 1.5MB or so.
There's really not enough information available to answer the question intelligently. "What will you use it for?" is what I always want to know before I make a technology recommendation.
For basic photography tasks, Picasa is hard to beat. When somebody graduates from Picasa, I tend to recommend Lightroom.
If somebody is doing graphic design work, then I would say there is no substitute for Photoshop and InDesign.
GIMP is a great alternative, but might still be more than needed. Paintshop Pro is a great program - for cropping, color correction, and placing text on images. Since GIMP is free - one can use as much or as how little they need.
www.rcmedia.com
There's really not enough information available to answer the question intelligently.
True. Anyway, for all basic operations I'm using IrfanView (it's freeware) including the plug-ins available for it. (You can even include Photoshop plug-ins.) It's amazing how much you can do with that software. And it's fast, too, even on older hardware.
I recommend very much to take it into consideration.
If she can live with the privacy issues, my recommendation is Picasa.
Adobe, these days, is the new Microsoft. The software is bloated and they want to install all kinds of auxiliary crap on your hard disk. Also, their apps phone home all the time, not to mention a general attitude of hostility towards their customers.
Because of this, for the Mac, I recommend Aperture over Lightroom. And before buying Photoshop, I recommend checking out Pixelmator. It doesn't do everything Photoshop does (yet), but it is so much faster and nicer that you may never go back to Photoshop.
Pixelmator is very good, and it does not take forever to get started like PS.
That disadvantage vs. Photoshop is that you can only adjust shadows and highlights, not midtones
Chris Almqvist
Have any of you tried PhotoStudio from Arcsoft?
Irfan Skiljan's Irfanview is also very handy for batch resizing/renaming, and other basic
chores, and it's a freebie if you choose not to send a donation to him.
Really intuitive and not too expensive while being able too control every aspect of a picture (burning, dodging, selective contrast) is Lightzone by Lightcrafts.
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