“Aren’t there any free good ones out there?” This is a question that many of my friends popped out, whenever we discussed about using Adobe Photoshop.
Indeed, many of us know that Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom are the best image editing softwares created to date. Yet we are being kept away by the hefty price tagged to it. It is also so fully packed with features that 95% of us don’t need – which bring up the question of “Why should we pay so much for a software that we will be using about 10% of it’s functionalities?”.
This brought me to start my search of a good piece of software that either costs much lesser or free.
Summary of Editors :-
Basic Editors:
SplashUp Light (http://www.splashup.com/light/download.aspx)
Features Packed Editors:
Artweaver (http://www.artweaver.de/)
PhotoFiltre (http://photofiltre.free.fr/)
Paint.NET (http://www.getpaint.net/)
Advanced Editors:
The GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/)
Splashup Light
I have recently review another software, Splashup Light. It is surprisingly an easy to use application that does the job well. In fact, in just 3 clicks, you can easily transform a Day-Light photo-shoot into an Evening photo-shoot. Of course, it has other adjustment tools too. Very neat for a basic editor.
Artweaver (Highly Recommended)
I have re-review this piece of excellent software today. It has similar features to Paint.NET and the menu + interface is arranged to resemble that of Photoshop Element. The website is available in English language as of today 15th October 2009, so you can visit their home page or download it off at the location: http://www.artweaver.de/direct/Artweaver.exe.
It has one significant advantage over Paint.NET, and that is, it allows you to re-edit any text in any layers. Very cool. I will highly recommend this over Paint.NET. As for user who prefers a simpler interface and does not need too many features, Paint.NET is still good.
PhotoFiltre
Although the software has not been updated for a long while, I still find it a neat piece of software – it has batch processing installed with it as well, cool! One of the best thing I like about this software is, most of the commonly used tools are being placed in 2-rows of toolbars on top. I have been using it to process my every day tasks of cropping, resizing, color/contrast enhancement.
Although, I must admit that, the interface should be further improved to be less daunting for the average users.
Paint.NET
This is yet another featured packed software that I have used to enhance and touch-up photos before I uploaded it to facebook and other blogging platform. It does it’s job decently fast. Like Adobe Photoshop, it has layers for you to move things around
It is a very neat piece of software that I have used the last 2 years.
I have only one complaint – it does not allow you to re-edit any text after it has been finalised. I am looking forward to version 4, and hope that they will fix this issue then.
This software name itself is not the address to their website, but a way that the developer termed it to be the advanced-level of WinXP default Paint software, developed with Microsoft .NET technology. You will need to install the .NET framework 3.5 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=AB99342F-5D1A-413D-8319-81DA479AB0D7&displaylang=en) to use this. If you are still using Paint, then it is time to upgrade to Paint.Net
The GIMP (Highly Recommended)
The most advanced of image editors available on the web today. And best of all, it’s an open source application that is still evolving as of now. It has been said to be the best alternative to the paid Adobe Photoshop.
I have it installed in all my PC, and have really appreciated the hard work put together by the developers. It has tons of features that you can find in Photoshop too.
And it is able to open up Photoshop PSD files (Photoshop 7 as most compatible), although it has some issues with opening PSD files that have layers grouped in folders. If you have used Photoshop before, and do not want to pay for it, then you got to try this out.
(I find that it has many other features that Adobe Photoshop Element 7.0 does not have yet)
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree with you statment on paint.net, it does the job!
The issue with the text doesn’t seem to be on the list of things that will be improved unfortunately. I put this one on the table few months ago and the answer was clear
But still, paint.net is great from my point of view.
I see, it is kind of pity for such good program to be missing of such feature. That is one of the main reason why I did not highly recommend this program. The latest version is still at 3.36, although another beta version 3.5 is being developed – still it did not fix the problem.
At least it has superseded the old Paint from Windows.