Image Editing On A Budget.

You Don't Have To Spend A Dime To Get Professional Results!

I have a problem with people who write about or teach digital photography and always mention using Adobe Photoshop. They make it sound like Photoshop is the only way to fly! Yes, Photoshop is awesome and is used by pros everywhere. Yes, it is an appropriate tool for advanced work. But it also costs about $300. Some writers forget this, as they often get review copies from Adobe at no charge. Instructors also get steep academic discounts. So it's easy to overlook the fact that you are telling someone they need to spend more money on software than they did on their camera!

While my wife is a pro who does use Photoshop as part of her book editing and layout business, I take a different path. I offer my students 100% free software that suits their needs and capabilities. And I use these same free tools in the production of our popular CD tutorials. I invite you to go to the sites of these products and try them. There is no cost, no obligation, no spyware and no salesperson will call! (By the way, I have no connection to these sites. They don't even know I am writing about them.)

Irfanview is a handy image viewer that can make quick changes to image size, do modest color correction and even print "contact sheets" of selected image files. It is my default program for quickly viewing and sorting my images. www.irfanview.com
Photofiltre is a wonderful image editing program from a fellow who is both a graphic artist and a programmer. I use it constantly to tweak photos, add text, and use special effects. www.photofiltre.com
Faststone Image Viewer has many of the features of Irfanview. But it's best feature is the ability to crop to a specific size, such as 4x6 or 8x10. I always use it to crop my images prior to ordering prints. www.faststone.org
Photoscape is a remarkable suite of programs that allows editing, combining of shots and even making animated gifs (those still shots that flip from one to another). www.photoscape.org
GIMP is the free Graphic Image Manipulation Program that most closely resembles Photoshop. It is open source, so it runs on Windows, Macs and Linux computers. http://gimp.org/