LOOKING for a free but good photo editor? A plethora of such software is available on the Web.
You do not need to break the bank to buy Adobe Photoshop, which is the industry standard, if all you need is some simple image editing.
Out of the five tested, my personal favourite is GIMP, followed by Picnik.com, Photoscape, Paint.NET and Picasa.
Online photo-editor on steroids
If your photos are mainly shared with friends on the Internet on sites like Flickr, Facebook or MySpace, sign up for a free account at www.picnik.com.
Picnik.com is integrated with many online image-sharing and social networking sites so you can edit photos you have already uploaded to these sites.
The interface is easy to pick up, and many image-editing tools and special effects are available just by clicking on icons and adjusting sliders, or dragging a brush on the image itself.
The editing tools include image rotation, cropping, resizing, sharpening, exposure and colour adjustments, red-eye correction and blemish removal.
Effects include addition of text, shapes, photo frames and filters that transform your photo into paintings or snazzy images.
From your PC to the Web
If you intend to print out your photos, the higher resolution needed will make the file size of the image files too large to upload and download in large numbers.
You would then be better off installing a desktop photo editor on your PC.
Once the photos have been touched up on your PC, you can upload low-resolution versions to the Web. The high-resolution versions are put on a thumb drive and sent to the photo studio for print out.
Desktop editors are similar to picnik.com and include Google Picasa and Photoscape picasa.google.com, www.photoscape.org.
Both offer easy-to-use editing and special effects to jazz up your photos. An image browser is included, as are tools to use multiple photos to make collages and slideshows.
Spoilt for choice
If you want to really get your hands dirty and exercise complete control over every aspect of photo-editing, then go for either Paint.NET or GIMP (www.getpaint.net, www.gimp.org).
Both feature Photoshop-like user interfaces and offer the full gamut of tools to manipulate your photos. Levels and Curves tools give you power-user control over image contrast, exposure and colour balance.
Multiple images, on the other hand, are manipulated as separate layers to allow complex compositing within the same file.
In the next five parts, each photo editor will be reviewed in greater detail, starting with Picasa next week and ending with GIMP which is the most complex of all.
This is the first of a six-part series on choosing and using photo editors.
This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life on 17 December 2008.
