by Barry Marcus

Created on: July 27, 2008   Last Updated: May 29, 2009

Most digital cameras come with free software to allow you to edit your digital photos. Most of these are quite limited in what you can do, but fulfil the basic needs of the snap shot photographer. Most are free versions of propriety products and the functionality is limited.

The Kodak and Adobe provide free versions of their photo editing software. These allow you to crop and rotate, correct the colour balance, brightness and contrast, some special effects and little else.

Picasa is a free product available from Google. Picassa provides the basic fixes available but with some additional features. Pictures can be straightened from 0 to 360 degrees very effectively using a grid and a single lever. This feature surpasses those provided by the more sophisticated packages.

Picassa allows for pictures to be converted to black and white, sepia, soft focus, tint, soft focus, filtered black and white, and focal black and white. All very useful functions. The tuning option makes provision for fill light to be added, highlights and shadows may be accentuated and the colour temperature adjusted.

Of course there are a number of even simpler adjustments that can be applied automatically. Red eye reduction makes it simple to eliminate the annoying red eyes common with flash photography. I'm feeling lucky allows Picasa to make the decisions. Auto-contrast, auto-colour and the fill light lever complete the offerings of the editor. Use the collage function to create a collage of your photos.

When you install the program, Picasa will search your computer for all pictures. Picasa creates a gallery that is quick and easy to navigate. Information about the camera used and date are maintained and a facility to add additional albums and sort by category is included. Finally, Picasa makes it easy to share photos, upload them to the web and to create a slide-show for your web-site.

Jasc (now Corel) Paint Shop Pro is still one of the best photo editors available on the market. It is not a free product but allows for complete professional editing of photos and graphics of any kind.

Gimp is an open source product that can do everything that Paint Shop Pro can do - perhaps even more - for free. For professional work, Gimp is highly recommended. If you need to seriously touch up a picture, airbrush a face, de speckle, change the perspective or almost anything else then Gimp is the answer. Gimp has a number of tool bars that can be placed anywhere on the screen. The tools allow you to match colours on your photo and use these to touch up another spot, apply filters, add additional light sources and so on. The photographer has complete control throughout.

Gimp is a professional graphics editor that offers a much in the way of functionality. Expect to spend a couple of hours exploring Gimp's rich array of features and learning how to use the product. Once mastered, you will be able to produce truly professional pictures.

Picasa is an excellent tool for the layman and for enhancing and cropping your pictures with great ease. Picasa allows you to become familiar with all its features within a few minutes. It is a very cleverly designed application that can be used by anyone from a professional to an amateur.

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