Photo Editing Software

theshiver

Member
Can someone recommend Photo Editing Software that is easy to learn and use for a beginner. Would paint shop pro x 4 be good? or photo shop 10 Thank's for your help
 
Try Lightroom 3. You can download a 30 day trial from Adobe and there are videos online that can help you with the basics.
 
+1 Adobe Lightroom

It's got loads of deep features and buckets of "just keep it simple" stuff as well.

There are good videos available on how to use it, i purchased a few from luminious-landscape.com when he first did them on version 1.3 or something way-back...

I'm sure there must be free-bee videos on you tube or something by now though...

And it's pretty cheap. Often it goes on sale thru Amazon.com... so watch there for it.
 
+1 Adobe Lightroom

It's got loads of deep features and buckets of "just keep it simple" stuff as well.

There are good videos available on how to use it, i purchased a few from luminious-landscape.com when he first did them on version 1.3 or something way-back...

I'm sure there must be free-bee videos on you tube or something by now though...

And it's pretty cheap. Often it goes on sale thru Amazon.com... so watch there for it.
 
If you are JUST looking to to basic correction and exposure compensation +1 to Lightroom. If you're looking to do more Try Photoshop. The newest versions of Photoshop have very similar features as Lightroom but they also have all the stuff that photoshop is known and loved for.
 
Photoshop and Lightroom are both Adobe products and built off of each other. Lightroom is a little cheaper. A full blown version of the Photoshop suite is kind of expensive.
 
I'd get Photoshop CS5 is you want to do major photo editing.

I'd get Photoshop Elements if you want to do photo editing but not have all the "pro" tools like the Creative Suite has. 99% of people out there can get along with Photoshop Elements and still have more tools than they ever need.

I'd get LightRoom if you just want to adjust levels and colors, that type of thing but no actual photo editing like drawing or erasing parts of the photo.
 
check out gimp photo editor, i just picked up a copy, its free, to replace the cs2 that i couldnt transfer from my old computer. Gimp works just like photoshop and is just as powerful, tons of free plugins for it too.
 
Lightroom is your best choice for taking a picture and editing color, lighting, sharpness etc... To make it look better. It's cheaper and easier than photoshop. If you need to do more than that and want to do something like taking objects within images, cut them out and place them on a different background or edit a lens flare out of a picture or edit one part of an image not the whole image that would be photoshop. If money is an issue and you can't afford either. Pixelmator is only 15$. It is a cut down version of photoshop and can do a heck of a lot. It really depends on what kind of editing your wanting to do. My ultimate suggestion is if money isn't an issue get Lightroom 3 and photoshop cs5 or cs5.5. I use both all the time.
 
Last edited:
I use PhotoImpact Pro. Has most of the same features of Photoshop without the price and the learning curve.
 
If you plan to get serious about photography and editing go with adobe lightroom or CS5, otherwise why not give gimp a shot. Its free and pretty simple to learn, but fyi it isnt compatible with raw (at least the non mac version) untill you install a "unidentified flying RAW"

happy shooting
 
Back
Top