OK,
I took the picture, what do I do now?
by
Jim
Charles
As
scrapbook aficionados, we are gravitating more and more
toward digital photography and although there is room for much
discussion of mechanical
vs. digital photography, I am more interested, here, in a discussion
about
photo editing software to enhance my experience in putting together a
scrapbook
project. In my
arsenal of scrapbook
supplies, I have 5 different photo editing software and I sometimes get
a bit confused if
I switch from one to another. Rather than me pretending to be an
expert, I did
a search on “Article on comparing photo editing
software” and found some
information that could help me through the process of making my
pictures more of
what I envisioned than what actually happened.
Below I have borrowed 3 articles from 3 sources and included
links to their pages.
from TopTenREVIEWS
What
to Look for in Photo Editing Software
Photo
editing software has unlimited applications. Use it to
fix family snap shots, create digital art or to perfect images for your
company
website or marketing material. Below are the criteria TopTenREVIEWS
used to evaluate photo editing software.
- Ease
of Use – Photo editing is especially difficult
to learn and use because of the many different options available. The
software should have tutorials to show you how to use features and many
programs have "Wizards" that automatically fix the most common problems
with photos, (e.g. red-eye, crooked images, correct poor lighting and
so on).
- Import
and Export Formats – There are only a handful
of formats the program should definitely support. JPG, GIF, BMP, EPS,
PDF, TIF, PICT are among the most common. However, with the
ever-changing nature of file formats, more is better.
- Editing
– The photo editing software should have
features that allow you to improve or add to your photo like lighting
adjustment, effects, text and so on.
- Photo
Sharing Capabilities – Software should give
you tools to optimize (file size, resolution and image size) your
photos for the specific sharing method you intend to use. Sharing
methods include email, web galleries, PDAs, cell phones, print and
more.
- Output
Capabilities – The software should be
versatile and effective in saving images. It ought to save the images
in a number of different ways including printing, emailing, web and
more.
- Organizing
– The photo editing program should have
organizing capabilities with thumbnails, the ability to search for
images by keywords or rating, view EXIF (digital camera data), store
your images in permanent albums and image archiving.
- Help/Documentation/Support
– The software should have tutorials to show
you how and why you would want to use certain features. Also the
manufacturer should provide technical support in the form of FAQs,
email and phone.
With
the right photo editing software, you could be the envy
of all your relatives, scrapbooking partners or business associates. To
read
about the software our reviewers chose as #1, Photoshop Elements 3, click
here.
from PC World
Popular
Image Editors Gain New Tools
Adobe
Photoshop Elements 5 and Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X1 help ease your
surfeit of photos.
Alan
Stafford
Like
many people, I find that managing my collection of digital images is
almost as big a job as editing them. New versions of two popular
imaging
applications--Corel's Paint Shop
Pro Photo XI and Adobe's Photoshop
Elements 5--promise to help you deal with photo glut, but
only one of them
delivers. Excellent editing tools and advances in the importing and
sharing of
photos put Photoshop Elements a big step ahead of Paint Shop Pro. . . . to
read more
from PC Magazine
Digital
Photography:
Go Forth and Rectify
Chances
are good that your photos need some serious
help; now they can get it—without a serious outpouring of
cash or massive
expenditure of time on your part—thanks to great new
photo—editing software
By Sean Carroll
Chances
are, if you're a PC
Magazine reader,
you've got at
least
one—and possibly several—devices that capture
digital still images. Cameras,
phones, PDAs, camcorders, GPS devices, and
even notebooks—all of them can capture images. But then what?
Most of you have
mastered downloading images to your desktops,
far too many of you have conquered
the fear of e-mailing pictures and quite a few of you have also caught
on to
online photo sharing and tagging sites, like flickr.com.
But judging by the images I see on people's
desktops, in my inbox, and on sharing sites, a much much
smaller segment
of you has made even the most hesitant stabs at photo editing. Which is
a
shame, because I hate to say it, but most of your images suck. And they
don't
have to. Or, at least, not so badly. . . .
to read more
from Photo Editing Software Review
PHOTO
EDITING SOFTWARE REVIEW
Enhance
Your Images and Fix Your Pics
If
you can imagine it, you can create it with photo editing software.
Crop,
chop, resize, recolor or touch up your images to
perfection—no dark room
needed. .
. . for more
I’m not finished with my research yet so
I will continue viewing articles
and playing around with the software out there just to make sure that
my next
scrapbook will be the best I can make it.
JimC
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