Someone has to be the first to post on the POP Tech Blog, so why not me? We are planning a Tech Shop discussion about inexpensive photo editors for Windows systems on March 10. It occurs to me that our Tech Blog is a good place to post notes about our Tech Shop for those who could not come and for those who come, but cannot remember some detail. Our hope is that the Tech Blog will become a place where people can ask questions and maybe find answers to their technical problems. So let me post a summary of the presentation from the March 10^th Tech Shop. We cannot put up the demos and the one-on-one discussions, but this may help people remember what they wanted to ask about.

Why would you want a photo editor? Well, unless you are a superior photographer, you probably find some of your pictures are a little less than wonderful. A photo editor can help you make them better… sometimes a lot better. Often something as simple as cropping your photo to remove undesired or distracting background can improve the impact of your picture greatly. Sometimes a little adjustment of the background lighting can make a “dark” picture better. Maybe you just want to remove the “red” eyes that occur in flash pictures. All of these corrections can be handled with a photo editor.

But wait! There is more! You might wish to post your picture on a website or your facebook page or email that cute photo to you mother. With today’s digital cameras, the photo image you take on the camera can be megabytes in size (for those not fluent in technical jargon, that means really big). Sending these photos through email or to the web can take a long time (and may not be allowed by your email). A photo editor can reduce the size of your photo to make it easier to post or email. There is a cost of course (nothing comes without cost), since the smaller image cannot be enlarged as much without some loss of quality. But often, the smaller photo image is plenty adequate for viewing on a computer or making a regular 5×7 print.

Finally, many photo editors also serve as photo organizers. Do you have trouble finding your pictures after you transfer them from your camera to your computer? You are not alone. Photo editors often have an organizer function that allows you to group your photos together or just locate them on your computer. And many photo editors can also help you transfer your photos from the camera to your computer.

So where can you find a good photo editor (and how much is it going to cost)? The first place you might look is with all those CDs or DVDs that came with your camera. My Canon camera came with an organizer called ZoomBrowser Ex that provides some simple editing functions. Sometimes the software package also includes a more complete photo editor as well. There are a number of fine photo editors that sell for around $100. I use Adobe’s Photoshop Elements, but Corel’s PaintShop Pro is highly rated and less expensive. However, I intend to focus this article on really inexpensive photo editors (free) that can be downloaded from the Internet.

A good place to start is Google’s Picasa (www.picasa.google.com). Picasa is more an organizer than an editor, but it contains a number of very good editing functions. Picasa handles all of the usual editing: rotating, cropping, color correction, lighting correction, and “red” eye filtering. But Picasa also includes the ability to resize photos (in the Export function) and lots of filters and special effects for those who want to play with their photos. Best of all, Picasa does not change your original photo when you edit, but keeps it as a backup so that you can go back to the original photo if you later decide you do not like the editing. The big plus with Picasa, however, is the organizer function. Picasa will move photos from you camera to your computer, will move photos to the web (in Picasa’s web storage), will prepare photos for email, and will print photos. There is a lot to like about this program, and it is free for the download.

Other free photo editors include paint.net (www.getpaint.net). Paint.net is a nice, simple image editor that works well with photos. While it does not have the organizing functions of Picasa, it resembles a “grown-up” version of the Paint program that comes with Windows. An editor more like the $100 packages you can buy is Photoscape (www.photoscape.org). Photoscape has a good editing tool box and many useful organizer tools. Finally, if you really wanted Photoshop, but could not afford the $700 price tag, try GIMP (www.gimp.org). GIMP tries to do everything that Photoshop does. Unfortunately, it is as complicated and hard to learn well as Photoshop. But then again, it is free!

I encourage you to take a look at some of these editors if you do not have one already. A little post camera work can often turn a so-so picture into something really great. And feel free to post questions! We will try to monitor the blog and post answers in a timely fashion.

Peace+

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