any information or advice on Photo editing

[Barney]

Does any one know of a good Photo editing program - reasonable price and you don't have to renew after a year at an extortionate cost !! I only want basic stuff - like I have seen ones that you can change the background I think it  was 'In Pixio" but the reviews were poor - some are free but you only seem to get bits of the complete thing -
As people say "nothings free in life " but I can't say that about "Webresizer"it works great and its free
I thing being able to change the background for model photos could be useful especially with the dark winter days and nights coming on fast
A confused
   Barney

[Bill Gill]

Barney, I've been using GIMP for several years. I like it a lot. It's free, open source software with a lot of support that's been around for quite awhile. It has many, not all, the features of PhotoShop, far more than I've ever needed - and I do a fair amount of work with it. GIMP is available for PCs, Macs and Linux machines. Some reviewers find certain GIMP features are even better than PhotoShop's.

I've used it for all my photo editing for magazine articles and forum posts, other graphics artwork and even crude measured drawings once in awhile. Here's general info from the website:
https://www.gimp.org/about/introduction.html

There are multitudes of videos on using GIMP on YouTube. Avoid really old videos even if they appear to be basic intros. The software has changed enough that you will get lost. Even some newer videos can be awful, just skip them. Any by Logos by Nick and Davies Media Design, among others, are very good. At the start you'll probably have to back up and rewatch a lot. The actual GIMP reference/instructions are less helpful unless you are already very familiar with graphics terminology and GIMP itself.

There is a learning curve. Many PhotoShop users who switch to GIMP complain GIMP isn't as "intuitive" as PhotoShop, but I've heard exactly the same complaints from GIMP users changing to PhotoShop.

You can do basic photo editing really quickly: scaling, cropping, adjusting brightness, contrast, hue, changing the resolution of an image for posting online...

And if you watch good tutorials and PRACTICE, you can do some really advanced stuff. There's a lot to grasp if you really want to master using it, but you can do adequate editing in a short time frame. You can even watch some PhotoShop tutorials after awhile for new ideas, when you figure out which tools are basically the same, though might have different names.

Start with real basics: how to open a new file, simple photo edits, what individual tools do, stuff like that. There are MANY ways to do the same things with diferent tools and it's easy to get overwhelmed if you watch many different sources for tutorials as they usually have developed their own techniques and trying to keep track of them all will become impossible.

If you try it and feel you're slipping down a rabbit hole, contact me , I've probably been there too.  Best, Bill Gill

[Bill Gill]

Barney, some samples editing with GIMP ( I can use GIMP, but still can't figure out how to post photos and captions together here, please forgive the awkward post)
PHOTO 1 (bulkhead flatcar, brown background) simple crop and scaling image. Took less than a minute.
PHOTO 2 (bulkhead flatcar, white background) changed background color, more work to do well, takes practice and undestanding a few tools, their capabilities and limits.
PHOTO 3 Krakow Auto & Woody (You probably recognize Anders Malmberg's super model in background) He photographed Krakow Auto in Sweden. The Woody I detailed was photographed in USA and added to his photo with a lot of work and a bit of dumb luck.

One thing forgot in previous post: In addition to basic editing and tools, learn about using LAYERS with GIMP. That took me for-EVER to discover. You will save yourself much aggravation by finding out about them early on!!!!

[finescalerr]

When Adobe began to extort its customers I switched to Affinity Photo, the only serious commercial challenger to Photoshop for Windows and Mac and iPads and, for $50, you own it. In practice I find it does some things better than Photoshop, others almost as well, and everything else equally. I slightly prefer it's auto color correction; it seems slightly more neutral. Of course you can adjust it manually to duplicate that of Photoshop. By now, after using Photoshop for 25 years to produce my magazines and books, you guys probably know what a stickler I am; I don't recommend Affinity Photo just because of its price.

Barney, if you decide to try it, I'll send you my macros and suggestions to shortcut your photo processing and try to help you get up to speed.

Don't waste your time or money on watered down programs like Photoshop Light or whatever they may call it. Just go for a fully loaded program and use only the commands you need. It won't be harder to use. Actually it will be easier.

Russ

[Barney]

Bill & Russ - Sorry for the delay in answering only big time problems "again" in our area with the internet providers some people going without emails and internet connections for 10 days and more - then when it was finely sorted "sort of" we had a power cut "again" and the Router thing threw a wobbly and it took them a day to sort -and to top it all Mr Apple upgraded  the system and I'm now trying to get my head around the "all new all singing " PC whizz kid system" - the head ache seems to get worse every day and the local Supermarkets appear to run out of food ! and of course my Super PC whiz kid Son has got his moving in date for his new house  for this Week End so all help from him at the moment is in Shut Down for the time being
But still never mind "Im alive " and Im sure there are plenty of people around who are a lot worse off than Myself
Will get back to you both soon I hope - and to all others on the forum Look after yourself and your families but I did warn everybody these PC things will never catch on !!!!
Barney

[nemmrrc]

Barney,

If all you need is cropping, resizing, adjusting color and maybe adding some text to your images then I suggest Picasa. Picasa was always free of charge and available for Windows and Mac. . The software is no longer made after Google deprecated for its Google Photos app. However, if you can find a download of Picasa on the webs you should give it a try. I always felt it was very easy to use and was nowhere near as resource intensive as some of the other photo editing tools.

Jaime

[finescalerr]

Thanks for the information, Jaime. I think Barney bought Affinity Photo at a bargain price and I'll try to walk him though it when he's ready. We haven't heard from you in a long time. Hope all is well. -- Russ

[Greg Hile]

I'm another one who hasn't been around much but I hope to do better in the new year. As for photo editing I, like Russ, was and still own the complete Adobe Creative Cloud suite. However, I am finding less and less a need for its complexities -- and its hefty price. Russ suggested I try the Affinity Photo program awhile back and I am in the process of making the switch permanently. I have all three -- Photo, Designer, and Publisher, which is their equivalents of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, respectively. I may still keep Acrobat and there is a $10/month subscription to Photoshop and Lightroom available, as well, that I might hold onto for awhile just in case. I have just taken on the editoship of the Bay Area Garden Railroad Society monthly newsletter and am finding Publisher to be quite adequate for my needs, at least at this point.

Greg

[darrylhuffman]

I was responsible for setting up computers for a chain of video stores.

Part of my work was evaluating photo editing software.

A key component was the program should be easy to learn.

More than just learning, the finished work had to be very good.

Over a 32 year period I tried dozens of programs as they were released.

It may seem like an odd choice, but one of Adobe's earliest program still is my favorite.

I have used this program for 20 years and have never found any to be easier to use and still produce top notch results.

The program is Adobe Photodeluxe, version 1.0

This program works on Macs and PCs.

You can find them only on eBay these days.

The program is very affordable.

Do not buy any of the later programs as they are much more complicated to use.

I've posted thousands of photos on the internet.

All processed with this program.

You can find some of my photos at:

ghosttownmodels.blogspot.com