Whats the easiest photo editing program?

[Imzadi]

The biggest hint to remember when working with photos is to never save over the original. Everytime you save a .jpg file you lose detail. You always want to keep that original and go back to it if you ever want to change a photo you've already worked on. I will usually copy the photos to my computer and then immediately change them all to "read only" so I don't accidentally write over the top of the originals.

Is this true with digital programs? I thought the whole purpose of digital was that it accurately saves exactly as the original.

But, I don't know. There was an old Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where you can't continually make a clone off of a previous clone. That by the tenth clone, it is so degraded from the original, it barely resembles the original.

But, yes, I too, usually never overwrite the original scan once I've made a scan of it. I always like to have an original "clean copy" there, in case I want to start from scratch again. Beats scanning it again.

 

[pr surfer]

Picasa, Photoshop Elements... both are good.

Paint.net is a great one

 

[SamRoc]

I was looking on youtube at a photoshop tutorial, and it showed someone using the liquify filter to make someone look thinner. I have a few beach wedding renewal pictures of me and dh, but I wore a sleeveless dress (big mistake) and my arms need some retouching. I tried it on my friends computer who has photoshop, but the background came out blurry. Is there anyway to retouch skin and not mess up the background? thanks! Next time its long sleeves for me!

 

[Imzadi]

That's when you use the clone tool. Make sure you only work a few pixels at a time. The tool you used might have been set too big. Capture a the size of a few pixels right next to where you want to fill in with the clone tool. This way, it's the same shade & texture. Just click the button to insert the cloned pixels where you want. Make sure you keep capturing and inserting the tone or texture as it changes along the background. (Some areas might be in slightly darker shadow.) Otherwise, you will see an obvious insertion of a non-matching color.

 

[DBL101]

Is this true with digital programs? I thought the whole purpose of digital was that it accurately saves exactly as the original.

But, I don't know. There was an old Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where you can't continually make a clone off of a previous clone. That by the tenth clone, it is so degraded from the original, it barely resembles the original.

But, yes, I too, usually never overwrite the original scan once I've made a scan of it. I always like to have an original "clean copy" there, in case I want to start from scratch again. Beats scanning it again.

What matter is the format in which you are saving the image. .jpg files are compressed and will lose detail everytime they are saved. Other formats keep all the detail. TIF is one, and most of the editing programs will have their own native format that will not lose information. You will eventually need to save a copy as a .jpg file at some point because most printing processes or third part prorams, use this as a universal data type.

 

[SplshMtn99]

Depending on how basic you are looking for, and if you are running Windows Vista on your computer, it has built in photo editing in Vista. You can auto adjust, crop, fix colors & exposure, it even fixes red-eye pretty well.

That would be the EASIEST one I know of, but I have several & use them all for different things. Microsoft Picture It Photo Premium 9, Adobe Photoshop Elements ver6, Picasa and others.

 

[Imzadi]

What matter is the format in which you are saving the image. .jpg files are compressed and will lose detail everytime they are saved. Other formats keep all the detail. TIF is one, and most of the editing programs will have their own native format that will not lose information. You will eventually need to save a copy as a .jpg file at some point because most printing processes or third part prorams, use this as a universal data type.

Thanks. That's important info to know. I wondered why a professional photographer had given me a CD with my photos in TIF format. I had to convert them to jpg to print copies. Now, I know to do that as a last step for printing and save all my retouches & edits in the original TIF format.

 

[LuvOrlando]

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[LoraJ]

I bought Photoshop Elements and I find it almost useless. It is so non-intuitive, and I just can't get anywhere. I got to buy a guide book or something - the online help gets me nowhere either. These layer things just mess me up. I can't even figure out how to add a frame a photo. I can't even resize a photo. Yep, I am that bad.

Oh well. Maybe there is a better program out there.

To resize a photo in Photoshop Elements, in the title bar where it says FILE EDIT IMAGE, select image and then the resize option.

What I do is import my photos from my camera by just copying them directly from the card to a folder created for the occasion. Photoshop elements has this feature where you can resize and rename all of those photos from the folder with the press of one button.

To use this, go the FILE pulldown menu and select "process multiple files."

Select the folder the photos are in and then select a folder that you want the new size photos to go to.

in the photo above, this is the setting from when I added DH's photos to mine. where it says photo name, it will rename all those photos with that name plus numbers. mine started at 001 and I started his at the number in the box above because that was the number after what mine was.

Saves so much time.