Photo shop software

[6508.froggy]

Can anyone give me direction on good photo software. 

My computer died the other day and some things cannot be retrieved. I was using fantastic photo software but cannot remember what brand and it is probably obsolete now as  I had ised it for many years. 

I have download several and am not impressed with any off them so suggestions would be welcome. 

Thanks

[digital*ghost]

Depending on the editing I'm doing, I use either Windows Gallery, Photofiltre, or PicMonkey (the first two are free software downloads, Picmonkey is online only, free to use but they now require an account to be registered, and there are some premium - i.e. paid subscription - features you can't use if you only go for the free version, but I just use it for background editing and the ones I need are free).

A lot of people use Gimp or Photoscape - I tried Photoscape but I'm too used to the other programs and haven't really been inclined to learn a new one. 

This website has a list of their own 'best of' free softwares, some with paid upgrades: http://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-free-photo-editor

[6508.froggy]

Thanks Digital

I am the same so used my program I was using and could skip through photos with great results I look at these others and shake my head thinking technology should be geting simpler not more complex and not as efficient! 

I will have a look ast the ones you have suggested.

Much appreciated. 

Cheers

[stationmasterhobbies]

GIMP it a lot like photoshop, but depends what you want to do. it is also free,

[black*poppy]

Lightroom lets you batch process a set of photos. Very intuitive and fast. It isn't free but well worth the $$$

[egglesdtp]

Irfanview is quite intuitive and powerful.

[tazzieterror]

+1 for Lightroom.  I've been using it for years and it's an excellent tool for both organising and editing images.  My main image library currently has over 90,000 photos, most of which are now keyworded, so I can find nearly any image I want quickly.

EDIT:  Although it's not a free program, you can download a 30 day trial that has full functionality.

[clarry100]

To Tazzieterror....

I'm interested in what you mean by "keyworded".
What does this do to help you find images?
And how do you do this?

I store my product images by category in folders and then by the SKU of the product.

Always interested in new ways to store and locate images.

[tazzieterror]

---

@clarry100 wrote:
To Tazzieterror....

I'm interested in what you mean by "keyworded".
What does this do to help you find images?
And how do you do this?

I store my product images by category in folders and then by the SKU of the product.

Always interested in new ways to store and locate images.

---

Hi Clarry,

This is method I use more to organise personal photos, but would work similarly for product images - here's what I do...

In the past couple of years, I've made several trips to Europe, visitng a bunch of countries. I take a lot of photos, so at the end of the day (or week, depending on how busy I am), I'll import the photos from my camera onto my computer, either by connecting the two with a USB cable, or plugging the memory card into the computer.

I tell Lightroom to import the photos, and it brings up a window showing thumbnails of the images to be imported from the camera or card.  I can choose to highlight certain images, and then in a box on a toolbar on the screen, type in any words I might want associated with the selected photos: e.g. Europe, Germany, winter, snow, landscape, dusk, mountain, trees, forest etc etc.  When the images are imported onto the computer, Lightroom keeps track of the keywords associated with them.  Later, I might want to find all the landscape images I took in Europe with snow in them.  I can filter the images by keyword, type in "Europe, snow, landscape" and those are the images displayed.  

It sounds like a bit of work typing in the keywords when importing, but it probably takes me 10 seconds if that - Lightroom will auto-suggest/complete keywords that it recognizes.  It's also easy to make some keywords different between images.  Maybe all the shots are in Germany and at night for a particular import, but some are at dinner, while others are afterwards by the river.  I select all of them, keyword with "Germany" and "night", then select the dinner ones only and add "dinner, schnitzel, beer, stein", then select the remaining images only and add "drunk, river, swim, polizei" 😄

If you searched youtube for "Lightroom keywording" I'm sure there would be a bunch of tutorials.

Hope that helps!

[black*poppy]

Best thing about Lightroom too is that you can use the settings across a set of photos.

For instance, as tazzie said, you import a set of photos you want to edit and Lightroom holds the thumbnails.

Because I don't have the space for a proper studio, my photos sometimes come out a bit dark or the colours aren't right - green looks teal, red looks a bit pink, etc.  So I adjust the white balance/hue/brightness/contrast etc to get the products back to their original colour.  Instead of doing that to each individual photo (I usually have between about 4 and 9) I can save the adjustments to the first photo, then hit Paste for each thumbnail... done.  Then Export them all to say: Cue_dress-1, Cue_dress-2 etc etc  and they all save together for easy locating when listing. 

Gotta love Lightroom. 

But you have to use Photoshop if you want to do stuff like wipe out backgrounds and that sort of fancy stuff.  Photoshop doesn't batch process.