IMAGE MANIPULATION SOFTWARE

The question is often asked which is the best image manipulation program. The answer given is invariably Adobe Photoshop. However I would say this is not true given most peoples needs. Before I get a lot of abusive emails from the Photoshop fan club, I had better explain myself.
Photoshop is probably the most sophisticated image manipulation software available- I use it myself. But it is not particularly user friendly, takes a long time to learn and is very expensive around £600.00 (English pounds). Most people will never even scratch the surface of what it can do. You may as well buy a Ferrari to go to the shops-it looks good but it's a bit extravagant. But fear not there is now a wealth of software available some cheap, some free. Most are available as demos which can be downloaded or obtained from disks on photography or computer magazines. Try before you buy. Try to work out your future needs. Here I give a quick rundown of a few I have tried.

Adobe Photoshop version 7.0 /CS.

As I commented it takes a while to understand but can do almost anything. Buy some of the many independent books to help you learn the program-the manual supplied is hopeless. Also you can use the free tutorial disks on photographic magazines. Photoshop also accepts many plug-ins. These are small programs that become part of Photoshop to add extra filters or utilities. They range in price from free to hundreds of pounds.

Photoshop elements.

Is a cut down version of Photoshop 7.0/CS -and not much cut down at that. Elements will do most of the things its bigger brother will do at a fraction of the cost. The user interface is much easier to understand with the added help available, although the lay-out is much the same. It will take a lot of use to find out what it lacks compared to the full version. For most people it is a much better option at a fraction of the cost.

Paint shop pro.

I confess I was not a fan when I saw earlier versions but after winning a later version I changed my mind. Although it works along similar lines to Photoshop it has a very different feel to it. The most obvious difference is the readily available built in actions that will produce all kinds of effects at the touch of a button. The effects browser shows the results of all kinds of filters at once. This has only recently been introduced into Photoshop. Paint shop also accepts many plug-ins. Many are the same as Photoshop. Paint shop pro has a good selection of photo frame effects to finish off your pictures. This program may be a better buy if you wish to create images from scratch.

Roxio platinum suite.

A very user friendly image manipulation and browser suite. One of the easiest to use- yet still a powerful program. Excellent for those new to image manipulation who wish to sort out the jumble of image type files on their computer.

The Gimp.

This program has a similar look to Photoshop but is an "open source program" built up by many users over a period of years. The big advantage of this program is that it's free! This program has many useful features for sophisticated manipulation of images so is well worth a look.

iView Mediapro/Extensis/Photo Album.

These programs are image file and data bases for those with large numbers of photographs. However these and the ever increasing number of similar programs have quite powerful image editing tools. Many people would not require an additional program. iView and Extensis are powerful professional image sort programs with many other uses. They produce galleries for upload to the Internet, or batch processing of images. It is much easier to enter competitions, or sell your images if you can find them in the first place. This type of program attaches information to the digital file so that it remains with the file when copied or sent to some else. This is a great boon for those with lots of files.

When I started this page I intended to include most of the programs available. It soon became obvious that this would become a never ending task. A magazine I took a look at this week had four new demo programs on the attached CD. I strongly suggest you try out demo versions before you buy.Only buy the more expensive programs as your skill and requirements increase. Do not be too concerned if you do not have the latest version- they seldom contain anything radically new. If you are spending a lot of time altering your pictures maybe you need to think more about how you are taking them!

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