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The Photoshop Guy Recommends Other Image Editors?!?
So why is the Photoshop guy pushing other products?
No, Bill hasn't lost his mind (though the jury is still out on that). Being a teacher of Photoshop, I will often get people coming up to me asking about other programs that they can use to work on their images. Now I still feel that Photoshop is the all-time champion of all image editing programs (sorry Microsoft and Apple), but for reasons of ease of operation or cost there are other programs out there which can do a lot of the same operations as Photoshop.
So if people are coming up to you with these questions here are a few programs that you can suggest in order of ease of use and cost. First the free ones.
One program that is free and very easy to use is Picasa from Google. It takes a few clicks to find it, but it is well worth the search. First, you go to the Google home page and find the More link at the top left of the page. But wait, it is not as easy as that. You have to go to the bottom of the list for Even More to click on. Then you are taken to the Google page with all of their free programs, among them Picasa.
Once downloaded, you run it and it will search your hard drive for all images to build a browser page, which is a good thing. The reason it is a good thing is there are always images hiding in folders we have no idea that were there, duplicate images, or things we downloaded years ago and forgot about. Once found, we can delete the bad ones or move them to folders where we can start to use them. This program will also do simple editing and, as a plus, it is all non-destructive. You can also email images from the program using your own email programs and create a CD slide show. There is even a tab for uploading images to national labs like Snap Fish and your local Walgreens and Wal-Mart's.
The next free program that is getting closer to Photoshop is a golden oldie called GIMP that was first developed for Nikon. It can be found at GIMP, but do be sure to also download the manual. Gimp has much of the same look of Photoshop with layer masks and many of the same tools of Photoshop. Of course, the major drawback is your layered images can not be saved and shared with other Photoshop users. Plus Actions created for Photoshop or special filters will not work there.
Last for those are looking for a bit more power or want to share with other Photoshop users there is Photoshop Elements for just under $100. Photoshop Elements can do about 85% of what Photoshop can do with many of the same tools. What it can't do are many Actions (Though some actions can be imported but very limited) and CYMK separations. If you are only working on a few images and not a file of 1000 wedding shots, Elements works just fine. You can even work on RAW files with the same sliders of Photoshop CS 3 and Lightroom. What it can't do with RAW files is select a group of them and do the same adjustments at the same time. However, you can go though the other images and apply the same setting one at a time.
So there you go, three programs for those who want to pick your brain for free photo advise. Good luck and have fun.