Easy photo editor

[Babis]

Hello. I was using "Microsoft Digital Image Pro" for many years, which mainly consisted from latest version of PictureIt! and a nice photo gallery. Now the product has been discontinued for more than a year and many of its features are included in some vista versions.

I am looking for a similar simple but powerful photo editor for basic digital image tasks, like crop, resize, change hue, saturation, fix red eye etc

The program that I am looking for should be easy and not to have to go through books to learn even the basic functions, so it has to be other than photoshop/paint shop pro.

I am currently trialling Ulead's Photoimpact, but I am looking for others, thanks for any suggestions

[tomos]

yet another image/photo editor and batch processor
a very depreciating title to a software announcement but it sounds very good
disclaimer - I have it downloaded but not tried it yet

[suleika]

Many people find IrfanView very easy to get to know and use.  I used it as my photo editor for a long while, and I still use it as my default viewer.

You might like Picasa too - friendly interface and the basic tools are nicely designed GUI-wise.

[Babis]

thanks

[Dirhael]

It sounds to me like the freeware application Paint.NET might be just what you're looking for. It's powerful enough to do most of what you'd want to do with a photo, while at the same time being quite easy.

However, if all you want to do with your images is pretty much the things you've listed, I think your best option is FastStone Image Viewer. Image viewers/browsers/basic editors doesn't get much better than this

[jgpaiva]

I support both of dishael's suggestions. For some intermidiate editing, paint.net is great, and i use faststone maxview as my image viewer, and it's just perfect!

[Babis]

A quick update: I tried everything listed above in a snapshot of FirstDefense-ISR (except FastStone's maxview which I have set as default viewer long time ago - only thing I don't like is when I zoom-in it starts zooming from the center of the picture and not from where my cursor is, so I have to move the picture afterwards, if you know what I mean)

I must say I am impress with paint.net, I mean so small and so effective!!! I am facing some difficulties presently, like the clone tool seems not smooth at all and I miss some things from PictureIt!, like edge finder, blender etc, I will install it and on my default snapshot.

[iphigenie]

I have always liked ulead photoimpact as an "easy" photo editor.

The edit mode of ACDSee also is nice to use - especially things like the hue/saturation/color and brightness tools are quite nice and easy to use with good results. I had acdsee for ages and never used the quick edit mode, then used it once or twice and it is great for quick image processing.

[suleika]

I'm enjoying trying Faststone Image Viewer, on these recommendations.  I like it as a viewer, and I very much like its file resizing dialogue.  To be able to preview the quality and the size of the outputed file is very useful. 

[iphigenie]

to qualify what i say, it is actually acdsee 8/9 which had a very clever mini editor. The forums tell me that 10 doesnt fare so well. I dont know since I have acdsee 9 and acdsee pro 2 (totally different editor)

I have about 6 full blown graphics programs on my machine, and I have used a lot more, and yet the first time I tried the editor you get when you double click on an image in acdsee, cause I was lazy and just needed to tweak contrast, I was very impressed by the way they were doing it, and the quality of the results.

[lanux128]

this came up in gHacks recently: Imagine. looks good but haven't tried it yet..

[tomos]

this came up in gHacks recently: Imagine. looks good but haven't tried it yet..

-lanux128 (January 18, 2008, 02:34 AM)

doesnt seem to be accessible/available at the moment (homepage or softpedia)

[justice]

Try Picasa (desktop) or Picnik (online). Definately among the top of the bunch.

[lanux128]

doesnt seem to be accessible/available at the moment (homepage or softpedia)

-tomos (January 18, 2008, 02:52 AM)

that's strange, tomos because i can access the page with no problems at all.. anyway, try downloading the file to see if it works..

Windows stable version

      Version 0.9.7.0 (20060907)
            http://www.nyam.pe.kr/dev/imagine/download/Imagine_0.9.7.0.zip (zip file)
            http://www.nyam.pe.kr/dev/imagine/download/setup/Imagine_0.9.7.0.EXE (EXE installer file)

• http://www.nyam.pe.k...B2/viewtopic.php?t=8

[tomos]

doesnt seem to be accessible/available at the moment (homepage or softpedia)

-tomos (January 18, 2008, 02:52 AM)

that's strange, tomos because i can access the page with no problems at all.. anyway, try downloading the file to see if it works..

-lanux128 (January 18, 2008, 07:07 AM)

hmmm, nor none of them work 
wonder if this a personal thing or a european thang
can someone else check those links in Lanux's post- I just get "not accessible"

I remember this being a problem before on a different computer for me- I couldnt access sites everyone else could (someone out there thought it was non-appropriate for me ) there was an explanationout there, will look up that (it was alaxnotes if i recall correctly)

[PhilB66]

@tomos

No problem accessing Imagine Website (a forum actually).

[tomos]

thanks Phil
@lanux - I had that problem before with a link you posted

here was your helpful response:-

hmm.. looks like websites without the www prefix doesn't do well on your pc.. reminds me of this thread here..

-lanux128 (June 01, 2007, 02:12 PM)

except now I can access the one I couldnt then, and now the one's I cant access have www prefix

I'm not going to loose any sleep over this...(repeat, repeat, repeat...)

[lanux128]

No problem accessing Imagine Website (a forum actually).

-PhilB66 (January 18, 2008, 07:45 AM)

thanks PhilB66, i was beginning to wonder if it was merely my imagination..

[scancode]

Worked for me. There you go (sorry it took so long, crappy internutz )

[lanux128]

thanks Phil
@lanux - I had that problem before with a link you posted
...
except now I can access the one I couldnt then, and now the one's I cant access have www prefix

I'm not going to loose any sleep over this...(repeat, repeat, repeat...)

-tomos (January 18, 2008, 07:53 AM)

oh my! it's groundhog day! but seriously do check some other websites ending .kr, .jp, .cn or .tw to see if all "Far East" connection is blocked as well..

[tomos]

Worked for me. There you go (sorry it took so long, crappy internutz )

-scancode (January 18, 2008, 07:57 AM)

wow! thanks scancode

will check out the "Far East" launx

[tomos]

lanux,
re the "Far East":

Spoiler

got through to this
http://www.jnto.go.jp/
and
http://www.krs.co.kr/

they both have something "go" or "co" there so not sure if they qualify -
it's hard to find sites like that here!

[luc]

Easy photo editor  ?

My recommendation is Helicon Filter.  In contrast to most of the previous suggestions it is actually an image editor (and not mainly a browser) and it is specialized on photo optimization.
What makes it easy? It is the fantastic user interface and the layer-less workflow.  There is very little to learn. As a beginner just follow the "filter" tabs from left to right,  adjusting the image if needed.

http://www.heliconso...m/heliconfilter.html

[Babis]

nice