Digital Photo Software - recommendation?

[Nkray]

Hey folks,

looking for the best general software to work with digital photos - any suggestions?

I do not store the raw data, just the digital .jpg files and would like to:
crop,
highlight,
sharpen,
shade,
etc.

Thanks in advance
Nick

 

[480sparky]

What software came free with your camera?

 

[Nkray]

I have a Nikon D5000, it came with the standard Nikon image software... doesn't seem to have that many options

 

[D-B-J]

Lightroom is my favorite, but it's not free. Ever tried Gimp?

 

[Nkray]

I have not tried either.... What is the approx. cost of Lightroom?

 

[Scatterbrained]

Photoshop. Assuming you have no intention of working with the raw files. You could also try Corel Paint Shop Pro. I'd imagine that would suite your needs well while also being more affordable.

 

[xzyragon]

Photoshop for one offs, lightroom for quick touchups / batch processing. They're free if you torrent (tsk tsk), but you can also "lease" them at a monthly rate.

There's several free alternatives, including Picasa (google's version of lightroom), gimp, camera raw, and a couple others I'm sure.

 

[lacogada]

This is a good image viewer that has all the features you mentioned.

FastStone Image Viewer - Powerful and Intuitive Photo Viewer, Editor and Batch Converter

 

[dannylightning]

light room is around 150 bucks or if you are a student you can get it for around 80 bucks. nice program for fixing photos up, but if you want a full blown editing program you may wan to look into something else.

for a editor i have corel paint shop pro X6 which I like but it could be better, for 100 bucks its pretty good. I use light oom most of the time unless I want to do something other than just the basic editing.

like room is basically same basic idea the nikon software only much better with allot more tools and adjustment options, I find that nikon editing program that came with my camera to be pretty lousy.

for 10 bucks a month you can get the lightroom/photoshop cc bundle which is pretty good considering a full blown version of photo shop used to be thousands of dollars, now you can lease it. kind of sucks that you will never own it and you will have to pay that 10 bucks a month as long as you want to use it. so it deepens on how you look it that if its worth it or not..

but I just decided to buy light room 5 and the corel paint shop program. works for what I need to do.

 

[480sparky]

I have a Nikon D5000, it came with the standard Nikon image software... doesn't seem to have that many options

It may have come with ViewNX. You can 'upgrade' that to Capture NX-D for free from Nikons website.

 

[KmH]

JPEG is a lossy, compressed, 8-bit color depth file.

JPEG was designed to be a finished, ready-to-print file format.
JPEG photos have little, if any, editing headroom.

We can get Adobe's Photography package for individuals - Photoshop Lightroom 5 and the professional grade Photoshop CC 2014 - for $9.99 a month.

Photo Editing Tutorials
Image Files

• Understanding Bit Depth
• Understanding Image Types: JPEG & TIFF
• Understanding RAW Files: Why Should I Use RAW?

 

[rudimaes]

I use Photoshop Elements 12, very easy to use.
Rudi