which photo editing software should i use??

[Kevinh219]

im not looking to do anything super fancy, just average edits.

was lookin around google, and saw Corel Paintshop Pro X5 Ultimate, and Adobe Photoshop Elements 11

both are pretty cheap and seem to have everything i would need and more,
what do you guys think is better, and are there any other programs im not looking at that are around the same price range??

thanks!

 

[qwertyjjj]

im not looking to do anything super fancy, just average edits.

was lookin around google, and saw Corel Paintshop Pro X5 Ultimate, and Adobe Photoshop Elements 11

both are pretty cheap and seem to have everything i would need and more,
what do you guys think is better, and are there any other programs im not looking at that are around the same price range??

thanks!

Paint.net - it's free and you can get an HDR plugin for it as well.
www.getpaint.net

 

[thetrue]

Picasa is a good free one, I used it for a long while

 

[Big Mike]

When you say 'average edits' are you just talking about simple adjustments like brightness/exposure, color/tone, sharpness, contrast, saturation etc? Or do you want to 'play' with your images and manipulate them by cutting, copying, stretching etc?

If it's the former, I'd suggest Adobe Lightroom. It does 90% of what 90% of photographers would want to do....and does it in a very slick way. Plus, it's also a great program for organizing and cataloging your images.

 

[KmH]

GIMP.org is pretty popular and free, as is Photoscape : Free Photo Editing Software (Photo Editor) Download

There are Raw converters that work with GIMP.

Corels PSP X5 is kind of clunky and Elements 11 is new. You might want to visit Elements Village - Powered by vBulletin

There are a lot more online resources for Photoshop than there are for PSP.

 

[nmoody]

If you want to purchase something I highly suggest Lightroom 4 or Elements 11 as mentioned above.

If you want something free start with gimp/Paint.net/picasa and see if they are robust enough for you.

 

[Kevinh219]

not to sure what i mean by average edits either lol,
just meant im not trying to make money off it and do crazy stuff.

havent really dabbled in photo editing, but would like to learn, figure why not start now,

thanks for the tips everyone i think im going to start off with picasa, and see where that takes me and if i enjoy it, ill probably go ahead and buy lightroom 4.

thanks!

 

[John27]

not to sure what i mean by average edits either lol,
just meant im not trying to make money off it and do crazy stuff.

havent really dabbled in photo editing, but would like to learn, figure why not start now,

thanks for the tips everyone i think im going to start off with picasa, and see where that takes me and if i enjoy it, ill probably go ahead and buy lightroom 4.

thanks!

Good choice!

 

[KmH]

If you get Lightroom, there are many editing tasks it cannot do. Elements 11 can do the type of edits Lightroom can't, and Lightroom can do some things that Elements can't.

The 2 go hand in hand. In fact, when Adobe designed Lightroom, lightroom was intended as software people bought to compliment their Photoshop CS or Elements.

 

[KenC]

One advantage of starting with PS Elements is that if you do at some point decide you want to do the kind of editing that can only be done in PS, you'll have less of a learning curve in PS.