Recently I’ve been trying to get some nice prints of some holiday snaps I took a couple of years ago. You know the kind I mean, they’re blurry, are with a lot of people I’ve hardly met before and are from the time you dropped your camera in the sand. So when my ex-boyfriend was telling me about the different ways software can now ‘fix’ your photos without being a Photoshop guru, I thought there would be no better time to get all the trial software my little machine could install, so here’s what I found out:
Photoshop
At the top of the list is favourite from all those thick-rimmed glasses wearing graphic design students, who are probably making icons for your next app. In Photoshop, you are going to have to watch a few tutorial videos if you’re a complete novice, but the learning curve isn’t that steep – even for me! You simply select the area you’re after, then you simply lighten or darken the areas you want (there’s a lot of inbuilt filters and colour adjustments under the filter and edit menus), then you’re on your way to becoming as instagram famous as you’ve always dreamt of.
Gimp
Gimp. No, really, it’s not what you think. Gimp good in many ways, like being free. If you’ve used other photoediting software in the past, you might notice that most of the features are quite similar, so what’s the catch? Well Gimp is sort of like Tesco’s own brand. It’s in the cupboard when you want it – It works when you need it, but it won’t do every little thing you might in your life. That’s its only real downfall, but apart from that, you’ve got the linux community ready to help you at every turn with this one (It comes free with ubuntu and other distros, and that means you’ve got useful forums for whatever problems you might have. It connects people together and isn’t that what the internet was made for?
Pixlr.com Speaking of what the internet was made for, for this option, you’ll probably need a fibre optic broadband connection. This is because we live in 2014, and now, your software can come through your browser (as well as anything else you want). Dubbing itself as the “Most popular online photo editor in the world” I thought I’d check it out. Again, it’s really easy to use if you’ve got experience or seen a few tutorials on Youtube. The tools are basically the same and having used all three, I would have to say that the accuracy of selecting and processing depends on your internet connection and how much ram you’ve got to spare. This software was pretty though, so I liked it.
I’d have to say that all this software feels pretty similar, and they’re easy to set up, so if you’re after a photo editing package, you’ve only got yourself to blame if you don’t check out these three. They’re what I’m now recommending to all my unphotogenic friends and family members!
