Digital photography

[Speicher]

Lots of people on here take excellent photos, which is encouraging me to return to photography. I have an Olympus with 3.2 mega pixels. I have begun taking photos, and storing them on a memory card, and then transferring them to my computer.

So I have labelled the memory cards with the contents, ie which holiday etc. Now I would like to store them and alter them slightly. Nothing ambitious, correcting the horizon, cutting off stray lamp posts, etc. I did try altering one photo, but forgot to save the original and pixelated it beyond recovery. Fortunately there are similar ones, but not quite as good as the original.

My question is this, can anyone recommend a program that I can use to do a few changes and to put them into some sort of order. For example put the architecture ones together, and the lakes and boats together, I am sure you will know what I mean, I am not good at explaining it.

I have tried Photofiltre and more recently Kodak Easy share software(downloaded free). I have heard Photoshop mentionned but think that may be too advanced for me, and probably too expensive.

However, I struggle with these programs, as it seems I am doing it by trial and error, and when something goes right, I have not written down what to do, and have to think it out all again. Should I carry on trying these programs or is there something easier, better to use. I do not want to do major alterations to photos, I like to retain them looking closely like how they were taken.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. People's photos on here have encouraged me to try this.

 

[Bigtallfatbloke]

Hi,
I don't know how good these are but they are all FREE...so try them and see if they help.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/dr/imaging

 

[Odyssey]

I use Photoshop myself. It is an excelent program but yeah, it's probably got a whole lot more than you'd ever need. And it's very expensive. Adobe do some cut down versions of photoshop for a cheaper price but they're still quite advanced. Obviously very useful though! Your photo software is essentially your darkroom.

I don't know what cheap packages are on the market, but definately have a look around and see if there are any free versions that will fulfill your needs.

 

[Jaded]

Have a look at Photoshop Express

https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html

 

[Crackle]

Speicher

As a starter for 10, create a Google account and sign up to Picasso. Download the Picasso software, this allows photo database organisation and simple editing and a utility to upload your stuff to a web album which you can make private or public (see my piccies as an example).

I'll have a look for some other free stuff for you. Gimp is one, it's very powerful but not immediately accessible, bear it in mind though.

Another thing, if you edit your picies, keep an original unedited, nothing worse than messing it up and not having anything to go back to.

 

[john59]

You could also try ‘jalbum', it now has some editing features and some excellent skins. Plus registering gives you some free web space to try out your albums for free.

http://jalbum.net/


John

 

[glen]

http://www.oldversion.com/
Has some nice photo editors,

 

[domtyler]

I would recommend Picasa as an excellent place to begin. It can do things like correct the horizon and many other commonly requested operations very easily, it is exceptionally user friendly.

http://picasa.google.com/download/

It will also automatically save your original snap so you'd never lose your original.

 

[John the Monkey]

I like Picasa too, for what it's worth.

 

[Speicher]

Many thanks for your suggestions so far. Is Picasso and Picasa the same software with different spelling? (Please excuse my ignorance).

I do not think I would be posting many photos for public viewing, except perhaps the odd one or two on this forum.

I like the idea of a program that will automatically save my original.
I will have a closer look at the suggestions that have been made. Many thanks.

 

[Aperitif]

Picasa Speicher - Picasa

 

[Speicher]

Thank you Aperitif I thoughted it might be a sppeeling mistook.

 

[Aperitif]

Download it and let it riffle through your files on the PC - sit back and wonder where on earth the images had been 'all these years...'

 

[Speicher]

I only really started going digital last summer . Until then I was reluctant to move on from old-fashioned film.

Will it really find all my photos and put them in one place, allow me to adjust them without losing the original, and post photos on here?

What else does it do? Will it re-unpixelate my photo that I ruined?
That's what made me nervous about altering images. I will try that software first as so many people have been kind enough to respond to my request for help. Thank you

 

[longers]

I downloaded Picasa and it will indeed go and find all your photo's. I don't use it much but I think that every time you start it up it goes and looks for new photo's you may have taken. It's got some good editing features too but that's too much for me.
I use digital like film, take loads, some might be ok and occasionally get a belter.