Sunday, August 09, 2009

looking for photo-editing software

One surprise I have found with the iMac is that, while the photo-editing software has some technical features, it lacks a lot of the simple stuff I enjoyed with Microsoft's "paint" - part of the Windows accessories package.

As a teacher, I like to take pictures and then write text on them -maybe a label or caption. I also like to be able to point at or circle a specific part of the picture.

As an enthusiastic amateur, I also like to occasionally stitch three or four photos together to make a panoramic view.

As a blogger, I like to resize photos to very specific sizes.

With iPhoto, I appear to be able to do none of these things. I can blur part of a picture, which is great if I want to remove recognizable features of person's face to preserve anonymity and the crop feature is better that Window's version but if I want to resize a pic the simplest options are "large, medium and small".

I am looking at GIMP, Serif Photoplus and a few other free editing software programs online, but getting GIMP to add a phrase to a picture is overkill. Its not clear to me that Serif Photoplus has an Apple version.

Any suggestions?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You might want to look into the Online photo editor route. THey are all good options. The first 3 and the last 2.

http://www.dailygyan.com/2008/11/10-online-photo-editors-that-you.html

kwandongbrian said...

Thank you.

Another commenter elsewhere suggested:

picnic.com

Thanks again for the help.

K'Brian

pslvseo a5 said...

Paint.net is (at least in our opinion) the simplest option on the list. It still comes with a ton of powerful features like layers, adjustments, and user-created plugins, but is simple enough that complete newcomers can grasp it immediately. The features are across the top, and filters are accessible from a drop-down menu.
Some of the special effects are pretty cool: sharpen, blur, distort, emboss, etc. You can even get some Instagram-esque vintage effects in there for good measure. We don’t want to waste too much time on this one. It’s got a lot of features, an easy interface, and a simple layout. If you’re struggling with others on this list, then stick with the easiest option.