I spent part of the weekend looking at the photos I snapped this Summer, which is on the way to a downshift into Fall, here in the Northern hemisphere. Some were very cool and worth saving as is, some weren’t worth the HD space they took up, and some were “keepers”, but needed corrective editing.
I keep a bunch of photo editing software on my computer including IrfanView, a fast, light, basic photo editor , which I use frequently throughout the week. But, for the kind of editing I had in mind (not heavy Adobe Photoshop specialty editing), I had to look at another application – Photoscape.
In the two years, or so, that I’ve been using this free application, it’s come out of nowhere to become the most popular photo app download on CNET, with over Sixteen Million downloads (300,000 downloads in the last week alone). I’m not at all surprised.
Photoscape is a terrific photo application that’s small (under 17 MB), fast, free, and sports an intuitive interface that’s easy to use; especially for those with only modest previous experience.
You don’t have to take advantage of all of the powerful features built into this impressive application of course – see fast facts below. You can just stick to those tools you are most familiar with, including resizing, cropping, correcting red eye, .…………
As well, you can perform a wide variety of additional image adjustments, including brightness, contrast, and applying a host of special effects.
An unusual aspect of the Photoscape opening screen interface is its circular layout, as this screen capture illustrates. A very cool presentation!
Photoscape offers feature rich online help, supplemented with video for those of us who are into, “show me how” mode. The following screen capture illustrates the video running the Bright/Contrast help feature. I give this a big “thumbs up”.
If you’re in the market for a fully featured photo editor, then Photoscape is worth a very close look.
Photoscape Fast Facts:
Viewer: View photos in your folder, create a slideshow
Editor: resizing, brightness and color adjustment, white balance, backlight correction, frames, balloons, mosaic mode, adding text, drawing pictures, cropping, filters, red eye removal, blooming, clone stamp
Batch editor: Batch edit multiple photos
Page: Merge multiple photos on the page frame to create one final photo
Combine: Attach multiple photos vertically or horizontally to create one final photo
Animated GIF: Use multiple photos to create a final animated photo
Print: Print portrait shots, passport photos
Splitter: Slice a photo into several pieces
Screen Capture: Capture your screenshot and save it
Color Picker: Zoom in on images, search and pick a color
Rename: Change photo file names in batch mode
Raw Converter: Convert RAW to JPG
Paper Print: Print lined, graph, music and calendar paper
Face Search: Find similar faces on the Internet
Languages: English, Korean, Chinese, Traditional Chinese, German, Dutch, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Mexico, Latin America), French, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Italian, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Colombian), Thai, Hungarian, Turkish, Catalan, Slovak, Czech, Norwegian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Swedish, Estonian, Danish, Romanian, Hebrew, Galician, Finnish, Indonesian and Arabic.
System requirements: Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/Vista/Win 7.
Download at: Download.com
For the Geeky Photographer:
Image Analyzer 1.30
If you’re a geeky photographer, then Image Analyzer could be just the program you’ve been searching for. This very small (1.24 MB), free, advanced, feature-rich image editor, comes complete with serious enhancement and analytical tools.
At the advanced level, this is not a program for the faint of heart, and requires a good understanding of photographic techniques. Check it out at “A Seriously Advanced Photo Tool – Free Image Analyzer 1.31”, on this site.
Lighter grade free photo applications – fast, small, and flexible.
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Hi Bill
Thank for these ideas. I’ve been using Corel Paintshop Pro for a number of years but it’s very big, slow and expensive to update. Will be giving these a try over the winter, together with Gimp Shop which I downloaded a while ago.
I hear you on the advent of autumn: the nights are fair drawing in as we say here in Scotland!
Kind regards
John
Hi John,
Actually, I used Paintshop Pro for years (pre Corel days). It was a definite leader in photo editors. Haven’t used it though, since Corel bought them out.
Best,
Bill
I have been looking for a good, inexpensive (read “Free” 🙂 ) photo program. I will definetly check out photoscape.
I used to use Corel and Adobe. I’ve used Gimp on and off, but I think I will give this a try.
Thanks Bill!
Hi Dan,
I could never quite get my head around the Gimp. I was a little uncomfortable with the strange layout. I think you’ll like this one – I especially liked the “backlight” feature.
Best,
Bill