P is for Photoscape, Picasa & Picnik!
FREE IMAGE EDITORS
If you own a digital camera, you probably need an image editor. Abode Photoshop is very popular for editing images and more but it is very costly. For an occasional photographer, you probably won’t need (or know how) to do much editing, there is no point in spending money on feature-laden but costly software and end up using the very basic features only.
If your primary need is to enhance your photos, then Photoscape & Picasa are 2 free image editors that can help you do the job by enhancing your photos easily and are fun to use as well. It just takes a few clicks here and there, a little tweaking to get the correct amount of adjustments and if you are adventurous enough, there are some additional features to create special effects for your photos.
Picasa’s strength is in its image browsing feature - it allows very clear cut & easy browsing of all the photos stored in your PC and has image enhancing features like soft glow, gradient tint, etc which you can apply or undo easily. You can upload photos to your own picasaweb (Google’s version of Flickr) directly from the browser, create slideshows with music to name a few.
Photoscape on the other hand, has some fun features like Splitter - to split your photo into parts; Anigif – which creates an animation from a series of images; Combine - create a horizontal or vertical merging of a few photos. But the thing I like about both software are its clean interfaces and easy to understand lingo. Both work pretty fast and do not take up huge space on your harddisk. If your harddisk space permits, by all means download both since there are some features exclusive to each and you can enjoy best of both worlds.
Picnik is another good image editor ideal for those who are unable to install both software on your PC, for eg. it being an office computer, you can upload your images to Picnik.com and do the editing online. It offers some exclusive effects with cool names like lomo, goofy, pixelate, etc. Worth a try!
