Recommendations, please, for photo software which is as easy to use as Picture it! 7, which is what I use now, but with more features and not as mind-numbing to learn as Photoshop, the manual for which is an excellent cure for insomnia.
I'd get Picture It! Publishing but it's no longer available, which is a shame as it looks to have the extra features that 7 is missing.
Si
I personally use Paint Shop Photo Pro X2 Ultimate. But if Picture It is what you are used to, would this fit the bill:
JW
I've no experience of Picture it! but I've used this:
Photofiltre
Suggest you look here
Rob
In message , harry writes
Well besides being expensive, Photoshop is way more complicated than the general user needs or wants.
Never used Picture it, so not sure what it's like. What do you want toa actually do with the photos?
But mostly here we use Photoshop Elements (basically a cut down PS that is easier to use, whilst still being as powerful as most peopel will ever need.) - it has two parts an editor, which is very good - it has simpler views, which is good for when you just want to tweak some photos. The full editor does loads more.
It also has an Organiser, which is the bit that we use most. As it's much easier to manage 1000's of photos via this than via just stickign them in folders.
You can download trial version from Adobe, Morgan often have old version going cheap.
The editor bit of Googles Picasa is not bad either, and simple to use.
Oh, well suggested! I've never seen that site before so I can spend half the day downloading freebies now instead of getting cold and wet walking the dogs. Good chap!
Si
I know Photoshop is good but the manual... I just can't read it!
"You can use tools or alpha channels to freeze areas of the preview image to protect them from further changes, or to thaw the frozen areas. If you make a selection before using the Liquify command, any unselected areas that appear in the preview image are initially frozen. Certain reconstruction modes change unfrozen areas in relation to the distortions in frozen areas. (See Reconstructing distortions.) You can hide or show the mask for frozen areas, change the mask color, and use a Brush Pressure option to create partial freezes and thaws."
If you fell asleep then, I'm sorry.
I'm sure I've got a 'Photoshop for idiots with a seriously short attention span' pdf on here somewhere. Maybe I should try again...
Si
Seconded - great site. Another bookmark added! :-)
I like Photoscape, its free, not fully featured but has some of the most useful ones
That was my impression.
It's not at all bad for fairly simple photo manipulation but still easy to use. I'd like to be able to alter perspective though, and blur, darken, lighten, smudge etc., none of which this version does. I can do this in Photoshop but I have to keep remembering how, and which keyboard button to press in conjunction with the mouse to do certain things, and it just gets annoying. It's not intuitive, to me. Picture It doesn't need to be *much* better than it is, which is why I was looking for a newer version.
I like to do things like this: and I feel that a few more tools wouldn't hurt. I only just discovered that I can easily remove a section of a layer to reveal the layer underneath in Picture it!
Si
Great idea. When is the book coming out? :-) Far better than the usual 'old postcard on left, new photo on right' format!
JW
Not a bad idea, although the audience might be somewhat limited. Having said that there is an excellent local history bookshop in Ramsgate...
Si
Oh, you sneaked that in at the end there, didn't you? Downloaded and playing with that right now and I like it a lot so far - very configurable but still simple enough to learn.
Thanks!
Si
Sorry I would have mentioned it except when people ask for "graphics package EASIER than xyz" there's usually a barrage of complaints if someone recommends GIMP ... I use it all the time, it's close enough to the bits of photoshop that I remember ... and finally the next version is going to allow single window mode!!
ISTR that there's a version of GIMP that's v. like Photoshop in some ways, so that it's easier to learn than GIMP for those used to PS - GIMPshop or something?
There is, but it's four years and two major releases behind GIMP proper, once GIMP 2.8 is released it should be near enough for most users who want a free photoshop equivalent, dunno if it'll have 16bit colour support though.
More's the bloody pity.
Allow ... not force (don't even think it'll be on by default). I tried
2.7.1 development version, found the single window mode OK on a large wide monitor, but anything to do with fonts crashed it on windows, so back to 2.6.x
Phew.
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