Photo editing software

Apologies for replying to my own posting - bad netiquette - but I have just noticed Microsoft Photos App, Microsoft Paint and the Snipping Tool. Are they okay or is it better to use proprietory software?

I stick with GIMP, but there's also Paint.net and a newer offering Affinity Photo which used to be paid, but is now free (requires cloud account).

Digikam is avilable for Windows I believe, it's more a photo management system but it does have editing facilities.

Apparently the Gimp is also available for Windows but that may be overkill.

Depends what you mean by "basic".

I use XnView MP.

When I used Windows, I liked IrfanView enough to make a donation.

Photoshop might be expensive, but you could probably pick up a copy of Photoshop Elements if you look around on eBay - probably for less than a months Photoshop subscription

I am currently using version 11 which has enough bells and whistles for me

You dont actually say what you mean by "very expensive" or give any details of your modest requirements

Another +1, it has its own domain now:

Sorry, it was a late night posting. My requirements are mainly cropping, levelling the image and removing blemishes. I used to have Photoshop Elements which was fine (exceeding my requirements) until it expired. I looked at Lightroom at £119.09 pa which seems a lot to allow me to edit the occasional photographs. I am not averse to paying this sum but I would like to consider other options first.

I would say that there's sufficient good, free graphics software available now, that only those making a living from it need consider paid rather than free software ...

GIMP

That's because you can use it on Windows. Then we you graduate to a better operating system, you can still use GIMP on other operating systems and the knowledge you gain learning about it on Windows transfers over, not wasted as you learn a new program.

I don't suppose anyone knows exactly what facilities Gimp has now, but it's simple enough to do what you need without spending days learning the bits you don't need. It's free.

Thanks. It seems GIMP is favourite. I shall expore this.

Paint.net seconded. It does almost everything Photoshop does and loads a lot more quickly. I only use Photoshop for a couple of functions that Paint.net doesn't have (like "switch colour").

These days, new copies of Photoshop (and the other main Adobe applications) cannot be bought outright. Only rented as a suite. And not cheap...

Depends what you want to do.

Desktop:

Photo darkroom style editing - GIMP, terrible name but brilliant program.

Simple cropping / rotation - pretty much anything.

Mobile phone or tablet:

SNAPSEED can do a lot of things, it can even open raw files (at least from a nikon).

Other options; Google used to offer free downloads of Picassa - that is still available from other sources. Quite capable and easy.

There is also a version of Photoshop CS2 that you can download and use (due to Adobe turning off the activation servers for CS2, then getting moaned at, and having to release patched versions that don't require activation!) Old, but more than adequate for your use case.

For my very modest needs, mainly cropping and resizing, I just use Paint.

Cheers

Dave R

Grr!

s/we you/when you/