1. Photoscape

Photoscape is my favorite photo editing software. Actually, it’s not just a photo editor, it has got a plethora of tools for images. Before using Photoscape, I was of an opinion that it is just another photo editing software. However, I constantly read positive review about Photoscape, so I decided to try it out. Since then, it has become my default photo viewer and editor.

Photoscape has got a very simple and easy to use interface. It uses tabs for important functions with one tab reserved for everything offered by Photoscape. I especially like the editor interface. as it helps me do functions like resizing, color adjustment, levels adjustment, sharpening etc with a single click. There is no need to find these options in a huge list of menus like in Photoshop. Another feature that I like about the editor is very simple display of the picture properties. It displays properties like photo dimensions, file name and size right below the image. These are the most common properties that I need while editing my photos. Overall it has been a very good experience with Photoscape and I intend to use it as my default photo editor in the future as well.

2. GIMP

GIMP is a free photo editor often known as the free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It is open source and has lots and lots of features. It was made for Linux in the beginning but then ported to Windows and Mac too. Although it has many great features, it is still, in my opinion, a bit more complex than other image editors. The greatest feature of GIMP is that its functionality can be extended through plugins.

3. Picasa

Picasa is more of a photo organizer tool from Google but it also consists of a very handy image editor. Although the editor is not very advanced, it contains the most common tools that people usually use with the photo editors. Since it is very easy to use, it is a popular choice among people who don’t have time to learn the complexities of a photo editing software. If you are hosting your photos in Picasa Web, then this is the best tool you can get, since you can sync your photos to the cloud immediately after the editing.

4. Paint.NET

Paint.NET is another free and open source photo editor with some advanced functions. I use Paint.NET where I want to work with layers and level adjustments of the photo. Paint.NET can be compared with GIMP but it does not offer any plugin integration.

5. IrfanView

Irfanview has been my favorite before I switched to Photoscape. I like it because of its simplicity, portability and small size. After using Photoscape, I personally think that besides simplicity, IrfanView is a bit more complex and old in terms of user interface and usability. It does not provide any buttons or tabs of functions to edit the image. Instead it has a menu which contains everything that we need to edit a photo. Although it’s not my default image viewer and editor now, I keep a portable copy of IrfanView in my USB Flash drive among other essential portable software.

I hope now it will be easier for you to decide which image editing software you should keep as your default editor. What is your favorite photo editor? Do tell us in the comments.

You may also like 5 useful online image editing software and 5 useful alternatives to Photoshop.

Image credit: BigStockPhoto

The more we progress through this digital age, the more important image editing becomes. Before, only people who worked in photography or printing needed good image manipulation, but now everyone needs it. It’s so much easier to save photos digitally than in physical snapshots, and manipulating them has never been easier.

However, the cheaper programs that exist really aren’t the best for manipulating those photos. They do the job of cropping, brightening, enlarging, reducing, exporting, etc. But something is lost in translation. Mac supplies the application Preview with its OS X, but while it can reduce file size and crop, you lose a little bit of the image in the process. This is especially true if your’e working with screenshots that have text, as I’m often doing with images here at Make Tech Easier.

Experienced graphic designers and photographers use Adobe Photoshop, but it can be a very costly program. Windows users use GIMP, but it doesn’t work the best on Macs. After much research, trial, and error, I finally found a program that does for Macs what GIMP does for Windows. Pixelmator is the poor man’s Photoshop, but there isn’t anything I need it to do that it can’t.

Let’s start with this image I snapped of the Pixelmator website. When I first open the image in Pixelmator, I get a chance to see all the great tools, many of which I’ll never even need. They’re actually very similar to Photoshop, with selecting tools, painting tools, and retouching tools. Anyone who has used Photoshop will be familiar with these. It also works in layers, just as Photoshop does.

What I need to do is edit photos to make them small enough for the web, yet still retain the sharpness so that I still have the quality once it’s added to the website, Pixelmator gives me all the tools I need to do that and more. I just need to crop the image, and use the Sharpen tool on anything that looks like I might be in danger of losing it. I then just need to adjust the size and Export to the Web. In the resulting dialog box, I can choose the image quality.

The best part about Pixelmator is that it’s a native Mac application. Instead of fighting through Windows options, everything here is meant specifically for the Mac, Snow Leopard and later to be exact, and it also works with Photoshop files, as well as iPhoto, Aperture, and Automator. You can download a free trial at the website www.pixelmator.com, and that’s good for thirty days. The price of the application, either through the website or the App Store, is costly at $29.99, but it’s still hundreds of dollars cheaper than Photoshop. Additionally, they’re coming out with a big update soon and are promising that anyone who buys the current version will get the update for free.

1. Phixr

Phixr comes with a simple interface for you to edit your picture online. Log into your Phixr account and click on the “Choose File” button to locate the image on your hard drive. Then hit the “Upload the chosen photo to Phixr” button to upload it. If you want to edit a file from the web, then copy the photo URL to the URL uploader and hit the upload button.

in the Phixr interface, you can flip the image horizontally or vertically, crop a certain area from it, equalize its color, remove noise, set brightness level and contrast and add some texts to it. You can also sharpen the photo. Once the editing is completed, you can save the output in PNG, JPG, GIF or PDF.

You can also upload to the various photo sharing sites or email it to yourself (or your friends).

2. Picnik

Picnik is a very simple online photo editor. Just log on to the service page and hit the “Get started now!” button to jump start your editing job.

After the editor is loaded successfully, you will be prompted to upload a picture from your hard drive. Hit the “Upload a photo” button to upload. Picnik offers you a bunch of editing tools such as Auto-fix, Rotate, Crop, Resize, Color Adjust, Sharpen and Red-Eye Remove. After the editing, you can save the result to your computer or share it with your friends in the various social networks.

3. Picture2Life

Another simple online editing tool that is good for quick photo editing. To get started, click the “Choose File” button to locate a picture from your hard drive.

Picture2Life organizes its editing tools into several categories so you can easily and quickly select the effect you want. Categories include Quick Fixes, Fun stuff, One click or All Effects.

4. FotoFlexer

A good thing about FotoFlexer is that it comes with a wide interface so you can view a big image at one glance, and without having to zoom in/out. Like other photo editors, it also has an array of editing tools such as auto-fix, red-eye adjust, crop, copy region and resize. You can also add some extra effects to your photo such as animated stickers, glittered texts and smoothen the photo wrinkles.

5. Pixlr

Pixlr is a good alternative for Adobe Photoshop, as it offers you the ability to add layers and do pixel level editing.

The interface is similar to Adobe Photoshop so there is very little effort required to get used to it. Stuffs such as eraser, cutting tool, smoother, sharpen tool, resizer and magic selection tool are available.

Some other useful online photo editors not listed above:

• Sumo Paint: A Adobe Photoshop look alike.
• Photoshop.com: The online presence of the Adobe Photoshop. It is free to use.
• Splashup – Another Adobe Photoshop lookalike.
• Aviary – a great suite of photo editing software

Which is your favorite online photo editor?

Everyone has heard of Adobe Creative Suite, which allows you to create all types of print, web, and mobile design. With it, comes a hefty price to get all the applications to have a full design studio. Additionally, if you are using a computer system that doesn’t have the software installed, then you are not able to access your files to continue designing. There is an application called Aviary that provides a way for Artists to create wonderful designs directly on the web. It also provides a way for you to interact with other artists to share and provide inspiration.

Aviary has different editors to allow a designers to create different kinds of creation. These are Image Editor (Phoenix), Color Editor (Toucan), Effects Editor (Peacock), Vector Editor (Raven), and Audio Editor (Myna). There are also two tools: Screen Capture (Talon) and Image Markup (Falcon).

The site also allows you to customize your own dashboard view if you register. On this dashboard, you have the ability to view, move, or remove the different levels (i.e. everyone’s, friends, and/or yours) of activity and creations. The sidebar can’t be removed and it has the different Aviary tools from which you can choose from. It also has the account settings, such as editing your profile. It also shows the level that you are on; for instance, I am a “Fledgling,” which seems to be a popular trend on many web sites.

Phoenix: Image Editor

The Image Editor is very similar to Photoshop or Fireworks. It allows you to work in layers and group them together. You are able to easily create layers from the other Aviary editors (i.e. Raven, and Peacock) that allows you to use the features not in Phoenix. One thing that I didn’t understand is why there was a difference between a “regular” layer and a Phoenix layer. If you click on it, it opens up a new Image Editor window. The color picker is very easy to use, and you are able to grab the colors in the image, and save it in the program. The History feature is great to see all the modifications that have been done to the image, and provide a way to remove it.

Toucan: Color Editor

Toucan allows you to create and modify different color palettes for your design. There are three areas: clipboard, image picker, and color deficiency preview. One of the great features is the amount of images you are able to use in the color editor. You can import an image from your local drive, URL, Aviary library, Flickr, Facebook, or Picasa.

When you import from any place other than your local drive, then it is pretty quick. However, when you are importing from your system, it took awhile. Overall, this is a neat feature that could help with trying to find the perfect color palette for your designs.

Peaock: Visual Editor

Peacock is the neatest tool Aviary has to offer. You are able to create different kinds of creations from scratch. It provides you so many options that it makes it easy to design anything that you want. One thing that I found very neat is that you can use your webcam to take a snapshop to use as a starting point. There are many effects to enhance your design. You are able to connect (or disconnect) different types of features on your final creation. Like Toucan, you are also able to import images from local drive, URL, Aviary library, Flickr, Facebook, or Picasa. This is amazing and it was very easy to use. Aviary also provides a video tutorial that really helps you understand how to use Peacock.

Raven: Vector Editor

Raven allows you to design artistic creation by free hand. You are able to create your own shapes or the ones that are provided. As Phoenix, you are able to create different layers and group them together. You are able to modify the fill and stroke to the shapes you create. I’m not much of artist, but if I were, I could create great designs using Raven.

Myna: Audio Editor

If you are a podcaster or musician, Myna is a ery useful audio editor. You can use QuantumTracks, if you want to have a starting point. There are three tracks that you can combine together to create your podcast (or song). It has a recorder, so you can use your voice.

If you want to import music in from your local drive, you can as well. Even if you are starting out, Myna is not hard to use.

Falcon – Image Markup

Falcon allows you to easily make changes to an existing image or start from scratch. It seems to be a light version of Phoenix, so it really isn’t needed.

Talon – Screen Capture

Talon is a Firefox-only extension that allows you to take snapshots of an item on your screen. You are able to save, copy, or edit it using one of the editors. It only works on Firefox version up to 3.5, so if you downloaded the new Firefox 3.6 beta version, you won’t be able to use it.

Aviary has a lot of features that would be useful to a variety of designers. What’s great about it is that it also has its own social networking site, so you are able to connect with other artists, and view/share work. Some of the editors, especially Phoenix, slowed down my computer a tad bit. Even so, I thought Aviary is a great web application.

Even though Adobe Photoshop is the standard for creating professional image, not everyone can afford or want to pay the high pay for it. If you are looking for a free online alternative to Photoshop, then SUMO Paint is the best that you can get.

Sumo Paint is a free online image editor that looks like a complete clone of Adobe Photoshop. It is built with Adobe Flex and run completely from your browser. For those who are worrying that this application will take up tons of memory, I have tested it and found that it is stable, loads fairly fast and only takes up a fraction of my memory usage.

The impression you get when you first load up SUMO Paint is its Photoshop lookalike interface. Seasoned Photoshop user will find the floating toolbar, palettes and color bars far too familiar.

Unlike other online editors that focused mostly on image editing, SUMO Paint provides you with the necessary tools to create a professional image. You can find the Ink, Pencil tools for you to do your drawing (no Pen tool), custom shapes for vector work and add multiple layers for various effects. There is also a variety of brushes and filters effects that you can use.

To load an image in SUMO Paint, you can either upload the image from your computer, or simply grab an online image with its URL. Alternatively, you can create a SUMO account and load your image from there. Once you have finished your editing, you can download it to your computer in jpg/png format or save to your SUMO account for future re-editing. There is no social sharing feature here, but you can set the image that you save in your SUMO account to be available for public viewing.

When compared to Photoshop, there are still many features clearly lacking in SUMO Paint, but if you are looking for a free editor that gives you a good set of editing tool with easy to use Photoshop-like interface, SUMO Paint is definitely the one to go for.

For those who can’t afford Photoshop, here is a list of the 5 great free alternative to Photoshop.

GIMP

There is no doubt that GIMP is the closest alternative to Photoshop. GIMP is used by many professionals and contains most of the functions in Photoshop. While some people dislike the interface and find it hard to use, there are still many others who love this open source software. You can find a huge user community supporting this product. Many Linux distributions have also used GIMP as the default image editing program. GIMP is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.

GimpShop

Using GIMP as the backend, GIMPshop added an extra interface to make it looks and functions more like Photoshop. If you are looking for Photoshop alternative, but hate the interface of GIMP, you might want to try out GIMPshop

Krita

Krita is a painting and image editing application for Koffice and is part of the KDE package. It has become very popular recently due to its ease of use. While it is not as feature-rich as the Photoshop, or even GIMP, it does contains the necessary tools to create/edit a professional image from scratch. In fact, the latest version contains some features that are not found in both GIMP and Photoshop.

Paint.net

Paint.NET is more than the default Paint application in Windows. Originally designed as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint, it has grown substantially to become a simple, yet powerful image editor. While still not on par with Photoshop, it does have plenty of useful features such as layers and filters. Currently, Paint.net can only be used on computers that run Windows, however a project that ports Paint.net to Linux, via mono is available for Hardy Heron. It is still not stable, but if you are adventurous enough, you might want to try it in your Hardy. To install Paint.net, add the following repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/xmlich02/ubuntu hardy main

sudo apt-get install paint-mono

CinePiant

CinePaint is a deep paint image retouching tool that supports higher color fidelity than ordinary painting tools. One of the advantage that it has over GIMP is that it is able to support 32-bits image (GIMP only supports 8-bits image). Cinepaint is mainly used by developers in the flim industry for motion picture frame-by-frame retouching. The current version runs on Linux, BSD, Mac OSX. Stable version for Windows is not available at the moment.