Image Editing

A few years ago, before I had access to a computer, I thought that image editing was like a form of cheating. It seemed fine to burn or shade images whilst hand enlarging photos from film, but any form of photo manipulation via a pc was just simply wrong.

HOWEVER, once I got my own digital camera and pc, I realised that the art of image editing, and in some cases retouching, is almost as important as the art of capturing the shot in the first place. Of course, not all photos require manipulation, but with most images, especially raw shots, they are definitely enhanced by the subtle process of photo editing, and in the case of black & white digital photography, the process is essential.

 

For most professional photographers, Adobe software such as Photoshop & Lightroom, and Apple’s Aperture, are all pretty much essential pieces of software. However, for the amateur photographer on a low budget, or those of us of a more geeky nature, there is plenty of software out there that is either Open Source, or just plain free, that can be used to perfectly replicate the actions of the more expensive “professional” programs.

For me personally, I mainly use the following pieces of software

 

DigiKam

Raw Therapee
  • Good for organising your photos
  • Excellent piece of software for editing raw images, and can also be used for jpegs. Not the simplest of programs to use, but very useful if you persevere with it

Photoscape (V3.6)

Nik Collection
  • Good but fairly basic image manipulation software, I mainly use it for cropping and straightening images, due to its ease of use.
  • Up until recently, this amazing set of software was a fairly costly piece of kit to purchase, until Google bought it up, & released it free of charge to anyone.

 

Examples of photographic editing can be found on the following pages, each example showing an edited photo followed by the original shot. In some cases, an image showing the framed version is also included.

Photo Editing Examples