Photo Editing/Organizing (The Cheap Route)

Today I want to rant a bit about some of the options the "poor boy" has after the picture is taken.  Now the big professionals and big spenders usually use a combination of Adobe LightRoom and Adobe Photoshop to organize and edit their photos to perfection.  But what is the hobbyist/Poor Boy to do?   To solve this mystery I asked myself a simple question: "If your supposed to concentrate on perfecting your photos in camera, why spend the money on post camera processing power?"  In other words I opted to spend the money I could have used to purchase the wonderful Adobe tools on actual photo equipment that will aid me in getting the results I wanted when the shutter trips.  Being a Computer Technician by trade this seems a bit back words but there you have it.  That same trade also exposes me to many free tools available to the average person.  Below I will list my tools of choice that have the power needed and best of all everything is free!  It does bear mention that this is only 1 solution not the end all solution.

Photo organization

• Picasa (ver 3.6 at the time of this writing)

I really can't say enough about this handy little program.  Google puts it out there for the world to use free of charge.  It will import, organize, and even do a bit of non-destructive editing/effects.  It easy enough to understand that I have grandma's and Sales Reps (thats right Sales Reps) using it.  You get facial recognition, tags, uploading to web albums, automatic resizing of images for emailing, and more.  Its defiantly worth a look.

Photo Editing

• Gimp (Ver 2.6 at the time of this writing)

This is likely setting the stage for comments, for there are many graphics programs out there that people really love and usually for good reasons.  However this is my blog and I'm telling you what I use.

The Gimp is my number 1 goto graphic and photo editing software.  If your used to Photoshop you will notice some missing features (or features that seem to be missing).  But overall you would be hard pressed to find a more capable PhotoShop alternative.  Once you learn the basic operation of the software there is little or nothing you can do in PhotoShop that you cannot accomplish in the Gimp.  Its cross platform meaning that you can use it on Mac, Windows, or Linux which covers at least 99 percent of the operating systems in use.  You can install it on a flash drive and take it with you where ever you go.  A simple google search will reveal thousands of tutorials, plugins, add-ons, etc.  In fact once you figure out the basic use of the program most of the Photoshop tutorials can easily be applied to the Gimp.  Many love this program and many hate it, but I truly believe that if you can get past the initial learning curve those same haters would at least become liker's if not lovers.  There are some very exciting features on the gimp horizon for version 2.8, keep a lookout for them.

RAW Processing

• UFRaw

Hook this up to the Gimp and you will be able to import and process your raw files.  It works with most raw formats out there including Nikon, Cannon, and Olympus.

Once again these are just the tools I use.  They are capable, fairly easy to learn if one has some patience and best of all they are completely, absolutely, 100% free.  The free price tag of post processing opens the doors to getting closer to that coveted prime lens, or new flash, stand, Alien Bee, whatever I just prefer to put my money where it should count the most which is getting the picture right the first time. In Camera.