Editing Photos

[Aggers]

I've just put all the photos we took at Eastbourne on to my laptop, but now find that
I no longer have the facilities for editing the pictures, such as cropping, compensating
for faulty exposure, colour bias, etc. It seems I lost that facility when my laptop was
recently repaired. Can anyone recommend a programme I can safely download that will
give me these facilities? I can't remember the name of the system I used before, and I
don't want to download trouble.

[Kaz]

I have Paint, it was free and it resizes nicely amongst other functions

[Suff]

Have a look at these free options

My main manipulation program is Paint.Net which I've been using for years now, but I do very little Photo retouching. The only program I don't recommend for you is Gimp. It comes from the Unix world where many people would rather insult your lack of knowledge than answer simple questions.

Should give you some options.

[Workingman]

I always use Picture Publisher 10 by Microgtrafx but it is no longer available. I do all the STDs with it. My second choice is Photo Filtre It works the same way but is easier and more accomplished than Paint or Paint.net.

[Aggers]

Thank you all for that information.

I will have a look at them tomorrow Bed is calling now.

[Aggers]

Because PAINT was mentioned twice, I've spent this evening downloading and installing Paint.NET.

And I'm totally confused.

I can't see anything on it to do with photographs, and it seems to be something of use only to artists
who want to make patterns or illustrations.

Where have I gone wrong?

[Suff]

Adjustments and Effects.

As I said, they are basic and not what a full photo retouching suite would do. For cropping etc, you would select an area, copy it and paste it into a new window. The selection part is on the toolbar.

Basic. Not helpful to the beginner.

[Workingman]

John, there was a time when there were photo editing programmes and painting programmes. These have somewhat merged into do-it-all suites.

The original photo editors were somewhat limited and often relied on what the programers thought you would need/like via wizards. The painting programs gave you free rein to do what you liked but lacked many of the things photo editors wanted.

So, you are caught between two stools.

You might be happier with:

FastStone image viewer at http://www.faststone.org/

Or Irfan View at http://www.irfanview.com/

[Diflower]

I just use microsoft office picture manager most of the time.
That's where I crop/edit/resize etc, if that's all you want it's fine
Search your programmes to see if you have it, when I click on any picture I can go to 'file' and it says 'open with' and gives me that as an option.

[Aggers]

I've spent all morning on my laptop, and have been in one hell of a mess.

Have tried most of your combined recommendations but am not happy with any of them,
they all seem so damned complicated, so I am now abandoning the idea altogether.

During my efforts I managed to download all sorts of nasties. Norton has jumped in, and,
I hope, removed them all, and has now downloaded 47 updates.

Sorry to be such a pest.