Some photo editing programs help please for Alice

[leon]

Hi Guys, my dear Alice is into fiddling with photos and enhancing them with special effects and such for her scrap book hobby.

I am not really into this but need to ask you guys which would be a good program she could purchase to do this sort of stuff.

She particularly wants to have some program where she can remove and add people and objects from one photo to anither and that sort of stuff. :shrug:

Any help and suggestions would be much appreciated. ;)

Leon :thumbsup:

[supernova1965]

Hey Leon,

GIMP is free and will do everything you want it is at least as good as Photoshop and won't set you back thousands of dollars. You just download HERE (http://www.gimp.org/downloads/) and the User Guide on the same page:thumbsup:

[Octane]

If The GIMP was as good as Photoshop, Adobe would be out of business.

But, yeah, for a freebie, it's good. She'll need to invest a lot of time in learning how to work with layers to do as you've mentioned, Leon.

H

[Regulus]

Warren's suggestion is a good one. GIMP is fairly powerful and you can use 3rd party plugin filters like Eyecandy. As you can for the next 2 programs.

Adobe Photoshop (Elements) is powerful and feature rich as well but does cost more than a few dollars.
http://www.adobe.com/downloads/

Corel bought Paintshop Pro and that's a good program. I have used it for 10years now. U can down load a trial here and usually buy a copy for under $140 in a local shop like HNorman
http://www.corel.com/corel/

[supernova1965]

I may have got a little carried away with my claim of at least as good as photoshop I meant to say as good as earlier versions of it.:D

[leon]

Thank you all for your advice and suggestions, I will look at them for her and go from there.

Leon

[Omaroo]

Leon - none of the programs mentioned here will easily do what you've stated Alice wishes to do. "Cutting" people out and placing them somewhere else is a very complicated task - and certainly not one that is easily accomplished by a beginner - depending on the required quality of the result of course. A simple lasso-select isn't hard once you've done a few. It's a relatively easy task if your background is a solid colour, but out of a landscape is a different matter.

If I recall, there are programs that are designed to do just this easily and without too much fuss. I'll see if I can find mention of them anywhere.

Woz - GIMP "as good as" Photoshop? Tsk..tsk...! LOL

[leon]

Thanks Chris I did expect that would be the case, and i appreciate your efforts in helping.
To be honest Alice would struggle with some of these complicated programs.
As you say most things become easy once mastered, but for a beginner as Alice would be it would be struggle.

Leon

[Omaroo]

There is a function in most image editors these days called (in some form) "extract", which does a half-reasonable job of helping you along, but it's still very hit and miss.

Have a look at this one, it does seem to be heading in the right direction for you:

http://download.cnet.com/Photo-Crop-Editor/3000-2192_4-10536710.html

[joe_smith]

But Gimp is a thorn in their side, as it taking some of their market share.
Both gimp and Photoshop layers based

GIMP is just as good a Photoshop for most home users it mightn't be as good for the pro's, but to say its no good at all is misleading and untrue. Some of you are are in the pro category and are biased, as the features you need, (which most are 3rd party plugings anyway) the average joe out there wouldn't even need. GIMP is open source and free, and its very good for most users and their needs. GIMP is a powerfull piece of open source software, and dose the job for millions of user's. I use linux as my main OS and use gimp for all my photo editing needs, my young daughter uses it to put effects on the photo collages she makes. I have a windows PC with Photshop on it and all that "I" need to do can be done on both. There are a lot of tuorials on youtube on GIMP Leon, and most software has a learning curve, but thats half the fun. BTW a good tutorial on cutting out images in GIMP is here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DTlrnvD5TY) not as hard as it sounds.

quote from a Pro :)

This is post is my personal take on it, But ultimately it boils down to each to their own and we are all biased in our view's me included, As I support the open source movement my biased defends open source. Photoshop fans are biased as well and will defend Photoshop. This is just how us humans are aren't we, and why flame wars are a great Internet past time.

[Omaroo]

GIMP is fair to average to great for many RGB users - but for the CMYK model, in print, it is utterly useless. This is its main flaw and barrier to mainstream acceptance in commercial environments.

[Octane]

Joe,

Where did I (or anyone) say that The GIMP is useless, or "no good at all"?

I used it for years under Debian. I even have it installed on my Mac.

H

[luigi]

When Gimp finally releases a 16 bit version the world will change (probably due to something else tough)

[alistairsam]

I used to use Photoshop in my pre-press days to do things mentioned here like cutting people or objects, creating collages, large format posters and so on, so no doubt its very powerful.

For a home user though who just wants to play with RGB images and some digital effects, no harm in downloading GIMP and trying it out, its free after all and has a lot of powerful features for most home users.

Utimately depends on what she wants to do Leon, best way is for her to try it out first and see if it meets her needs. There are so many features there that can be used in many ways. Just search for photoshop tutorials on effects she's interested in and try them out with gimp.
you can get the same effect in a number of ways.

Inkscape is a very powerful vector based program that I simply love and is free as well. she might need to work with vectors sometimes. so good to have installed as well.

[ZeroID]

I think Microsoft do a free program called Photosynth especially for that kind of task. Transplanting faces etc from one pic to another to get everyone smiling. Some caveats though, needs to be from similar photos, preferably one of a sequence. Worth looking at though.

When I used to do weddings I always took at least three of each shot, somome was bound to have their eyes shut, turned away or whatever. Pick the best of the three. Wish I'd had photo software in those days but it was pre-PC.

[cjamo9]

ive got corel paintshop pro, i dont really know how to use it but i stumbled across a help video on it which shows how to take several shots of the same thing then erase stuff and put stuff in the picture. dont know how much content would be in the trial version though.

[leon]

Thanks Chris, and others for your assistance.

Leon