Software You Need

I'm a firm believer in not spending money if I don't have to. It's not that I won't but if something free will do the job I need to do, then free is it.

My second belief is that the majority of people are NOT computer oriented. They are ordinary folks who like to take photos of their children, of their grandchildren, of their trips. They want to be able to put their photos on their computer and work with them. They don't want to become computer experts - they just want results. Where do my beliefs originate? In the night school general-interest classes on "Digital Photo Editing" and "Learning to Use Your Digital Camera" that I teach.

When it comes to working with my photos in Windows, my primary tools are:

• Picasa from Google which is a superb tool for organizing your photos on your computer, for simple fixes and simple edits, and especially for creating backups of your photos to CDs or DVDs. I teach many, many people who are lost when it comes to creating backkups and Picasa keeps it simple.

• PhotoFiltre, a French editing program (with an English version). This photo of the Arch of Constantine just outside the Colliseum was corrected for exposure, had the perspective straightened, was colour enhanced, had a canvas filter applied, had the edges "blurred" and was labelled - all in PhotoFiltre in under five minutes!
  
  PhotoFiltre actually comes in two versions - the free one and a more advanced version called PhotoFiltre Studio which sells for a very reasonable 29 Euro. PhotoFiltre Studio supports layers which give far more control to the photo editing process than software that does not use layers but Studio does not implement them at a level that I would feel comfortable recommending it over other software.

• Autostitch which is a graduate school project from University of British Columbia and is my all-time favourite for creating panoramas. The following panorama of Honolulu started life as a series of 7 photos taken in sequence from left to right. Autostitch then took the individual photos, matched them up, blended the edges and created the panoramic composite. Not bad for a free program and a lot easier than using many of the more expensive programs.