Essential Photo Software?
Sure, Photoshop is king. But are there other free programs that you find usefull? Can they replace Photoshop? The only free replacement I really know about is GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program.
GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.
Have any of you used GIMP for photography work? If so, please share.
If you’re willing to pay, there are a number of others from Elements to Paint Shop Pro. However, I’ve never found these to be quite to my liking. Personally, I use some or all of the following in my workflow.
- Adobe Photoshop - For most image manipulation.
- Adobe Bridge - For organizing and tagging.
- Nikon Capture - For working with RAW files (I’m not a big fan of Adobe RAW).
- Nikon PictureProject - For transfering files from my CF cards to computer.
- Flickr Uploadr - For uploaded photos to flickr.
- Neat Image - For noise reduction.
What do you use?
Responses and Conversations
Having attempted to move to Linux and then use GIMP for web work, I can say that for many tasks GIMP is great, but the UI just gets in the way. They really need to rework the entire interface to make it useful for everyday work.
As far as free replacements go, I have the feeling there’s something decent out there that we need to hunt down but that is missed because everyone talks about GIMP.
Comment by Chris Frazier on March 31st, 2006 at 5:41 pm