Exploring Popular Image Editors

Creativity Software: Exploring Popular Image Editors

No one image editor is right for every digital photographer. Different image editing programs offer different feature sets and take different approaches to manipulating digital images. The trick is to find the program (or programs) with the features and approach that most closely match your needs and working style. Image editing programs range in capabilities from extremely limited to impressively powerful. And, unsurprisingly, you find a similar range in price, from free or low-cost for programs with limited capabilities to several hundred dollars for high-end programs.

The disc that came with your digital camera probably included a simple image editor. You can find dozens of others on the shelves of local computer stores or as free downloads from the Internet. These programs are quick and easy to use for viewing your images and for producing simple prints, but they usually have quite limited capabilities. Your search for an image editing program undoubtedly will extend beyond the simple view-and-print utilities, as well as those already included in the Windows and Mac operating systems. Wanting more capabilities than what the low-end programs offer, however, doesn't necessarily mean that you should go all the way to the other end of the spectrum. An assortment of midrange programs just may fit your needs very nicely.

You can roughly group the available image editing programs into four tiers:

• In the top tier, Adobe Photoshop stands alone as the de facto standard for professional image editing. If you're working with images professionally, you need to own and use Adobe Photoshop. Although you may also find one of the other editors helpful for specialized tasks, Photoshop is your meal ticket.

• Highly capable image editors make up the second tier. Although they may not match Photoshop's every feature, they have the power and versatility to meet the needs of many digital photographers. The image editors in this tier often feature wizards and dialog boxes to automate common tasks, but the main focus is on direct access to the image with a variety of manual selection, retouching, and painting tools.

This tier of image editors includes the following:

• Adobe Photoshop Elements (not to be confused with Adobe Photoshop)

• Corel Paint

• Corel PhotoPaint

• Jasc Paint Shop Pro

• Macromedia Fireworks

• Ulead PhotoImpact

• The third-tier image editors sacrifice some of the raw power and versatility of the first and second tier programs in favor of dramatically improved ease of use. Wizards and dialog boxes that walk you through the steps required to complete a task make most common image editing tasks more accessible. The programs in this group may also have the ability to access your image for direct manipulation with retouching and painting tools, but you get somewhat limited manual editing features. The main emphasis is on the program's automated editing tasks.

These image editors fall into the third tier:

• Apple iPhoto

• Microsoft image editing software

• Roxio PhotoSuite

• The fourth tier primarily consists of the simple, view-and-print utilities, although some of the programs also have some limited image-editing capabilities. These programs often feature simple and attractive user interfaces with big graphical buttons for each task. You can use them very easily, but they offer only a very limited assortment of simple image editing options, such as cropping and overall color balance. Generally, these programs don't enable you to select and edit a portion of an image with manual retouching tools.

The programs on the bottom (or fifth) tier come and go and don't usually have the level of support needed for serious image editing. Unless you have very basic image editing needs, stick to the top four tiers