Scared of Photoshop? Try something simpler

Are you scared anytime you see someone working with Photoshop?
Let’s be honest, while Photoshop is great for working with images, it is hardly the ideal tool for a beginner.
Fortunately, there are some great, simpler alternatives for you to try out.

The first is Paint.net, a free image editor for Windows.

 It is very easy to learn and perform basic image manipulation, like cropping, resizing, adjusting brightness, contrast etc. It is also quite good for drawing something, or modifying a picture. I am normally quite reluctant to do any sort of image processing, have no interest at all but over the course of using paint.net, I have gained some skill in manipulating images with the “magic wand”. This allows you to select same sort of colors as an area, and for example turn a light background into complete white. Paint.net is quite fast, and doesn’t feel slow on almost any computer. It also supports using layers, so you can merge different pictures using layers and effects and stuff. This is where I reach my limits with image editing, so for me Paint.net is more than what I need.

 

The second one is Picasa, the free image software from Google.

 
Picasa has a lot of different functions: It can help you organize your photos, you can let it scan your computer for the photos and show them all in one place. You can tag them, mark them as favorite, label your friends in the photos.You can also edit your photos in Picasa , getting rid of red eyes is a matter of about 3 clicks. It also works wonderfully with Google Picasa Webalbums.
 
When I get back with a bunch of pictures on my camera, I usually do is the following: Copy the pictures from the card to the hard disk. Open Picasa, it scans the changes and finds the new pictures automatically. Then I go through them once, delete the bad ones. Then I go through once more and mark the ones I want to upload to my webalbum. Simply click on Upload, write the name of the new album, choose maximum picture sizes and I’m done. Picasa webalbums makes it really easy to share your photos with friends, you get 1 GB of free space and the expansion options are nicely priced (an extra 20GB is 5$ / year).
 
About the only thing that is not perfect is: It is not possible to make sub-albums, so in effect, all of your web-albums are in one “folder” and after a while gets kinda crowded. Other than that, highly recommended.

 

 The wildcard, if you want to call it that, is Microsoft Powerpoint.

 

Yes, I know, it is not really an image editing program. But if you just want to paste together some images, it is just perfect. A lot of the illustrations I put together does not require a lot of finesse, it is just moving and resizing a bunch of small pictures. For this sort of stuff, Powerpoint is perfect, they even added a “Save as picture” option in Office 2007. Nice and easy.
 

Image editing on your computer need not be complicated, as long as you are using the right software. For me personally, these three save a huge amount of frustration and pain for two simple reasons: They are all that a beginner needs, and they are easy to use. Have Fun!