Best free Photoshop download for beginner

Gardening_Girl

Hi there

I have just received a ton of very old photos from my late mother's personal effects. I want to share them with the family but they are not scanning very well and some are in poor condition. I have had one very special one done professionally but frankly its cost a fortune and I would like to have a go myself. I have seen lots of free photoshop type software to download for free but which is the best?

I also have some old projection reels and video cartridges I know you can transfer these to DVD but again the cost is scary.

I would be very grateful for ideas.

Thanks in advance

santer_2

One option

http://www.getpaint.net/

WhiteChristmas

The GIMP (it's not rude, it's an acronym!) is an open source (free) Photoshop alternative which offers lots of functionality but be warned that what you want to do is NOT as easy as it sounds - it's quite a steep learning curve. There are loads of tutorials online.

Paint.net will allow you to do simpler editing more easily - depends how involved you want to get.

Easiest way to do video cassettes to DVD is to hook up a video player to a DVD recorder (either a set-top box or a capture card on your computer).

I think the only real option for do-it-yourself film conversion is to project it and recapture on a video camera.

janetmw

Another option is the free starter edition of PhotoPlus from Serif here.

Janet

fenlander_uk

A few weeks ago I got a new pc and decided to try to find an alternative to the Photoshop CS4 I had previously been using. I tried Gimp, Paint (with a number of plugins), PhotoFiltre, Irfan, ShiftN and Faststone and by using them in various combinations I eventually managed to get some basic tweaking done on a set of holiday photos.

Then I downloaded a trial of Photoshop Elements 10. Much better results in a quarter the time. £57 at Amazon. If you've got a lot of photos to process, I'd suggest biting the bullet and getting software that really works rather than a load of stuff that mostly gets in your way. The Elements organiser is, IMHO, rubbish, but you don't have to use it and the editor is simply brilliant.

Gardening_Girl

Thanks everyone for your replies, i did sign up for a course but there were only 3 people there so they cancelled it. I didn't want to spend a ton of money on the soft ware then find I wasn't up to using it.

mart44

The choice is wide. It depends how much renovating of photos you want to do. Some can take a long time, depending on their condition. I don't think there is any really quick way. I did these (link below) using Corel PhotoPaint, which is part of the CorelDraw Suite. The full program is expensive but there is a Home and Student edition that is more affordable. I think that Gimp (free) could also do the job:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/boots44/photo-restore-3.html?fno

yangptangkipperbang

fenlander_uk wrote: »

Then I downloaded a trial of Photoshop Elements 10. Much better results in a quarter the time. £57 at Amazon. If you've got a lot of photos to process, I'd suggest biting the bullet and getting software that really works rather than a load of stuff that mostly gets in your way. The Elements organiser is, IMHO, rubbish, but you don't have to use it and the editor is simply brilliant.

I have used Elements for many years and would heartily recommend it. I have just moved to CS6 but have kept Elements on my PC as there are somethings that Elements does which full Photoshop doesn't !.
Version 11 is due out soon, so you may be able to get even better prices if you shop around.
Agree, to some extent, with the comments about the Organiser. The main drawback is that it only holds thumbnails of your photographs, the full sized photographs can be stored anywhere on your PC - so it is possible (and quite common) to have a photograph as a thumbnail and to actually NOT have the full size version as you have either moved it or deleted it.
If you use the Organiser you must fully understand how it works and I would suggest you make a totally separate filing system on your PC for your photographs. The more photographs you have the more cumbersome it becomes.

One mistake a lot of people make with cheap/free photo packages is to do all their work on the photographs in .jpeg format. Everytime you open a .jpeg file, work on it and close it again you reduce the quality of the image (the software compresses it and "throws away" bits of the photograph). So it is possible to spend a lot of time "improving" a photograph and actually end up with something worse than you started with.
Scan your photos and save or immediately convert them as either .psd or .tif(f) format, these do not compress the image. You can open and close these hundreds of times and will not lose any picture quality
If you want to send copies of photographs to relatives you just "export" a copy as a .jpeg file and send that.

Elements is WELL worth the money - try it on the 30 day trial and see...............

PS: There are lots of video tutorials on line, either the Adobe website or good old youtube.

tonyh66

Picasa by google?

coe90

GIMP
Krita
Paint.NET
ChocoFlop
Cinepaint
Pixia
Pixen
Picnik
Splashup
Adobe Photoshop Express
Artweaver

are the free alternatives of photoshop. I use "Artweaver" just similar to adobe photoshop and takes very less space comparison to adobe photoshop.

Figment

redrosephotos wrote: »

Being an expert in this area - search the user name in google and add .co.uk and you will find my photo editing site - if you're looking for low cost the GIMP is a very good editing tool. However, like Photoshop it takes alot of time to master. I liken photo editing to cooking, anyone can learn how to do basic retouching/editing like anyone can learn to make a lasagne. However, most would rather spend the £5 buying the ready made lasagne and that's where businesses like mine can be handy because we offer affordable photo editing.

There is a big step up from the lasagne though. Professional Photo Restoration is a time consuming skill and unless you have the passion or hours to put in learning it is sometimes easier and more cost effective to pay to have the more tricky pictures edited professionally.

If you require any further information let me know. With regards the scanning, we offer a free scanning service so if you have some pictures that you feel are above your skill level or you just want some free advice contact me through the website - username plus .co.uk

A blatant advert if ever I saw one.