Image handling & new camera

harryhound

Hi experts,

I'm a silver surfer who until recently had a Windows '98 dial up PC, largely unchanged since '98 machine. It is still here and still working.

Last Xmas the family bought me a Dell PC running Windows XP. I think it was intended to be a commercial PC rather than a hobby one. It has the Windows office stuff installed but little else.

I have installed firefox for web browsing and managed to link up with MAAF for broadband:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=4315749&highlight=harryhound#post4315749

Now I need to get to grip with using images (the 98 kit has a simple scanner making .jpg files and some installed software that allowed me to fiddle about somewhat with bit maps etc. However my interest was limited.)

I've yet to invest in a new scanner, the old one gives off interference that bounces round the ring main and upsets my broadband.
Meanwhile Mrs Hound has invested in a Cannon Ixus75 camera, she now has something that will fit in a handbag in place of a round the neck traditional SLR with zoom.

So we are going to need software to view and manipulate the 101 different types of image that are now available.

And something to play with the photos.

Plus some site on the web to store/print things (?) and perhaps a chat site to seek advice from like minded image manipulators.

If you have made this journey, please give us the benefit of your experience.

kind regards,

Harry

PS I've already scanned this forum and found mention of

photoshop
http://www.irfanview.com/
http://www.gimp.org/windows/

any thoughts on these?

seaweasel

Viewing and file management you can just do in windows. I'm not sure what you mean by 101 file formats, your camera will probably be using JPEG (or perhaps RAW if you choose to do so), and you can save the files in whatever format you want when editing.

GIMP is free and pretty good, you might also want to try Photoshop Elements which is a home version of the industry standard image manipulation application. Neither support CMYK but I doubt that will be a problem for you.

As for web storage, Flickr is pretty good and there are also sites like Photobucket. You could also just install a free gallery script on some web hosting like Gallery2 or Zen Gallery.

f1charlie

http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

is another editor you might like to look at. A bit user friendlier than Irfanview, although probably not as many features; and definitely friendlier than the quirky gimp, although that is very powerful once you are used to it.

chairman_miaow

For photo software , you can't go wrong with Picasa from Google :

http://picasa.google.com/

BillScarab

Instead if Gimp you could try Gimpshop, it is basically Gimp modified to look like Photoshop so it is more familiar to Windows users. Gimp was originally developed for Unix/Linux systems so the interface can seem a touch odd if you're used to Windows.

harryhound

Thanks everyone for your advice so far.

I'll be checking out your suggestions and come back here to let you know of my progress.

(Don't hold your breath, definitely more tortoise than hare).

Harry

nej

chairman_miaow wrote: »

For photo software , you can't go wrong with Picasa from Google :

http://picasa.google.com/

Agreed. I installed this last night and was amazed by how good it was.

Moneymaker

This won't help you as a Windows user but for those fortunates who own an Apple Mac, you can use the "Preview" and "iPhoto" software that comes free with your Mac. You can also get a cheap shareware program called "GraphicConverter" which works very well. Apart from that, you might well get a free copy of "Adobe Photoshop Elements" with your scanner (maybe Windows too?)

And if you happen across a copy of Adobe PhotoShop or Macromedia Fireworks, you're on a winner.

(Gimp is also available for Macs but I found it very quirky).

harryhound

Today Microsoft published more accounts showing squillions of profit.

Some pundit was wheeled on to discuss Microsoft's future and there was a discussion about the threats to Microsoft's proprietary software profits facing being reduced by googols (measured in Zimbabwe's dollars anyway); when Google really gets its suite of free software organised. It seems that at present only students, schools and money saving experts are installing it.

From my experience, students go out into the wide world and expect their employer's to supply them with what they are used to.
So watch out Microsoft, your software may soon be as well known as IBM's PLI and DLI. (programming language no1 and database language no 1 or something like that I think.)

Is this the link to the future:

http://picasa.google.com/

How does Google pay for it to be given away ?

Harry.

PS I've got the English English Firefox plug in dictionary installed and it is spell checking this like a word document. It does not like squillions & Google - suggests googly!

ManAtHome

Moneymaker wrote: »

you might well get a free copy of "Adobe Photoshop Elements" with your scanner

Good point - you're almost certain to get some image-editing software with the scanner.

Also have a scan at some computer magazines with free CDs - they sometimes have older versions of decent image editors.

f1charlie

harryhound wrote: »

http://picasa.google.com/

How does Google pay for it to be given away ?

Those advertising links you see on the right hand side when you do a google search; companies who pay for their websites to come up first in searches.