What is your favorite photo editor?

[Ionlorder]

What is your favorite photo editor?

Personally, I prefer Phootoshop because it is very complete, however, there are times that I feel lazy when using it and I look for one online or use an application from my mobile.

The online is www.fotor.com
and the application is a photo editor / photo collage.

Of course, both are not as complete as Phootoshop but for a quick edit they are very good. Only that I would like to change the application because now it is becoming very limited.

[Coffee Pancake]

I used to be a paint shop pro fangirl, but times change .. Photoshop. I like to dabble with others on and off.

The Gimp and I have never managed to be on speaking terms, we have only ever managed to stand at opposite ends of a hallway and scream obscenities.

Although .. It seems doodling with blender 2.8 will be a thing too

Online .. no, not worth the time and hassle. always quicker to just open PS. For quick edits, windows picture viewer works.

[Selena Alexandre]

I definetly prefer Photoshop, have tried Gimp but there was no way to get used to it

[MrsSeren]

I use a freebie program called Paint.NET and got quite used to using.

[Jackson Redstar]

hands down PS as it is the only one I ever used, but, now that it is on a never ending rental price, may be rethinking that!

[Coffee Pancake]

mumble mumble cs2 mumble mumble

[LittleMe Jewell]

I never do anything more than crop and occasionally adjust brightness or contrast.  Thus I'm still using an old product from many, many eons ago called Picture It - not even available anymore.

[Eva Knoller]

I am a recent convert to PS. I used paint.net for a bit, but I wanted to be able to do more with my pictures. In my opinion PS is the best, and there are so many tutorials online that I am constantly learning new techniques and tricks. GIMP was too complicated for me unfortunately. I really do hate having a monthly fee for PS, but there’s no way around it.

[Tick Marville]

On 6/10/2019 at 10:22 AM, Jackson Redstar said:

hands down PS as it is the only one I ever used, but, now that it is on a never ending rental price, may be rethinking that!

But for the price it's also a never ending upgrade.

[Alyona Su]

For me, it's definitely Affinity Photo - full-blown Photoshop replacement, the only caveat is that it's for macOS only, but definitely a PS-killer. As for Windows, I prefer to use ON1 Photo RAW and even though it also adds a plugin to Photoshop and Lightroom, it works 100% as a stand-alone as well.

And both are perpetual license (not an overpriced subscription) and just as MS Office is nowadays irrelevant (cheaper, easier, just as powerful third-party apps available) the same is true with Photoshop and Illustrator.

Edited June 11, 2019 by Alyona Su

[Madelaine McMasters]

I'm on a Mac, and have been moving from Photoshop CS6 over to Pixelmator Pro, which runs on my iPad as well. So far it's just been a matter of learning where everything is, but everything I need is there. Alyona's choice, Affinity Photo, is another fine alternative to Photoshop, and will be more recognizable to those with Photoshop experience. Either choice is far less expensive than Adobe.

[Alyona Su]

2 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I'm on a Mac, and have been moving from Photoshop CS6 over to Pixelmator Pro, which runs on my iPad as well. So far it's just been a matter of learning where everything is, but everything I need is there. Alyona's choice, Affinity Photo, is another fine alternative to Photoshop, and will be more recognizable to those with Photoshop experience. Either choice is far less expensive than Adobe.

I also have Pixelmator and Pixelmator Pro -  I like a lot of what it does, but a huge learning curve. Grab an Affinity Photo demo - the interface is a LOT like Photoshop, so a shorter learning curse and hundreds of demo videos for pretty much every tool and action. //Just saying

Edit to pass a link: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/ ... AND OH! They also have a WINDOWS version now.  Grab a demo and Photoshop irrelevancy will now confirmed.

Edited June 11, 2019 by Alyona Su

[Madelaine McMasters]

19 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

I also have Pixelmator and Pixelmator Pro -  I like a lot of what it does, but a huge learning curve. Grab an Affinity Photo demo - the interface is a LOT like Photoshop, so a shorter learning curse and hundreds of demo videos for pretty much every tool and action. //Just saying

Edit to pass a link: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/ ... AND OH! They also have a WINDOWS version now.  Grab a demo and Photoshop irrelevancy will now confirmed.

I have Affinity Photo. It's absolutely more like Photoshop than Pixelmator Pro.

[Bree Giffen]

Ohhh. Looks interesting. I use Clip Studio right now but if Affinity is like Photoshop without the need for subscription then it's worth a look. In Windows too. 

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

I started with GIMP because it was free. It took a while but I managed to learn it alright. Don't have enough experience to compare it to anything else.

[Sasy Scarborough]

I use PS and love it, but for quick editing and to use templates that make life so much easier overall, built in gif controls and combination of photos etc the Photoscape is the best for me and free and has so many features.

[Adam Spark]

I use multiple programs.

For shots with SL serving as the backdrop (or a backdrop prop), I use a very old version of Photoshop I got years ago for layer manipulation, and PhotoScape X for tremendous adjustments, effects and filters. Its free but incredible. There is also a pro version.

For green screening and post-producing a background (either in-world or otherwise), I start out with paint.net, and use from what I can tell an unparalleled chroma key plugin.

[Orwar]

   Gimp. It can do most things PS can, and I'd argue that the Gimp community is more inclusive and patient since, well, it's an open source program accessible to anyone - the PS community appear very elitist, almost as if they think themselves the upper class of the photo editing community; in my mind it doesn't matter if you used PS Ultra Pro Deluxe delivered with curly fries and a glass of champagne, or if you used MS Paint - it's the end result that matters, and which way you chose to get there.

   Just look at the difference between Gimp tutorials and PS tutorials on YouTube - for Gimp you'll usually just see the program itself and someone explains a process by doing it, but for PS there's usually a yuppie behind the largest possible Mac and with a setup of tablets and backdrops trying to look as cool and hi-tech and modern as possible.

[Coffee Pancake]

I've spent my entire adult life working with images & colour professionally, photography, design, web and in print (small and large formats). Gimp is not even in the same league as Photoshop, and to even suggest that it can compete, only makes it clear you have no idea what photoshop can do. My car has 4 wheels, your car has 4 wheels, what's the difference, right!

As as aside, how you get to the end result does actually matter. It's like hauling your groceries home in the store's shopping cart vs calling a lyft. Sure, your months supply of funions gets where it should be, but one option takes a fraction of the time and doesn't consume an excessive amount of your time and energy in the process.

There are reasons Photoshop is king of the hill and has easily kept it's crown for almost 30 years at this point.

If you just want a basic tool, might I suggest you take a look at Paint.net (free). For a more capable Photoshop analogue Affinity Photo ($50), or you could just google up that version of CS2 Adobe accidentally gave away to the world.

[Orwar]

   Well, let us dissect the rhetoric behind this overt Photoshop-elitism, shall we.

5 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

I've spent my entire adult life working with images & colour professionally, photography, design, web and in print (small and large formats).

   Appeal to authority.

5 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Gimp is not even in the same league as Photoshop, and to even suggest that it can compete, only makes it clear you have no idea what photoshop can do.

   Ad hominem.

5 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

My car has 4 wheels, your car has 4 wheels, what's the difference, right!

   Faulty comparison.

5 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

As as aside, how you get to the end result does actually matter. It's like hauling your groceries home in the store's shopping cart vs calling a lyft. Sure, your months supply of funions gets where it should be, but one option takes a fraction of the time and doesn't consume an excessive amount of your time and energy in the process.

   Another faulty comparison.

   I'm not going to say that you're plain wrong though, because yes, Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard. But if you're just getting into SL photography, PS may well simply be too much - to use comparison as a rhetorical device; you don't need a space shuttle to cross the street:

Photoshop wasn’t built with only digital photographs in mind. It covers all aspects of designing, illustrating and many other disciplines, This means that Photoshop has many tools that you will never use.
This takes space and makes the learning process much more confusing.
GIMP, on the other hand, built with digital photography in mind. So you cut out all the unnecessary tools from the mix. It is not only faster, you have less chance of doing something that you have no idea how to fix. - Craig Hull, photographer

   Source

   But perhaps you can give me an example of a specific photo editing process that one might want to use for an SL snapshot which you don't think can be done in Gimp? I'm genuinely curious, as I've yet to find a photo editing tutorial for Photoshop that I couldn't translate to Gimp with a few simple work-arounds or plugins.

[animats]

I still use an ancient paid-for version of Photoshop Elements on Windows.

On Linux, I usually use Pinta, which is adequate for cropping and minor color adjustments.

I've tried The Gimp, and it sucks less than it used to, but I haven't used it enough to be any good at it. Historically it suffered from the open source disease -  a huge number of features in search of an architecture. So did Blender, which has slowly gotten its user interface act together.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Orwar said:

But perhaps you can give me an example of a specific photo editing process that one might want to use for an SL snapshot which you don't think can be done in Gimp? I'm genuinely curious, as I've yet to find a photo editing tutorial for Photoshop that I couldn't translate to Gimp with a few simple work-arounds or plugins.

Oh I don't know ... how about none destructive editing so you can work a picture without backing yourself into a hole. Spot & other healing tools for cleaning up those seams and glitches, content aware tools, literally everything in the layer style palette, 3d content, colour & luminance masks and so on. 

Stupid example that takes seconds in Photoshop - Add some text to your SL snapshot. add a border & soft drop shadow to that text, then change your mind about what the text should say. I'll wait while you delete all those layers and start over..... 

Gimp is junk. The UI is junk. The workflow is junk.  The tool set has barely advanced in a decade. The colour support is junk, .. and just forget about it if you ever intend to print with any hope of proofing first, double your misery if your printer is CMYK (which they all are).

But it's free, open source and will open PSD files, which some how means it's comparable. 

<Imaginary Jennifer Lawrence gif here>

 

[Orwar]

1 minute ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Oh I don't know ... how about none destructive editing so you can work a picture without backing yourself into a hole.

   Easy. Create a layer duplicate before doing invasive alterations to it, keep the unedited copy until you're finished the the process and make new copies along the way as needed.

3 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Spot & other healing tools for cleaning up those seams and glitches

   Gimp has a healing tool that works fairly well, I use it all the time for seams and glitches.

4 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

content aware tools, literally everything in the layer style palette, 3d content, colour & luminance masks and so on. 

   Gimp has several layer modes, I'm not sure if you're looking for any specific ones - making masks by colour and luminance is easily done.

5 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Stupid example that takes seconds in Photoshop - Add some text to your SL snapshot.

   Takes seconds in Gimp, too.

5 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

add a border & soft drop shadow to that text

   Easily done.

6 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

then change your mind about what the text should say. I'll wait while you delete all those layers and start over..... 

   Well, if putting the wagon before the horse is your preferred process, who am I to judge? Also, doing a drop shadow takes seconds at most.

8 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Gimp is junk. The UI is junk. The workflow is junk.  The tool set has barely advanced in a decade. The colour support is junk, .. and just forget about it if you ever intend to print with any hope of proofing first, double your misery if your printer is CMYK (which they all are).

   You think the Gimp UI is junk, I think the PS UI is junk. The tool set has seen changes and advancements since I started using Gimp - but most importantly, it contains all relevant tools, and if you're missing a tool there's almost always a plugin for it anyway. And I'm not sure about you, but I don't see much point in printing my SL photos? Is that a thing?

11 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

But it's free, open source and will open PSD files, which some how means it's comparable. 

   It will open and export a pretty wide variety of formats, and if you need a specific format that isn't supported in the base setup, again, plugins and converters. Again though, I don't know what type of format is missing that would somehow be relevant to SL photography?

12 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

<Imaginary Jennifer Lawrence gif here>

   <Real Dethklok GIF because reasons?>

[Pow Curameyer]

Photoshop all day, everyday! 😍

[Doc Carling]

Affinity Photo and Photoimpact X3.