Make Your Photos Come to Life: A Look at Free Photo Editors
Photography is an important element of the Promotional Product industry. Having the ability to show your clients what their product will look like with their logo on it is a great way to close the deal and make a sale.
However, one of the challenges distributors often face is how to make those photos look great. We’ve written blogs in the past about how to use simple photography techniques to increase the quality of your photos, but having access to photo editing software can make a good photo even better! The bad news is that many companies are not able to justify purchasing photo editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, which can cost hundreds of dollars. The good news is that there are many free photo editing programs available online that will do a great job!
One of the most straight forward editors, which is great for people with little or no photo editing background, is a program called Pixlr. Not only does it have a mobile app for those of you utilizing the tips we featured in our Smart Phone Photography Challenge post, it also has an online editing tool. Pixlr has all of the basic tools you expect out of a photo editing program: crop, image size, brightness and contrast controls, etc.
It also features a very user friendly layout, the ability to save images in five different file formats, and the option to post images directly to your Facebook account. Advanced users can also create image layers (just like in Photoshop) and do complex image transformations to correct perspective and create virtual samples. For those of you looking to make your family photos look better, it has a good selection of photo filters and does a great job on red-eye reduction too!
Picasa is an editing program that has slightly more limited options than Pixlr, but has the added bonus of being a great application to organize your photos (which was its original purpose). Unlike Pixlr, Picasa has to be downloaded to your computer. Fully integrated with Google+, Picasa allows you to adjust your photos using 12 basic photo filters that feature slider tools that adjust brightness, contrast, hue/saturation, and other image aspects. One of the coolest features of Picasa is that it lets you preview the changes you are making to your images without saving over the original image. It also features side-by-side comparisons of your original shot and the preview of the changes you are making. Picasa’s photo album organization allows you to tag photos with keywords so that you can find them easily in the future and links up to your Google+ account for easy photo sharing.
The most robust of all free photo editors is Gimp. Like Picasa, Gimp must be downloaded onto your computer, but once it’s there, it’s basically like having a free version of Photoshop. Any effect you can create in Photoshop, you can also create in Gimp. A word of warning though: this program is not for the faint of heart. It is just as complex as Photoshop, and has a similar learning curve, but it is unbeatable in its applications. For those of you who have Photoshop experience, the first thing you will notice is that Gimp doesn’t work exactly like Photoshop. The basic tools are the same, but complex editing tasks are accomplished in Gimp in a vastly different manner than in Photoshop. The best part of this software though is that everything you need to know can be found in the Help menu! It’s an exhaustive resource that requires several hundred pages to print out (don’t worry though, it’s all online). There are also great tutorials on the manufacturer’s website and on YouTube to help you accomplish nearly every task. For those of you who want the editing ability of Photoshop without the huge cost, Gimp is the program for you.
We all know that image is important, especially when it comes to our products. Even the simplest of image adjustments can make a huge impact on how our product photography is perceived. Luckily, there are these great free software options available to help you along the way!
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