NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, February 2012
Free Services and Software for Digital Photographers
By Ira Wilsker, Radio Show Host,
Columnist, College Professor and deputy sheriff
iwilsker@sbcglobal.net
(click to email author)

WEBSITES:
http://www.advancedphotography.net/20-free-tools-photographers
http://www.irfanview.com http://www.vicman.net/lightartist/
http://pho.to/
http://funny.pho.to/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads
http://picasa.google.com
https://www.techsupportalert.com/pc/image-tools.html
http://mashable.com/2007/07/23/online-media
http://www.diyphotography.net/32-free-software-solutions-for-photographers

A quick visit to the big box electronics stores will show an incontrovertible fact about photography; for household (and even much professional) use, digital photography has overwhelmed film photography. Notice how even the typical corner drug store, once the primary drop off point for developing family snapshots, now offers in-house digital printing as its primary photographic service, rather than sending out film for processing. Even the renowned giant of the film industry, Kodak, may be approaching its demise as the demand for traditional photographic film and related services had dropped below the fiscal point of continued viability. When my kids were little decades ago, I exclusively used my Canon A-1 35mm camera, with its myriad of sophisticated lenses, to take albums of photos of my kids as they were growing up. When they were young, they had the ubiquitous 110 cameras, progressing to 35mm point-and-shoot cameras. It was not unusual for me to drop up to a dozen rolls of assorted film off at a local store for processing, especially when we knew that one of our local independent supermarkets periodically offered deeply discounted photo finishing as a loss leader in order to bring customers into the store twice - once to drop it off, and again a few days later to pick up the processed film and prints.

I will be honest and disclose that it has been about a dozen years or so since I last dropped off a roll of film for processing, as I have gone totally digital for my personal photographic needs. My first digital camera, which was very expensive in the mid 1990's, was a .3 (point-three) megapixel, 640x480, JVC camera, with a 10x optical zoom lens. My newest digital camera, purchased recently for less than half of what I paid for that old JVC, has a 14 megapixel image capability, with an 18x optical and 6x digital zoom, and can record HD video as well as take high quality still images. It is not just amateurs like me using digital cameras instead of film cameras; at my daughters' recent weddings, both the professional wedding photographers and videographers used digital cameras.

Now that digital photography is the well established norm, there is an abundance of services and software available to enable us to crop, edit, improve, add special effects, and otherwise improve our digital imagery. For about 10 years I have been using what may arguably be the most widely used, free, digital image editing software available, Irfanview (irfanview.com). According to the Irfanview website, since 2003 over a million copies of Irfanview have been downloaded every month; using simple arithmetic, that would be over 100 million copies, and that is only the count from a few (3 or 4) of the major download websites, and does not include the dozens of secondary download websites, or copies passed among individuals. As I had several times before reviewed Irfanview in this column, it should not take much of a reminder that it is an extremely powerful and capable image editor that can read, edit, convert, and write almost every known image format. In its basic form, Irfanview is simple enough for a novice to use, but by utilizing its advanced features, Irfanview has the power and features to successfully compete against its high-priced commercial competitors. For personal and academic use, the full featured Irfanview is totally free, but for commercial and professional use a license is a most modest $12.

There are many other excellent image editing utilities available, many of them also for free. One very popular free image editor is GIMP (gimp.org), which is an acronym for, " ... GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc." GIMP will run under Windows, on a MAC, or on UNIX based machines.

Google offers Picasa (picasa.google.com) as its free photo editor, which according to Google, "(can) organize, edit, and share your photos." As is to be expected from Google, Picasa is full featured and powerful, and can be as simple or as sophisticated to use as desired by the user. Picasa can, "Make simple edits -- such as cropping, straightening, removing redeye, retouching blemishes, or adding text -- to your photos. Or click "I'm Feeling Lucky" to try Picasa's all-in-one lighting and contrast fix." That "I'm Feeling Lucky" button will automatically determine what may be needed to improve a digital image, and automatically apply about a half-dozen fixes and improvements to the image, with the user being free to accept or reject the changes. The user can also select up to a dozen special effects, and implement another dozen "Picnik" special effects that can convert an image using a variety of other special effects. For those who may be concerned about losing the original image, Google says, "Don't worry -- Picasa always preserves your original photo. The photo edits you make are only viewable in Picasa until you decide to save your changes. Even then, Picasa creates a new version of the photo with your edits applied, leaving the original totally preserved."

Some digital photographers like to experiment with their images, and try a variety of artistic effects. One popular effect is to change the lighting on an image, and VicMan's Light Artist (free, http://www.pho.to, offers free online photo editing and special effects, including Smart Fix, a one click, comprehensive, digital photo enhancement. Other free services offered by Pho.To include an image touch up utility, a variety of specialty tools and filters, the ability to convert photos into animated avatars for gaming and other activities, convert images and faces into cartoons, and the capability to utilize over 400 frames and templates. These 400+ frames and templates (funny.pho.to) are a lot of fun to experiment with, as the user can bring a selected image into seasonal templates, calendars, montages, paintings, magazine covers, celebrity collages, photo frames, face photo montages, human-to-animal montages (put a human face on an animal body), cartoons, money (put a face on paper currency), zodiac signs, and monster effects.

There are many more online and mostly free utilities and services available to the digital photographer, and several online directories have compiled comprehensive lists of these services. Even though it is over four years old, "ONLINE MEDIA GOD: 400+ Tools for Photographers, Videobloggers, Podcasters & Musicians", available at mashable.com/2007/07/23/online-media, offers one of the most comprehensive directories of online editing services as well as image and video software utilities. "32 Free Software Solutions For Photographers" provides information and links about free image editing software at http://www.diyphotography.net/32-free-software-solutions-for-photographers. Another website, 20 Free And Useful Tools For Photographers, online at http://www.advancedphotography.net/20-free-tools-photographers contains an up-to-date lists of image editing and enhancement utilities. One of my personal favorite resources where I can always find the latest image utilities along with community ratings and recommendations is Gizmo's The Best Free Image View and Edit Software for PC, http://www.techsupportalert.com/pc/image-tools.html.

While I prefer to use Irfanview for almost all of my image editing, I also have the most fun creating unusual images from the hundreds of templates at funny.pho.to. It does not matter if the digital photographer is a greenhorn novice or an accomplished professional, there are some excellent free resources and utilities available to make the most basic digital snapshot into a work of art that can be cherished forever.
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