Photo Editing Software Reviews & Comparisons 2014
Photo editing software can help to edit images or finetune pictures and much more. Below are some of the top photo editing software compared.
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| Product Name | Corel PaintShop Pro X5 | CyberLink Photo Director | XARA Graphic Designer | Ashampoo Photo Commander | Adobe Photoshop Elements | Serif PhotoPlus X6 | ACDSee Pro 6 | Zoner Photo Studio | Photo Scape |
| Website | Visit | Visit | Visit | Visit | Visit | Visit | Visit | Visit | Visit |
| Pricing | US$ 49.99 | US$ 99.99 | US$ 89.99 | US$ 49.99 | US$ 79.99 | US$ 89.99 | US$ 59.99 | US$ 69.99 | US$ 0.00 |
| Review | |||||||||
| Photo Editing Software Features | |||||||||
| Corrections | Few | Advanced | Many | Yes | Advanced | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Batch Editing | Yes | Yes | None | Limited | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Editing Effects | 250 | 70+ | Many | 35+ | 100+ | 20+ | 45 | Yes | None |
| 3D Support | No | No | Limited | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| RAW Processing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Editing Features | Yes | Advanced | Many | Advanced | Many | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Utilities | Yes | Yes | Many | Yes | Yes | Yes | Many | Limited | Yes |
| Drawing Features | None | Yes | Yes | Basic | Yes | None | Limited | Basic | None |
| Input Formats | Yes | All Major | Many | Many | Many | Yes | Many | Many | 100+ |
| Output Formats | 50+ | 50+ | Many | Many | Many | 20+ | Many | Many | 20+ |
| Sharing | No | Yes | None | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | None |
| Backups | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | Auto | None |
| HDR Editing | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | None |
| General Information | |||||||||
| Support | Tickets | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | None | |||
| Supported OS(es) | Windows | Windows | Windows | Windows | 2 | Windows | Windows | Windows | Windows |
| Special Features | Many | Many | Many | Many | Many | Yes | Many | Few | Yes |
Image Editing Software Buying Guide
For over a decade, when it came to desktop publishing, just about everyone knew that you needed a Mac for the task. If you had a PC, graphics editors would smirk or laugh at your lack of knowledge. Yet over the past few years, this odd situation where the Mac held court over any other platform, but only in one area, started to change quickly. Mac-based software started to be released for the PC under the Windows operating system as well. So now Adobe Photoshop is available for the PC and the Mac, and anything you can do on one system you can certainly do on the other.
Furthermore, there are now a good number of alternatives to Photoshop which are solely offered for the PC using Windows.
More Photos Taken Daily
The growth in the interest of amateur photographers to take snaps with anything from a smartphone, a disposable camera, a high end point & click camera, right up to a high-end DSLR, has meant that more and more people are finding graphics applications necessary to deal with their snaps.
Organizer or Graphics Editor
It is important to decide whether you are looking for a cool way to manage your photo collection or if you wish to perform professional-looking edits.
Photo Collection Organizers
A photo collection organizer app is one that can easily import your photos, allow tagging, add geo-location data, perform facial recognition based on your Facebook friends list, and more. It can do a masterful job of letting you create Smart Albums, which are ones based on certain search criteria. This criteria can include a geo-location for where the snaps where taken, which people were in the photos, etc.
That said, the image manipulation tools available in an organizer app are usually quite limited. A few color adjustments here, a red-eye removal filter there. Good, but nothing too advanced.
Professional Editors
A graphics editor is another animal entirely. These applications can be something as advanced as Photoshop CS6, with an array of brushes to use down to the individual pixel level, filters and other tools to remove image imperfections from a photo-shoot set for the cover of Vogue magazine. With this level of sophisticated comes an equal level of complexity. Any users of a professional-level editing application will have to climb a steep learning curve. So many filters, so many different brushes; what does each of them do and how much practice time is needed to become proficient at using each of them?
Software Choices
For photo collection software, Google offers the Picasa package which does an excellent job of organization. Often people will edit with one package and organize with another, and this free package is their organizer of choice. However, several professional packages offer organizational elements (tagging, facial recognition, etc.) within their own app or as part of a secondary organizer app.
For image editors, there is the choice of software that attempts to straddle the photo collection / graphics editor line, and applications that are professional editing applications only.
Choosing the right package for the job
Once the choice has been made to go for a professional image editing suite, the next choice is which one to use. For this it is highly recommended to make good use of the free trial periods to fully experience what the popular image editing suites have to offer. This way it is possible to experience first hand which graphical user interface (GUI) works best for your tastes and how well it can be adjusted to meet your requirements.
What works well for one may prove to be a nightmare for others so it is vital to try it all out first including the many features and tools that the software suites include. Most of the professional software suites are very complete and can do anything the other suites can do. However, the quality and accuracy of the same features can differ greatly and therefore it is vital to test which package produces the best results for the type of images you like to work with frequently.
Free or Paid
There are at least a couple of good image editing applications that are free.
For photo collections, Picasa is a popular choice. With graphics editors, Photoscape is also worth a look.
Trial Versions
It is well worth taking looking to see if there is a trial version for the paid software. A number of software developers do offer downloadable trial versions from 7 to thirty days in duration. This can be extremely helpful to determine whether the software package is a good fit for your needs before making a purchase.
In Conclusion
Even though the choice in software can be confusing, choosing the best image editing software is ultimately a matter of answering a few simple questions and after those are answered, trying out the many different packages to determine which one best suits your needs perfectly. By eliminating what you don't need and making good use of the free trial periods on the software suites you choose to try out before buying, it is possible to select the best one of the lot.
Though this may be a time consuming matter, it is well worth it because after all you are choosing software you will be using professionally and most likely on a daily basis.
