Beginner free editing software

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lee hayes

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Edit My Images
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hi all, now that i have my new camera was wondering if theres are any good free editing software out there....dont want to pay untill ive got my head round it
 
If you use a tablet the free 'Fotor' editing app isn't bad. Nothing like as complex as GIMP but handy for very quick edits.
 
The free Nikon software is a good place to start.

You don't mention whether you use a Mac or Windows (or Linux) but DigiKam is a very good place to start for all 3. Be aware that some picture editors are destructive (any change you make is actually written into the image and is not reversible) while some are non-destructive, and the only time an image is altered is when it is exported, with the original remaining untouched for further work if needed. If using a destructive editor then always create a copy of the original BEFORE starting work - I have too many images that I can't recover for re-working because the originals were edited & re-sized for web use.
 
ancient_mariner said:
The free Nikon software is a good place to start.

You don't mention whether you use a Mac or Windows (or Linux) but DigiKam is a very good place to start for all 3. Be aware that some picture editors are destructive (any change you make is actually written into the image and is not reversible) while some are non-destructive, and the only time an image is altered is when it is exported, with the original remaining untouched for further work if needed. If using a destructive editor then always create a copy of the original BEFORE starting work - I have too many images that I can't recover for re-working because the originals were edited & re-sized for web use.
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This is a good reason to get into the habit of exporting instead of saving at all times it is possible.
 
While I totally agree with those above who say that the free Nikon software is a good place to start, such software can be quite complex for a beginner and it may be easier to start elsewhere.

At this stage we do not know what the OP has as a computer system, and this information would really help. Also we do not know whether he is shooting jpeg or RAW, again such information would be helpful. For real beginners using the Windows OSI have often recommended "Faststone Image Viewer", see:
http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

It meets the requirement of being free, is a pretty decent organiser for "jpegs and RAW" and has some fairly decent editing attributes. It is a lot easier to get used to than the packaged software that often comes with the camera, as well as being easier than GIMP.

Just for information, as an alternative to GIMP I have just come across a post that indicates that there is a version of "darktable for Windows" in the pipeline:
http://www.darktable.org/2017/08/darktable-for-windows/
Again, not really for beginners, but an interesting development.
 
anisah said:
At this stage we do not know what the OP has as a computer system, and this information would really help. Also we do not know whether he is shooting jpeg or RAW,
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Hi
I'm running Windows 10 and shooting in RAW format....should have mentioned that in original post
 
TLR-330 said:
I take it you got View NX-i and Capture NX-D from http://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/index.html
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Hard to beat those for free raw conversion. In fact, hard to beat them for quality of conversion at any price, though other programs like Lightroom have slicker interfaces and cataloguing features.

For more complex downstream editing, the usual free recommendations would be GIMP and Paint.NET:

https://www.gimp.org/
https://www.getpaint.net/

Ninite is a good way to install them and other free (and adware-free) Windows software:

https://ninite.com/

Affinity Photo is a more sophisticated alternative to GIMP and Paint.NET for a very reasonable price:

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/
 
Orangecroc said:
Which software did you use to edit the Rugby photo in your other thread, because that seems to have worked well for you.
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think I used Rawtherapee..I downloaded the View NX-i and Capture NX-D but thought the Rawtherapee was easier to use
 
LIGHTZONE is pretty much a cloned version of Lightroom and has the same functions. Is even laid out very similar. Some good tutorials on YouTube and it does everything you need with RAW.
 
Another vote for GIMP. I found it fairly complicated to get into (and I've only scratched the surface) but it will do just about anything you want.

At the other end of the scale is Photoscape. It is somewhat limited but is just about the easiest photoeditor you could ask for. Although to has a RAW convertor it is not that good so you would need something else to convert RAW files, but for jpegs it is so easy.

One other thing to consider is the organisation of your photos. Very quickly you'll amass a huge number of shots and without some organiser finding a particular photo will be a nightmare.

Dave
 
get the trial of Lightroom,then when the trial ends, use the basic raw editing functions for free,
 
jpgreenwood said:
Is it worth getting? Ive been sent a link to that too? What can it do that LR and NIK EFEX cant?
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Can't speak to the comparison, since I've never used LR or NIK EFEX, but I recently adopted DxO Optics Pro 11 (free) as my editor upgrade, because it's got a reputation for being rather good at automatically correcting some of the optical imperfections of lenses such as lack of linearity and chromatic aberration, and for having good quality noise reduction. Being a devotee of free software I've been having to do such things by interpolating extra specialist programs into my post processing workflow, which has become increasingly tedious. I've been using half a dozen different editors, each of which is very good at something which most of the others aren't. I've ended up often using two to four different programs in sequence to do my image editing. I decided to give this free DxO a try a month ago.

So far so good. I'm impressed with how good the automatic lens corrections are. I haven't yet done comparative tests of how good its noise reduction is, and how well it would cope with a disastrously noisy images such as candlelit snapshots, but it's certainly good enough to cope well with my normally noisy images. I find it difficult to compare editors, because they often have quite different features. Sometimes something that's one simple slider on one editor turns out to require the use of two or three other not at all obvious adjustments in another editor. You have to learn the ways of a new editor before you can properly compare it to the established expertise with which you use the editor you've been using for years. That can take months.

All I can say about this free version 11 is so far so good, good enough in fact that it might even tempt me into paying the money for the latest version.
 
DXO Optics Pro does some things very well, particularly handling high contrast images and with the elite version removing noise, and seems to have effective automated settings. LR can produce very similar results, but requires much more user input. Nik is different, and easy to over-cook an image.
 
Just downloaded the free DXO Optics Pro 11 (Essentials) version and it seems quite a powerful piece of software, I'm quite impressed. :)
 
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