How-To Geek
Ask the Readers: Which Photo App is a Must-Have Software on Your Computer?
Regardless of which operating system you use, there will always be images of some kind that need to be worked with on your computer. This week we want to know which photo app is an absolute must-have software on your computer when working with images.
Photo by -Merce-.
Photo apps come in an extremely large variety based on functionality and/or price. For some people a basic photo app will serve their needs very well for things such as removing “red eye” from photos, minor editing, or adding some small special effects. Others need a photo app that packs more punch to do advanced cleanup, editing, and manipulation of images for their own use or for professional work.
The other deciding factor in which photo app you may use is price. For most of us there are many excellent photo apps that are free such as Paint.NET, Picasa, Windows Live Photo, PhotoFiltre, the powerful GIMP, and many more. Each of these apps provide a wonderful level of functionality for the everyday person but what if you need something more or different? If you work with advanced features shareware there is a good chance that you are using Adobe’s Photoshop software. There are less expensive shareware apps available but Photoshop is the one go-to app that most people automatically think of.
Each person usually has something that works well for them and gets the job done when working with images. Perhaps you know a of perfect photo app that you would like to tell everyone else about. Maybe you have one that is only so-so and are looking for something better. Here is your chance to share your photo app wisdom with your fellow readers and/or find a great app to add to your personal software arsenal. Let us know in the comments which photo app is a must-have software on your computer(s)!
Note: There is not a poll this week due to the fact that one could not begin to cover the large variety of photo apps available.
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Comments (151)
Akemi Iwaya (Asian Angel) is our very own Firefox Fangirl who enjoys working with multiple browsers and loves 'old school' role-playing games. Visit her on Twitter and Google+.
- Published 10/27/10
Picasa
Picasa for importing and general simple editing of photos;
Paint.net for other graphic work which has now pretty much replaced ArcSoft PhotoStudio 5.5. I don’t do much graphic work and what I do do is pretty straightforward so I don’t really have any need for the advanced stuff available in paint.net or, indeed, photoshop.
Oh, and I also use Jing for grabbing screenshots.
MS Paint.
Come on everyone, you know it’s true; I bet everybody reading this has an “untitled.bmp” file on their desktop at this very moment.
Photoshop Elements … It works great, is cheaper than full Photoshop, and still manages to load much faster than GIMP. Paint.NET is a close second.
Picasa for dealing with photo’s, arranging prints and backing up to google’s storage.
I hate to say it but I agree with Kellan on Paint – I take a lot of screen grabs in my job and often dump them into paint, crop them, add arrows or highlight buttons then send them in an email or add them to a word doc. It’s not the best but it’s always there when you need it.
Paint.NET! =)
Paint.Net mainly, can’t get on with Photoshop so Paint.Net is a great alternative to it :)
Picasa, Irfanview
Paint.NET
Well Definitely NOT Photoshop Elements, I can’t even get the new one to import my large directory of pics and raw files.
Not Picasa — as much as I want it to be this, there are a few quirks that need to be fixed before I can make it my goto.
Funnily enough, Windows Live Photo Gallery works.
Paint.net
GIMP 2
IrfanView, PAINT.NET and GIMP.
For years it was Paint Shop Pro, cheap and it could do 99% of what photoshop could do.. then Corel went and bought them out and totally ruined great software, so now, it’s GIMP
Few must have softwares: MSE, Ccleaner, Firefox/Chrome and VLC.
Sorry did not read the full article. For images, I use snipping tool, ms paint and PAINT.NET.
1) Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/) for adding keywords and other IPTC data. This makes image searching in Windows very easy.
2) Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/) for viewing and slideshow.
I use an old legacy version of PhotoShop and very pleased with it.
I do hear great things about GIMP, but haven’t yet tried it.
No question,XnView…as far as i’m aware one of the very few with gamma correction & will even open video files too!
I’m surprised no-one has mentioned Adobe Lightroom. Also Photomatix (HDR) and Photoscape quick and easy edits.
GIMP and Irfanview – used to like Paint.net but havn’t been able to get the right .net to load on my computer since it was brand new!
Must have? None, it *is* possible to get it right in the camera, well usually! Most used?
Lightroom, it knocks everything other than Photoshop out of the park.
Paint.NET or Pinta in Linux
Paint.NET – Its DA BOMB
Photoshop 7 for working with images (don’t need the features of the later CS versions…. )
Picasa and Irfanview for organizing, converting and viewing.
Photoshop, and sometimes Lightroom as well…
And for Mac, iPhoto only ;)
management: picasa
duplicate search tools: antidupl.net, imgsearch, dupdetector
does any other app have face recognition?
It’s Picasa for me, and it’s looking like Paint.net/Pinta will be the next system I learn.
For editing, it is The GIMP, for viewing, Kwickshow.
Faststone image viewer
For organization Picasa has the best facial recognition, but it still depends on a local db to store some data. Microsoft Live Photo is a close second.
For fast viewing / conversion / batch conversion, ifanview is small, fast, and it reads just about anything. It is like the VLC of image viewers.
For editing, photo – manipulation, etc Paint.NET. Out of the box it is OK go to the forums and get some of the plugins to really get it going.
Best of all these are all free.
Paint.NET for editing; Faststone Image Viewer for viewing.
For FREEWARE I’m partial to Photofiltre myself.
iPhoto. I need Faces! :-)
MS Paint and Photoshop
Faststone image viewer.
Free and stupendously easy to use, you’d be mad to use anything else as your default photo viewer. It also handles 90% of the basic photo-editing tasks beautifully.
I’d love to own a copy of Photoshop but I’m too cheap to pay the price. As an alternative I always end up using Picasa. It’s easier to use than other free apps I’ve tried and it covers the basics.
Microsoft Image Composite Editor is my favourite for stitching panoramic images. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/
Irfanview
Irfanview. It has no substitute!
Can’t beat this combo…Photoshop 7 and Lightroom 2.
Picasa for most basics, then Photofiltre or PS elements depending on what I need to do.
XNView
Photoshop CS5
Faststone Image Viewer for viewing — great little product;
Photofiltre (Free) is an excellent little app (and light) for doing most simple to moderately complicated photo-editing — I went so far as to purchase the Photofiltre Studio for the extras (layers, etc) and to support it;
For complex photoediting, I’ve got Gimp installed, but only use it on the odd occasion that Photofiltre doesn’t quite cut it.
PhotoScape has some really nice and easy features …
Paint.Net For quick edits and
Picasa is a wonderful viewer
Snipping Tool is great for screen captures
Photoshop CS# (any number is good, but the higher the better) for heavy and advanced editing
Irfanview. I use it for everything except heavy manipulation of images. I may have to try out Paint.NET for that.
Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS4
Is there really anything else :-)
Picasa, Irfanview
GIMP 2, PhotoCap 5 and Imagine.
For raster editing: CinePaint
For vector editing: Inkscape
For viewing: Okular
VOTE: iPhoto for managing
Photoshop for editing…sure it takes a long time but its worth it.
Picasa, Irfanview
Paint.NET is all I use for image manipulation. Install the plug-ins that I need, and it’ll do everything I want.
ACDSee. thats all.
MS photo viewer for viewing. MS paint and MS office picture manager for basic edits, for advanced Xnview.
Not a lot of diversity in photo apps from this bunch, huh?
Ok, gotta admit I do use Picasa for all managing and basic editing. But if you want to speed through a bunch of photos and open multiple instances, then the good old basic Windows Photo Viewer does the trick.
Screenshots? I used to use Jing but so much was closed out in the free version, and I just need quick and easy captures. So now I use Screenpresso. Very lightweight, portable version included, and even lets you do some basic editing. I think one or both of these also handles video screen captures?
I guess what I’m trying to say is – don’t spend money on pretty good photo software unless you’re a full-time photographer. Actually I’d say that about almost every hobby on the net now…
GIMP.
I don’t have the money for CS5 and I don’t steal software.
Gimp 2.0
IrfanView – Great for batch processing
Photoshop CS5 – Need I say more…
IrfanView
MS Paint & PS
Paint.NET as well as GIMP. Some things are easier to do in the former, but the latter is nuch more powerful and feature-filled. Both are free, which makes things even sweeter.
GIMP Image Editor
Photoshop CS5 64bit. Leaves everything else standing.
Picasa for 95% of what I do.
Microsoft Picture It! when I need to resize images.
Good old Microsoft Paint to prep screenshots for Picasa (old habits…but am pretty fast at it).
GIMP when I want to “photoshop” something (but find it very tedious).
Picasa and Gimp 2.
pixelmator for mac. very easy and fun to use.
I use Irfanview, because 1. its free and 2. it lets me resize images very easily, and 3. I can do simple editing like contrast, and brightness, and color corrections, I dont need all that expensive software out there that does a thousand things that I cant figure out.
Irfanview for quick and easy; GIMP for anything more involved.
I love my free photo galleries at Fotopic.net for sharing photos.
For working on photos, I use Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3.
I enjoyed Windows Live Photo Gallery for fixing photos quickly, but since the last update, it’s got more difficult. They did away with some short cuts, which I prefer.
Used Paint Shop Pro 7 for a long time. Then Psp 8. Agree withh previous comment re the newer Corel version is not worth bothering with. Paint Shop Pro 8 meets all my needs except the Extract facility.
IrfanView
Photoshop CS for routine stuff and Photoshop CS5 for more complex tasks.
Google Picasa.
PSP 8
Picasa for basics and Irfanview for more complicated stuff …
I only use PaintShop Pro X3 for everything Cropping,resizing,removing something from a photo that distracts from the main theme i.e Lamposts and wires. I also can add effects and crop and paste from another photo
I too find Photoshop a waste of time. A program called Photocolor has done an excellent job for me for a number of years now.
GIMP.
I use Windows, Linux, and Mac, and having one tool across the platform is invaluable.
For plain viewing, most anything that comes with the OS, or just a browser is fine.
For online galleries, I dump my pics onto a linux/apache webserver, and use “album” to generate thumbnail pages.
PICASA
From time to time I use Ulead Photoimpact, Photoshop Elements, Picasa (album downloads), Paint.NET but ONLY IRFANVIEW IS ESSENTIAL – used every day! Resize, crop, adjust gamma, brightness, contrast, colour saturation, Insert text, thumbnail preview, batch convert, supports Adobe filters, ITPC editing, insert searchable text Comments in JPG files etc etc etc
Although Irfanview is free for non-commercial use it helps me so much that I purchased/voluntary donation it in 2003.
The other eszential tool is XPLORER2 – has thumbnail preview of image and PDF files (so qualifies for inclusion with Photo Apps. Free version lacks the brilliant file serch tool. But earlier fully functional free version 2xEXPLORER is almost as good.
I really don’t know how anyone manages without Xplorer2 or Irfaniew!
Ugh. Well I’ve been on the hunt and all these comments will help.
Right now I have an almalgam of apps on my Windows 7 machine:
Still have PSP 9 (but its print doesn’t work with W7)
Have (but hate) PSP Photo X3 – ugh
Have a copy of Photoshop CS (pre bridge) that I’m trying to convince is legit. It’s an upgrade and I can’t find the original. I do have Photoshop CS2 (full version) installed and I’m going to try to “upgrade” down from there. :)
I use BreezeBrowser 1.3.2 and Downloader Pro 1.7 – I’ve tried Irfanview but have been with Chris Breeze too long to change.
I also just came across (and bought) Portrait Professional Pro which is an amazing program. Don’t use it much and probably shouldn’t have bought it but when “adjustments” to faces are required, nothing beats it.
Now off to try some of the new ideas here and oh how I’d love to have A primary image/photo editor.
Thank y’all very much for the ideas.
Photoshop CS4
Lightroom
ACDSEE – way beats Picasa for management/organization/manipulation
FastStone Image Capture
Well , This app here is completely different from its other competitors here ..
I jus L O V E this app jus because of its simplicity and its usefulness.
This app comes in very handy when you need to remove objects from your picture.
Be it small moles on your face , or a completely Building on a garden
With a little practice u can do wonders with this app.
The best part of this app is .. its not at all complicated as the Photoshop . ofcourse u can do all of these much easily with photoshop , but u and i know it aint (” for us “)
;) we would probably go over 10 sites with various tutorials and try and try and give up with a sad result.
Ok , The app is called InPaint.
http://www.theinpaint.com/
Head over and jus read the homepage , Trust me i was Awestruck .
http://img502.imageshack.us/g/43236015.jpg/
Check out this album to see what i have done with it .
Irfanview for 99% of everything.
I have Photoshop CS5 and PaintShop Pro X3 but rarely use either (too much effort for very little difference). My choices are Lightroom, Picasa, all the Fastone products, Irfanview
Window Live Photo Gallery..
Batch face tagging is the best…
Well, I’m a GIMP girl, myself, especially since the latest version (2.6.10?) loads so much more quickly than even the last one. Yes, there is a bit of a learning curve, and finding some of the cooler plug-ins can be a chore, but once you get it together, it’s great. And, of course, you can’t beat the price! ;-}
Picasa for organizing and uploading photos, and some basic touchups.
Paint.net for the tough stuff.
MS-paint for screengrabs (yeah it’s old fashioned and clunky, but as a couple people said here, it always works, and I’m used to it)
It must be Lightroom3
As they said in the Amateur Photographer magazine:
‘many people will never need anything else’
and I seldom do!
Photofiltre for quick editing and Paint.net for more detailed editing. I just wish these worked on Linux. Photofiltre works somewhat via Wine but not as well as under Windows.
Photoshop for sure, Picassa is cool but does have anywhere near the capabilities for photo editing. I have to agree though that ms paint sometime does the trick and loads way faster…
Believe it or not, I’m still using Paintshop Pro 6. Tried to update to Corels version and hated it. PSP does everything Photoshop does and it’s easy to use. I know it’s 10 years old, but my motto: if it aint broke……
Photoshop for real editing
Faststone Image viewer for cropping resizing batch watermark etc.
Paint.net for adding text etc.
Snagit or faststone capture for screen capture
Irfanview Tops! It can: Clone Stamp tool [F12]….Quick Borders [Shift-V]….Opens Media files…Creates Exe’s…Fine Rotate…accept cool plugins…it keeps getting better ever version. 4.27 as of Oct 28th.
Paint.net of course
And Photoscape is actually very nice once you get used to it.
Irfanview Numero Uno!!!
Anyone who does not select Faststone Image Viewer as the number one viewer and minor photo adjustment application has never used Faststone Image Viewer.
Paint Shop Pro dose everything that a professional or amateur photographer wants or needs and it cost less then $100. I can see no reason to spend $300 -$400 for a program that has a lot of extras that are only needed by artist.PSP or PS elements will get the job done.
On Windows: Ifanview for quick resizes and cropping. Photoshop CS2 for the rest.
Mac : iPhoto and a copy of Photoshop CS
Linux : Gimp
Is Fastone Image Viewer easy to learn?
Becoming “fluent” in an app of this kind is always a problem for me.
So when reporting the results in future polls like this, perhaps rating easy of use for 1st time users can be part of the question as well as what’s your fave?
Photoshop. It’s the Cadillac of photo editing software but it does have limitations. And if PS is not in your budget, get GIMP. It’s FREE and does pretty much everything Photoshop will.
Adobe Lightroom for both Mac and Windows.
Must-have: FastStone Image Viewer. Superb program; so well-designed that I’ve donated money!
Picasa for searching files (I name the picture filenames). Alo good for simple editing. Don’t like the way it doesn’t update the originals though (it saves it as operations against the original; good for Ctrl-Z-ing backwards, but a pain if you want to use the photo elsewhere.
Picasa……
All the best………
Thanks Google…..
IrfanView, Paint.NET, GIMP, and the only other pay app worth its money, Paint Shop Pro. Frankly, anything is better than Photoshop if not for the simple reason that Photoshop is an Adobe product.
FYI: In case you didn’t realize it, Adobe is the “Evil Empire” within cyberspace. If you don’t believe it then just check out their history on security – they’re worse than Microsoft! Just for starts, you might start out researching these little known things called “LSO cookies” (LSO – Long-term Storage Object). An LSO is a PERMANENT piece of code much like a cookie. However, you DON’T normally delete LSO’s when clearing the cache and/or cookie folders because LSO’s are not normally stored/kept like cookies. LSO’s are used primarily with the Flash plugin too. And who do you think makes the Flash plugin? That’s right, Adobe! (Don’t even get me started on their historically insecure bloated PDF “Reader”.) So when it comes to graphics editors/viewers I choose NOT to follow the rest of the Lemmings who use Photoshop – I’ll use something – ANYTHING – else!
Irfanview and Picassa is my starting point. Sitting in reserve are Photoshop Elements and Microsoft Digital Image.
I have been working with “Adobe” products for sometime now.(so have you) Yes adobe is busting at the seams with security issues. Most popular software’s are. This is why so many user’s enjoy installed pirated copy’s of PS. Photoshop is over-kill for the casual user, I agree. Photoshop is highly over priced, I agree. Photoshop demands lots of processor & ram. I agree. I believe that their is a reason with so many photo editing softwares available that PS is still the industry standard according to the pros…………….. Your call,
NO , I do not work for “Adobe”. LoL
PaintShop Pro
Photoscape has some great templates for use with multiple pics, and it’s free like most of the apps mentioned.
Picasa is #1. I install it first to every computer I use. It’s free, finds and organizes every picture and has all the basic functions. And syncs with other Google stuff.
Then Gimp, if I need to do some heavy editing.
This year Adobe has lured me to buy Lightroom 3 license. What else could I do after using the free beta for many months? I’m hooked.
ACDSee and Photoshop.
Editing = Photoshop
Organizing = Picasa
useless
Supposed to be paint = useless
Irfanview for most resizing and quick adjusting of color, mostly making photos bit brighter and for re-sizing photos so there small enough to email and can saves lot’s more photos on dvd. Photoshop for other chores like cloning. and the old MS Picture it ver 2 for adding text to photos.
Irfanview and Snagit by Techsmith. http://www.techsmith.com – Fantastic software!
IrfanView for some basic editing, like resize, crop, flip, add text, enhance colors, etc.
GIMP 2. Nuff said.
I use Irfanview ( Free ) most of the time, then Picasa if i need to do other things Irfanview can’t do. I’ve used GIMP but can’t find the time to learn it…:). I also have Fastone Image Viewer for viewing RAW files and converting them to TIFF.
I forgot to mention that IrfanView is a must for some batch actions like rename, resize, etc.
1. PhotoFiltre
2.PhotoScape
3.Picasa 3
All free…..and use all 3……
Fastone Image Viewer
PaintShopPro 9 yes even with Win7. have used it since psp5. Does what I need it to do.
MS Paint for simple stuff, and Paint.NET for more complex graphics manipulation
Photoshop CS versions works for me – I’d be lost without the ‘Shadow/Highlight’ adjustment tool when scanning color slides which can be very contrasty – Gimp looks good but I think its best to stick you what you know.
I use FastStone Image Viewer for all of my image viewing and most of my image editing. I do use PhotoFiltre Free for editing too but mostly because FastStone doesn’t have a clone tool. I’ve been using both for years and they’re great.
I use PhotoFiltre
Thumbsplus has some nice tools for editing and does pretty much everything I need.
It must be PSP5
Paint Shop Pro 5 has been in my toolkit since 1998.
It starts up with same speed as “Windows Picture and Fax Viewer” is portable and has enough functions to get by most of the times.
I use Ctrl-Shift-P to launch it.
I have been using Irfanview for the last 10 years and has never let me down. Also it’s free even though I have donated.
Got to be Irfan View. Very flexable; will do most jobs; will take plug-ins and handle video and audio playing.
ACDSee Pro for general editing, overwise Corel Draw.
PhotoScape !!!
I use Photoshop Elements (8). for everyday stuff. Photoshop CS5 and Illustrator are for work or serious stuff. But, Elements gives me everything a person not needing it for work could want.
oh.. and XnView of course. OSS, portable and simple/intuitive Interface
I’m still using the app I learned on back in the late eighties…
Logitech’s Phototouch.
it has a lot of powerful editing features, yet the interface is easy to learn and simple to use.
Photoshop Lightroom is essential for managing all my photos, especially raw files. A combination of Lightroom and the right plugins lets you embed all sorts of meta data including geotagging, and you can easily publish out to sites like Flickr, SmugMug and Facebook.
Picasa is great too. I use it on my HTPC to run slideshows on my HDTV.
FastStone for browsing/viewing;
Gimp for most changes;
Irfanview for bulk resizing/renaming
1. http://www.pixlr.com/editor/
2. Paint.Net
3. Ligthtroom
XnView. So easy to Batch Rename. Great for screen shots.
Even though it’s probably overkill for what I need to do… Lightroom and Photoshop.
Photoshop, as there are so many books and tutorials about it, and it is made by Adobe. if not considering it’s price, photoshop is a must have for PCs.
IrfanView
For several years now it has been irfanview for me for viewing and minor editing and photoshop when I need do something more serious. Any time I do a format irfanview is one of the have to have programs that I add right away.
Definitely XnView. It’s free, it’s portable and has lots of functionality.
I am running Ubuntu. My favorite program is XnView, which runs decent under Wine – with some annoying refresh problems. I could not find any Linux program that can really replace it, but would also recommend the following: GIMP which is more powerful but harder to use, and gThumb which is easy to use but less powerful.
Microsoft Office Picture Manager is easy to use for; editing, cropping and compressing for email & web pages.
I use Adobe photoshop and MS Paint
WinTrezur (myplanetsoft.com) for photo encryption and then Infanview and old MS Photo Editor
Acdsee, from 5 years now
Picasa for photo managing, PS for editing, for me iPhoto is difficult to use.
well peeps. Picnic on Flickr aint that bad!!!!!! noone has even mentioned it (probably because technically it isnt ON your computer its IN flickr…
However, because I am a GIMP and can’t figgger out Photoshop (except cloning and healing and sharpening) thats all I use CS5 for..
I use LIGHTROOM 3.1.99933 which ever the latest is.
I use NIK plug ins and my fave is Silver EFEX PRO 2, the BEST black and white editing software out on the planet. PERIOD
I just hope that LR 4 comes out with better cloning and healing and better sharpening – as that is the ONLY reason I use PS.
I started with Picasa and it was great several years ago – no clue what its like to day.
Again Photoshop is soooo confusing.
LR and all NIK plugins and I like ONONE software but their User Interface is a bit hoakie.
On my Droid, I use Vignette THE BEST OUT THERE PERIOD.. its like 3 or 4 dollars and worth 40$.
PEACE
Boy there’s a lot of good apps out there! Looks like most people may 2 or 3 image apps installed and use each for particular tasks (I do, anyway).
1. Gimp
2. XnView (XnShell is the must have here)
3. Irfanview (everybody should have it installed just because it’s amazing)