PhotoSoftwareNews.com

Learning to see

It's hard to get good results from photo software unless you can tell whether or not an image needs adjustment. This comes with practice.

Try making some adjustments to your images and see what happens. Do they look better or worse?

You'll soon get the hang of it, especially if you look at other people's photos and read a few books about photography.

One-click solutions

Plenty of software packages offer "one-click" adjustments to correct contrast/brightness and color balance (when the photo looks too red or too blue). Are they any good?

Surprisingly, they can be very good indeed. Software such as iCorrect OneClick is an example of Quick-Fix software that can make an instant improvement to most quickly-taken photos.

There are also one-click features in more sophisticated products like Adobe Photoshop Elements -- certainly one of the best options for your first steps in digital photography.

For the best results, use manual adjustments, a good quality monitor -- and a low-light working environment.

Image editors

Software in this category can make changes to parts of the image as well to the whole image. It lets you resize and retouch your photo by masking parts of it, by transferring pixels from one part to another, or by using brushes to add colors and effects.

Some editors have hundreds or even thousands of features, many of which you may never need to use.

Here are some recommended image editors for beginners: Adobe Photoshop Elements; Paint Shop Photo; StudioLine Photo Classic

Image viewers

Bearing in mind that both your operating system (Windows or Mac) and your image editor enable you to browse your photos, why do you need another viewer?

The answer is: convenience. They're quick to launch, purpose-built for browsing, and many of them let you check the quality of your original with one click.

Recommended image editors for beginners: FastStone MaxView; ThumbsPlus.

Workflow software

Although workflow software is aimed at primarily at professionals and advanced amateurs, many beginners acquire Apple's Aperture or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Are they right to do so?

Yes, as long as they're prepared to spend a little time finding their way around them.

Workflow software does what it says: it eases the workflow for those who take thousands of images. This great software is overkill for just a few snaps.

Data recovery

Beginners are more likely than experienced photographers to lose images through accidental deletion. Don't panic. You can usually retrieve them with data recovery software, one example of which is actually called Don't Panic.

There are many others, including specialist software that retrieves images from damaged memory cards.

Going further

If you're planning a career in the graphic arts, you'll need to get to grips with Adobe Photoshop, the industry standard in image editing. But you can also build a powerful, alternative system by adding plugins to Elements or PaintShop Photo.

Photographers who seek the ultimate fix often opt for specialist software for tasks like sharpening (Nik Sharpener Pro), reducing noise (Noise Ninja) or rescaling the image (Blow Up).

As well as those mentioned, there are dozens of great software packages for these operations, and others for masking (ArcSoft Cut-It-Out), correcting lens distortion (DxO Optics Pro), adjusting skin tones (LookWow!), and restoring old photos (Image Doctor).

You can even experiment with panoramas (PTgui) or high dynamic range (Photomatix Pro Pro).

Whatever you want to do, there's a software solution out there that will help you do it. This site is where you will find it.