To buy or not to buy Editing software

arshuter

Senior Member
OK to make things clear total newbie and computer illiterate here. Is it worth it to buy editing software or use free on line stuff? Right now I have free Gimp 2.10.10 and Darktable in my computer and to be honest it confuses the hell out of me. Please all help is appreciated. Also what is the difference between the 10$ one and the 150$ one? Thanks
 
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wev

Senior Member
Contributor
I use FastStone Image Viewer, which is a free program, for 99.9% of my picture fiddling. It does everything I need, but I am a simply fellow and lazy.
 

nikonpup

Senior Member
Please all help is appreciated. Also what is the difference between the 104$ one and the 150$ one? Thanks
WHAT? Are you talking processing software?
Lots of beginner tutorials on GIMP on YOU TUBE to help you get started. Learn GIMP and when you are comfortable processing you pictures maybe move on to something else. All the better software (and there are lots)
have a learning curve which takes time to learn the in and outs of the program.
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Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
OK to make things clear total newbie and computer illiterate here. Is it worth it to buy editing software or use free on line stuff? Right now I have free Gimp 2.10.10 and Darktable in my computer and to be honest it confuses the hell out of me. Please all help is appreciated. Also what is the difference between the 10$ one and the 150$ one? Thanks
To get your feet wet I'd suggest you investigate the free Nikon software applications: View NX-I and Capture NX-D. These applications share certain similarities and work together. View NX-I is a pretty basic editor but will be easier to learn. Capture NX-D is a much more full-featured raw converter and editing application.

There are plenty of tutorials for learning how to edit your images, but generally speaking learning to post-process digital images comes with a learning curve and you need to be prepared for that. It's not hard to learn, not like brain surgery; it's more like eating an elephant. And how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Download Link for ViewNX-I and Capture NX-D
 
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Bikerbrent

Senior Member
I agree fully with Paul, give the free Nikon editors a good workout. You may find out that is all you need and it won't cost your anything except some of your time.
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
I started out with Photoshop Elements before moving to Photoshop CC. The thing is no matter what software you use, there will be a learning curve. It took me a while to get the hang of Photoshop Elements, but all the knowledge transferred over to Photoshop CC.
 

Woodyg3

Senior Member
Contributor
I like having the ability to do a lot of tweaking if I want to ,so I have Lightroom and Photoshop. $10 a month on the Creative Cloud plan. Lightroom has plenty of great tools for organizing you files, too. Lots of people hate Adobe for instituting the monthly payment plans, but for something I use almost every day, $10 a month is no big deal.

What IS a big deal is learning these two pieces of software, Photoshop in particular. The thing is, there are TONS of online videos and articles to help you out. Also, learning the basics on Lightroom doesn't take all that long, and 95% of the time you will only want to make basic adjustments, so you really can get started pretty quickly.

All that said, there are all kinds of very useful processing choices these days. I have heard great things, in particular, about ON1. You can download a copy for free trial, if interested.
 
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