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Hello fellow loungers. It’s been a long time since I’ve posted but I’ve been lurking about! But to the point: I am just getting set up again after having to do a System Restore. Long story made short: I got attacked by a nasty virus which morphed into what seemed to be 3 or more. Anyway I lost all but the basics so I need to install some photo editors and I think the best Freeware would be Infraview. I have MS Photoeditor and of course MS Office Picture Manager which seems to be mainly a viewer. And I explored GIMP but it’s a bit too complicated for Moi. Now I am totally paranoid about downloading anything so I was hoping someone could tell me if this is “safe” software. BTW I have upgraded to Norton AV 360, I no longer am using MSIE but have switched to Mozilla Firefox as I understand MSIE is a real magnet for viruses. Can anyone recommend other freeware for editing photos?

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Hi Patricia,

Welcome back!

IrfanView is an excellent allround graphics application; it’s free and safe.
Another relatively simple free graphics editor is FastStone Image Viewer.

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Hi Patricia,

Welcome back!

IrfanView is an excellent allround graphics application; it’s free and safe.
Another relatively simple free graphics editor is FastStone Image Viewer.

Thanks very much, Hans. The new Lounge is SOOOO fast. Perhaps not a “pretty” as the old one but much more efficient which is the point, isn’t it! I am reassured by your vote of confidence in Infranview. Funny that I was always told I was being SUPER-paranoid about my computer and yet somehow, I think via a pdf of all things, I got hit. I’ve downloaded Infranview and am just looking at FastStone to see what it’s all about. It’s rather comforting that in all my years of visiting Woody’s lounge, to return and find that everyone is [still] so helpful and courteous even to in-frequent visitors such as myself.

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Google’s Picasa is handy to have around:
http://picasa.google.com/
stuck
PS Picasa for older versions of Windows (9x & Win 2K) are here:
http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answe…amp;topic=14101

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Google’s Picasa is handy to have around:
http://picasa.google.com/

Ken
PS Picasa for older versions of Windows (9x & Win 2K) are here:

Thanks to all of you wonderful people! Look at that, I come back and just like that I’ve got loads of help. I’ve downloaded Infranview, Fast Stone Image and Picasa. I’ll explore Picasa to check out the imaging capabilities and may download GIMP again. If I needed a program with additional capabilities it would be good to have on hand.

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Chiming in a little late here, PhotoFiltre is a small but powerful freeware app, with capabilities sort of between Irfanview and the Gimp.

I also think XnView is a worthwhile complement to Irfanview.

Alan

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Chiming in a little late here, PhotoFiltre is a small but powerful freeware app, with capabilities sort of between Irfanview and the Gimp.

I also think XnView is a worthwhile complement to Irfanview.

Alan

I like Photofiltre and not too beyond my capabilities.

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Photo Gallery – Windows Live does basic editing very well.

BTW, while your choice of FF as a browser is fine whether or not your system is infected is determined much more by your browsing habits than the choice of FF or IE. I’ve run IE on quite a few systems at home and at work since it was first released and have never been infected. A good set of A/V, anti-malware tools, the builtin Windows firewall, & a router with a firewall serves me very well.

Joe

--Joe

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… And I explored GIMP but it’s a bit too complicated for Moi …

You should at least download and install a copy of Gimp, Patricia. Even if you only look at it occasionally, there might come a time when you have a need that one of the others can’t handle.

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Hi Patricia,

Someone else also mentioned it but I am a big fan of Windows Live Photo Gallery. It works for 90% of what I need to do. (I also have a copy of Photoshop Elements for the rest.) It really helps me to keep my pictures organized and is great for going through photos and doing basic editing, removing red-eye, adjusting shadows and that type of thing. It works really fast for that. I am on XP so cannot use the slideshow or movie maker functions. I look forward to using those when we go to Windows 7.

I have the latest version and it takes a little while to open, about 25 seconds, but I have over 15,000 photos.

I do plan to check out IrFan View because I keep reading about it and here it is on this post again as a recommendation.

That’s my opinion FWIW.

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I’ll recommend IrfanView, too. It’s really not all that much of an editor but more of a quick viewer with really basic editing. It’s invaluable for previewing, slideshows, thumbnails and full-screeen viewing without being too heavyweight and getting in your way. You can do some basic editing with it, but only very basic things. I like using it to look at photos and then set the preferences so that I can open a real editor with a hot key.

For a free medium-weight editor that looks nice, has a nice layout and is generally usable and intuitive I’d look at paint.net. If your needs aren’t too intensive it can probably handle many easy to intermediate editing tasks.

Of course Picassa is nice if you’re looking for mostly “one touch editing” and cataloging. If you want to do anything very complicated it probably won’t fit your needs, either. As far as I’m concerned Picassa is more of a cataloging program than an editor.

I always found the Gimp problematic since the layout and interface are wonky and unintuitive. It has a lot of filter plugins you can download. I found the 3rd party filters (if you need to install extra filters) to be pretty variable in quality with some good and some were pretty terrible. I hear there is a package called GimpShop you can get that rearranges the interface on the Gimp to resemble Photoshop so that it doesn’t look like the interface was put together by a mentally challenged orangutan.

After messing around with the quirks of the free stuff, I’ve usually eventually concluded it was useful to pay a little bit of money and get one of the less-expensive commercial editors since they’re often designed well, have more tools and options, present a more streamlined and consistent interface (to themselves and other programs) and have much better help and training built in. You can get either Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro Photo for under $100. Photoshop Elements is probably OK for most people, but Paint Shop Pro Photo gives you more in-depth features (including scripting, more filters, etc) for about the same price.

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I’m another one who find’s the GIMP just plain annoying; but since I have an old version of Paint Shop Pro, I tend to use that for anything other than the basics.

The basics (adjusting brightness and contrast, straightening, cropping etc) I do with Picassa as far as I can anyway.

I’m told that Paint.net is good, but whether it’ll replace PSP I’m not sure. I’m downloading it anyway.

My freeware recommendation that’s not already been mentioned is the Microsoft stitching and panorama software, ICE (Image Composite Editor). I find it quite impressive.

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I’m another one who find’s the GIMP just plain annoying; but since I have an old version of Paint Shop Pro, I tend to use that for anything other than the basics.

The basics (adjusting brightness and contrast, straightening, cropping etc) I do with Picassa as far as I can anyway.

I’m told that Paint.net is good, but whether it’ll replace PSP I’m not sure. I’m downloading it anyway.

My freeware recommendation that’s not already been mentioned is the Microsoft stitching and panorama software, ICE (Image Composite Editor). I find it quite impressive.

I’ve been using both InfranView and just now for the first time, FastSone. I LOVE the cropping ease of FastStone. Not so much Infranview which seems to leave a black border around the picture. No doubt it’s something I just haven’t figure out yet. But I totally love FastStone for cropping.

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I’ve been using both InfranView and just now for the first time, FastSone. I LOVE the cropping ease of FastStone. Not so much Infranview which seems to leave a black border around the picture. No doubt it’s something I just haven’t figure out yet. But I totally love FastStone for cropping.

Are you sure that black “border” is not just the background in the IrfanView window? I usually have the background colour set to some horrible puky purple, so that I know where exactly the background is. Set it from Options > Properties…

Alan

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Are you sure that black “border” is not just the background in the IrfanView window? I usually have the background colour set to some horrible puky purple, so that I know where exactly the background is. Set it from Options > Properties…

Alan

Well Alan, thank you so much, you are right on the money! (I was going to upload an image to show you what was happening but I haven’t figured that out as yet for our new Lounge) and then I opened InfranView, did the background colour thing, and voila!

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I was going to upload an image to show you what was happening but I haven’t figured that out as yet for our new Lounge

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Joe

--Joe

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Can anyone recommend other freeware for editing photos?

Paint.net is a top-ranking freeware image-editing program with advanced capabilities, which may require some learning but for which there is plenty of online support.

There are many such programs, but you may already have one or more without realizing it. Vista has Windows Photo Gallery, many hardware devices, notably printers, scanners, and cameras have at least ‘lite’ versions of major programs, and many have their own, some of which are getting better all the time. HP PhotoSmart Essential is now up to version 3.5.

You can sometimes compare, and justify or reject the purchase of, hardware based on what software it has bundled with it. If it happens to have something you might buy on its own as part of the bundle, then you can subtract the cost of that from the price of the hardware. A hundred-dollar Wacom Bamboo tablet comes complete with Adobe PhotoShop Elements 6, Corel Painter Essentials 4, and Nik Color Efex Pro 3. I don’t know what their standalone prices are, nor whether or not those are the latest versions, but Wacom does have a reputation for making it worth your while to buy their products. (I have just bought one myself, but not for the software.)

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Here is a time-sensitive update for bargain-hunters.

You might find some of the deals offered by Corel HERE to be of interest. There are a few Home & Student editions which may or may not have certain limitations. That CorelDraw Home & Student is a real deal if it is the same as the regular CorelDraw, or even close to it. (An excellent set of fonts!) I was looking for Corel MediaOne, which I thought was free. I have a copy which I received free, but it was probably bundled with something.

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While you are looking at programs for photos and such, consider Paint.Net as a FREE edition.

Just zip over to My link and download it. There are some good tutorials and it is not too difficult to learn. And.. it is FREE.

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