Image editors: cheap, quick to load, and easy to use?

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I need an image processing program to clean up scanned images, mainly of printed matter. I’m looking for the following properties/capabilities:

[*]Reasonable price (or free)
[*]Small, loads fast
[*]Modest learning curve
[*]Can talk to a scanner with a 32-bit driver
[*]Can handle JPG, PNG, and other common image formats
[*]Can adjust brightness, contrast, color balance, etc.
[*]Can change color depth, resolution, and canvas size
[*]Can do flood fills
[*]Lets me paste one image into another and move it to achieve an accurate “splice”

I used to use an old version of Paintshop Pro for this, but it will not run under Windows 7. I bought the current version and found that it has morphed into a Photoshop clone: huge, slow, loaded with features I don’t need, impossible to use without a book.

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Try paint.net if you haven’t. I don’t know about all the features but one critical one is that it has layers so splicing images should be possible.

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>Try paint.net if you haven’t.

Tried it. I was able to figure out how to do a flood fill without reading any documentation, which is a promising start. I won’t be able to try it with the scanner until this weekend, but so far it looks like an excellent fit.

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Be very careful of the paint.net site. The download installed several malware programs, one I’m still trying to remove.

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I quite agree with you, jsachs177.

I purchased successive copies of Paint Shop Pro until v8 (using their heavily discounted ‘Upgrade’ program.) I even bought v9 but couldn’t use it… too complex, too confusing.

I’ve gone back to using v7.04 (running quite happily in Windows 7) and can’t ever see this changing.

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I quite agree with you, jsachs177.

I purchased successive copies of Paint Shop Pro until v8 (using their heavily discounted ‘Upgrade’ program.) I even bought v9 but couldn’t use it… too complex, too confusing.

I’ve gone back to using v7.04 (running quite happily in Windows 7) and can’t ever see this changing.

I, too, am still running Paint Shop Pro, version 7.04, which runs quite happily in my Win7 64-bit setup, and does all you have specified. You can download the program (various old versions) from http://www.oldapps.com/Paint_Shop_Pro.php. I don’t know what you do about a license – you may find your old license for your old version still works…
Incidentally, look at the comments towards the bottom of the page after you download the program, particularly the query by Marianne Sicignano, and the reply by Kevin Woodgate…
Good luck!
Paul

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I am a Photoshop user, but it’s hardly quick, cheap and easy to learn. I also have Paint.net for quick edits. It does have plugins to extend it’s functionality. Also, I have PhotoFiltre Studio installed, which is fast and free. They also have a portable version which I have on a flash drive for quick edits on the road. The portable version is from PortableApps.com. Good luck!

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I am running PaintShop Pro 6.02 on Windows 7 64bit. Of course I did not “install” it… I just copied and pasted the folder over from my WinXP system and I have not run into any problems running it so far.

I agree with you about the newer version on PSP, I would not have it! As long as my old PSP 6.02 works, I am hanging on to it. It has “moved” with me through a couple of WinXP systems and now on to Win7 with no problems.

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Hmm, interesting. I tried copying the program file directory from my old machine to my new one, and I can run it. Sort of. Every time I start it, it displays the error message “Failed to update the system registry. Please try using REGEDT.”

I exported the entire HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/JASC/Paint Shop Pro “directory” from Windows XP and imported it into Windows 7. Then I ran the program again, and got exactly the same thing.

Any idea what’s happening?

This is PSP 4. The version that would not install on Windows 7 is a later one, I think PSP 6. I never liked it, so it’s not installed on XP.

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Very interesting responses! :p Makes me the outlier I reckon since I don’t think PSP was competent until PSP X. I don’t remember when scripting with batch processing was introduced though. Another winner for me is the ability to capture the edits (since X3) for a particular image and apply those en-masse to however many additional images. In both cases, workflow has been greatly enhanced for me since I can process hundreds of photos unattended.

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@PamS – Darn, PSP v6.02 was my image editor weapon of choice for so many years! It took me a long, long time to finally move to v7.00… which was decidedly flakey. I was so pleased when, first, v7.01 was released to try to cure the instability problems then v7.02 to fix the problems v7.01 introduced. For me, it all went wrong after that… I tried but couldn’t adjust to later versions, and gave up completely when Corel took over from Jasc.

@F.U.N. downtown, please excuse my ignorance but what is an ‘outlier’. A Google search leads me to Wikipedia but I’m none the wiser.

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From http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/outlier

Definition of OUTLIER

1: a person whose residence and place of business are at a distance
2: something (as a geological feature) that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body
3: a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample

The third definition is probably what FUN meant. :rolleyes:

Jerry

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Hi Jerry, many thanks for that, I guess the old grey matter is having an off day. 🙂

Umm… as ‘Super Moderator’, can you tell me why I’ve suddenly gone from ‘2 Star Lounger’ to ‘3 Star Lounger’? What does it mean? Is it ‘cos I’m really old (nearly 60) and good at lounging around? ROFL… but still interested in the answer.

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The star ratings are based purely on the number of posts you made. I don’t have the numbers that go with each star level off the top of my head right now but if I find them, I’ll let you know. VIPs and Moderator status is bestowed by vote of the current moderators and VIPs.

Jerry

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So if I post absolute nonsense but in multiple posts I can get ‘elevated’ in terms of ‘star’ status… ROFL. Thanks, good to know. I might try it out in the test area. I had mistakenly assumed the ‘star’ status was in terms of ‘value’, not ‘quantity’.

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So if I post absolute nonsense but in multiple posts I can get ‘elevated’ in terms of ‘star’ status… ROFL. Thanks, good to know. I might try it out in the test area. I had mistakenly assumed the ‘star’ status was in terms of ‘value’, not ‘quantity’.

Took a lot of digging but I found a table showing the Member star ranking system:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=28845&d=1312493042

Jerry

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Thanks for clearing that up Jerry and for posting the link.
Now I’m a New Lounger instead of a Lurker.
LOL

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I notice that several members have copied PSP on windows 7 from XP and simply copyied and pasted the registry entry over. This is a totally new concept to me as I previously thought the registry could not be tamperd with let alone be copied from different versions of windows.

Can anyone offer advice on this?

Thanks in advance
Rob

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I needed a quick, free, easy-to-use, photo editor 7 or 8 years ago & found Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com), the most popular graphics editor on CNET (download.cnet.com/IrfanView/). The author ( Irfan Skiljan) is a great programmer, & he regularly updates Irfanview to work with new versions of Windows, yet still maintains full compatibility with older versions of Windows (98, NT, ME, 2000, & up). 😎

He also adds new features often, but never makes big changes that screw up or eliminate prior features. All changes are incremental, & “old” ways of doing things always work on new releases. The only thing missing (from the list in the first post here) is flood fills, but if my memory is correct, a basic version of that was introduced in a recent release. The one major thing missing (but not in that list) is layering; it’s just not part of the architecture (yet?).

I’ve tried several other editors, using them for the occasions when I need a few advanced features, but Irfanview is my go-to photo editor. It’s amazingly easy to learn, with an intuitively obvious command/menu structure and loads of photo editing features. It’s also FAST & compact, supporting a huge number of graphics formats (some require plug-ins, also available for free from his website).

Finally, here’s a synopsis of the latest release from the website:

IrfanView is a fast and compact image viewer/converter. It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. It supports file formats and features. Features include: multi-language support, Thumbnail option, Painting, slideshow, toolbar skins, fast directory browsing, batch conversion/editing, multipage editing, file search, change color depth, scanning, cut/crop, IPTC edit, capturing, lossless JPG operations, effects, watermark image option, ICC support, EXE/SCR creating, many hotkeys, command line options and plugins.

What’s new in this version: Version 4.37 adds new features for Resample, Animated GIFs, Photoshop Effects and plugin updates.

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Glad to see so much praise for Irfanview, and here’s another fan. I started using it 4-5 years ago at the recommendation of a much more accomplished photographer co-worker, and so far no need for much else. Certainly fills the “quick to load” requirement – it’s instant. Most of my work is resizing, and it does that superbly, plus more. There are tools that I haven’t even explored yet, but one of these days…

I’d add that if you get a Nikon camera, the ViewNX software that comes along is very good, feature-rich, but crashes occasionally in my use.

Sure, it would be “great” to acquire and learn Photoshop, likely one of the “training wheel’ versions. But for now Irfanview easily does the job.

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I have been using PSP Pro X3 for a few years now and like it pretty well. I am no way versed in all that it will do, but I can do what I want easily. I had V6 and then V8 when it was JASC. I scan a lot of stuff, both text and pictures and get good results. I haven’t mastered splicing 2 together which I would like to do, but haven’t taken the time.

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I don’t have any info on PSP4. All I know is that PSP7 creates nothing in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE but creates a Jasc key in HKEY_CURRENT_USER and 2 sub-keys:
37012-jasc
Sorry I can’t help further with this.

I tried Paint.net a couple of years ago but found it crashed fairly frequently then. It could be different now.

For free, have a look at The Gimp. It’s quite comprehensive but has a bit of a learning curve.

Hope this helps…

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I miswrote. It was HKEY_CURRENT_USER that I copied the keys from (and to). So that’s not the problem.

At this point is looks like Paint.net is likely to be the solution for me.

I’ve tried GIMP; in fact when I first moved to Windows 7 I used it as a replacement for PSP. I should say “tried to use it,” because I found most of its controls absolutely incomprehensible. I could spend a half hour at a time trying to performs some simple operation like pasting an area copied from one image into another image, and never figure it out.

The documentation was useless; it was the sort that tells you “The Flipflop command flipflops the image… the Mairzydoats tool mairzydoats the selection… the Whoopsie command whoopsies the file…” but never explains where the fool controls are or how the operations should be used.

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Have you thought about Photoshop? You can download CS2 for free. It may be old but has more than enough to satisfy the casual photo editor. Have a look at this site:- http://www.techspot.com/downloads/3689-adobe-photoshop-cs2.html . It gives lots of info on the programme along with the serial number you will need. I’ve been using it for quite a while now and it does all I want. I’m running Win 7 Ultimate 64 and it works fine with it.

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Hi Jerry,

Many thanks. It was good of you to make the effort and I appreciate it. I was kidding about posting absolute nonsense… I do enough of that anyway. 🙂

Rick

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I am trying to remember what I had to do to PSP6 when I copied the folder over to Win7 to get it to run without throwing up an error first… I seem to remember that I had to right click on the exe file and select to run in compatibility mode or something to make the error go away. I still have my notes which I had for what software I was going to install on Win7 and I do have a side note written down about regedit, but I did not write down what I did to get around it unfortunately. Of course I also brought along the plugin.dll and msvcrt10.dll files as well and put those in the windows system folder.

I found one thread in another forum that said you could run it as administrator, but that it was not advised because back when PSP6 was written, it had full access to all parts of the registry which it does not supposedly need. For what things I do with PSP6, it runs just fine for me on my machine. Just wish I had written down exactly what I did to get the error to go away, but I just remember it was something simple, so running in compatibility mode or perhaps even running as administrator is the only thing I can think of that I may have done.

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You might like to try Irfanview, free, small, fast, rock solid, will do everything in your requirements list. Interface is a bit old school but none the worse for that. Or there is always Photoshop Elements – either as a give away with a scanner or there was an older one (version 4, I think) on the Adobe website that could be downloaded for free and came with a perpetual key – not sure if it’s still there, though. Or apart from the quick learning curve (it definitely isn’t!) there is The Gimp, which is open source for multiple platforms.

Irfanview addresses 95% of my requirements and Photoshop Elements (bundled with my scanner) does the rest.

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I tried about a dozen products before I bumped into Picasa (free, from Google). Incredibly capable, ridiculously easy. Only thing it won’t do for you is splice images. For that I jump into Photoshop (there are dozens of other methods), then right back to Picasa to do the rest.

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So happy to see so many PSP fans. I’ve been using PSP since v3.x and agree with you all. PSP started going downhill with version 6 so I’m still using v5.01. I have version 5.01 running on two Win7 64 bit machines. I installed from the installation CD and everything went smoothly with no problems, errors, at all. Both machines are run as administrator. Maybe that makes a difference.

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Irfanview is my preferred tool for straightforward image capture, but it doesn’t support most of the image manipulations I listed.

Picasa sounds like another useful tool, although past experiences have made me somewhat suspicious of anything that comes out of Google.

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I do a fair amount of graphics work and, even though I have Photoshop CS5 and Paintshop Pro X4 installed, I still find that Paintshop Pro 8 is the easiest and quickest way to get good results on those not so straightforward jobs. One of PSP8 features I find most useful is the brilliantly flexible clone tool, which puts Photoshop’s equivalent in the shade.
Take cover – incoming from massed Photoshop fanatics!! 😉

Nevertheless for the vast majority of work you can’t beat the speed and simplicity of some of the excellent freeware now available:

Irfanview + its Plug-in pack – is just about the quickest and most useful image viewer out there – I always set mine up as the default for all images it can handle. It has most of the everyday productivity tools you need, ready to hand, and it will open your scanner software in a trice and then pass the scan back into itself for editing. It even accepts the huge amount of free Photoshop 8B8 Plug-ins if you want to extend its range.

These others editors are also amongst my favourites:

Photo! Editor – A very easy to use tool with a good range of preset tools/effects – delve a little deeper and you will find you can refine the effects manually.
http://pho.to/editor/examples.php

OptikVerve Lab’s VirtualStudio – a must for creative photographers and ‘darkroom’ dabblers – this neat photoeditor includes their own PS 8F8 compatible ‘Virtual Photographer’ plug-in filter, which provides a superb range of classy effects.
http://www.optikvervelabs.com/

Photoscape 3.6.5 – A really useful suite with a surprisingly wide range of nice tools. Sadly it now comes pre-loaded with a PUP (Open Candy) but just zap the PUP off with a Malewarebytes quick scan and it stays gone (unless you allow it to update and then you have to do it again).
http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/download.php

Have fun!

Cheers, Chris

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Irfanview is my preferred tool for straightforward image capture, but it doesn’t support most of the image manipulations I listed.

Picasa sounds like another useful tool, although past experiences have made me somewhat suspicious of anything that comes out of Google.

Yes, I define/split image programs by their ability to handle layers; or not, because layers opens a whole other level of editing capability. Picasa, Irfanview, Faststone Image Viewer, Photofiltre, XnView, Photo Commander, PhotoDirector, etc., all have some things they do very well, but none of them do layers. The ones that do handle layers often fall woefully short on file handling and workflow which are where I think the non-layer group excels. Hence I rarely have a layer-capable editor open without Faststone or XnView. They just work really well in concert.

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Everyday I use Snag-it , http://www.Snagit.com $39

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Take a look at IrfanView (at irfanview.com). Like someone above said, it’s free, small, fast, rock solid, will do everything you’re asking. It is very nicely behaved and won’t tax your system.

It is an excellent photo viewer – hit the space bar and it will flip through all the photos or graphics in that directory (JPGs, PNGs, GIFs, BMPs and more). You can use it to adjust brightness, contrast, color balance, color depth, resolution, and canvas size and more. Flood fills too. It will resize, resample, change canvas size. It will display a histogram. It will decrease color depth. It will reduce red-eye. It will do custom fine rotation to two decimal points of a degree of rotation. It accepts many Adobe plug-ins. It will capture screen shots. You can paste any image or part of any image into any other, but you have to define the area it goes to as opposed to beibg able to move it around. The list is seemingly endless.

It has editing tools similar to Windows Paint. It also can receive as well as edit images directly from a scanner.

Some of the interface is a bit klutzy, and it has a somewhat steep learning curve, but it is very popular and if you can’t figure out how to accomplish what you want google will help. The author, Irfan Skiljan, will also reply to your emailed questions.

Make sure you download and install the add-ons after you install the program.

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Take a look at IrfanView (at irfanview.com). Like someone above said, it’s free, small, fast, rock solid, will do everything you’re asking. It is very nicely behaved and won’t tax your system.

It is an excellent photo viewer – hit the space bar and it will flip through all the photos or graphics in that directory (JPGs, PNGs, GIFs, BMPs and more). You can use it to adjust brightness, contrast, color balance, color depth, resolution, and canvas size and more. Flood fills too. It will resize, resample, change canvas size. It will display a histogram. It will decrease color depth. It will reduce red-eye. It will do custom fine rotation to two decimal points of a degree of rotation. It accepts many Adobe plug-ins. It will capture screen shots. You can paste any image or part of any image into any other, but you have to define the area it goes to as opposed to beibg able to move it around. The list is seemingly endless.

It has editing tools similar to Windows Paint. It also can receive as well as edit images directly from a scanner.

Some of the interface is a bit klutzy, and it has a somewhat steep learning curve, but it is very popular and if you can’t figure out how to accomplish what you want google will help. The author, Irfan Skiljan, will also reply to your emailed questions.

Make sure you download and install the add-ons after you install the program.

A very nice feature of Irfanview (with the addins installed) is that you can easily shrink the size of an image. For example, if you take high-resolution snapshots, they could be 2 or 3 megabytes each. Irfanview will allow you to shrink them way down, to less then 500 K each, without much if any noticeable difference in picture quality. When you are attaching images to an email, this can be critical.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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A very nice feature of Irfanview (with the addins installed) is that you can easily shrink the size of an image. For example, if you take high-resolution snapshots, they could be 2 or 3 megabytes each. Irfanview will allow you to shrink them way down, to less then 500 K each, without much if any noticeable difference in picture quality. When you are attaching images to an email, this can be critical.

Not the original though! If its only 2-3 MB it’s probably already a jpeg so once it’s dimensions or quality is reduced, there’s no getting back the data the original held.

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Not the original though! If its only 2-3 MB it’s probably already a jpeg so once it’s dimensions or quality is reduced, there’s no getting back the data the original held.

I always do Save As, so as not to change the original.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Check out http://www.faststone.org/ I loved my PPS7 I had on xp for many years, and really miss it. Loved doing animations and tags etc with it. Leo of ‘ask leo’ told me he uses faststone. I haven’t really checked it out yet. Am gonna try to load my PSP7 on this win 8.1 but thinking wont work,since my awesome HP printer an Scanner wont I am enjoying this thread about different graphic software as it has been on my mind lately too

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I’ve tried the GIMP but found it too difficult to get my head round, I occasinally use Irfanview for small jobs but most of the time I use PSP V9.0 which runs happily on Win7 64bit apart from a warning about display scheme needing to change.

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Like some others, I have used PSP for many years, in my case v5 now on Win7, successfully with no issues. I wouldn’t be without it! Also, with ClassicShell the general appearance can be made fairly similar to XP.
For anyone interested, it is possible to download (free) old copies of PSP programs including v5 at
http://www.oldapps.com/Paint_Shop_Pro.php

Garth

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I am wondering will these old apps run on this dang win 8.1?

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This FREE app StylePix is much like Photoshop…. and there is a portable version too – always a plus in my books

http://hornil.com/en/downloads/stylepix/

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This FREE app StylePix is much like Photoshop…. and there is a portable version too – always a plus in my books

http://hornil.com/en/downloads/stylepix/

I downloaded Stylepix Portable free version and tried it. (The paid Pro version is not portable.)
Resizing by dragging corners does not work. Width sizing does not work. Only vertical sizing works. (My OS: Win7x64, 8G Dram)
Almost all of the functions/filtering/editing are disabled. Hence, unable to evaluate.
Trial version is not provided.

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My Image Editor of choice is PhotoFiltre( http://photofiltre.free.fr/). It’s free and available in a portable edition and has an easy learning curve (not unlike the old PSP that I used for years.) Version 7 h as layers capabilities and there are a bunch of plugins avaialble for it.

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Bravo, greisner! Another Photofiltre user! I have Photoshop Pro 7 and ImageReady on my computer, and I always go by default to Photofiltre 7 to do the majority of my basic tasks. It’s fast loading, has an easy learning curve (my 8-year-old granddaughter has become quite a whiz with it on her account) and that wide range of plug-ins, including the ability to use Photoshop filters, makes it very handy. Loading Photoshop requires one to sit there for almost a minute reading the names from the Adobe phone book while one’s computer thinks about whether or not to let you use it. Photoshop’s a great product with a terrible learning curve and less-than-intuitive interface, and Photofiltre lets me be editing (and frequently done with) a photo by the time Photoshop loads.

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I use Paint Shop Pro 7.04 and Serif’s Draw Plus 7.0. There are things I can do, or know how to do, in one and not the other.

I sometimes do something in one of them, save the work, open it in the other program and do something else. I tried a later version of Draw Plus but discovered that they had made changes which necessitated another, albeit short, learning curve. No thank you. It was despatched to the big recycle bin in the sky.

I also have IrfanView and Gimp. The latter allows me to do something else which I find unstisfactory in Paint Shop Pro or DrawPlus.

Corel has gone the way of other companies, messing about with a perfectly good program, making it too complicated for its own good and increasing the price beyond the reach of many. Adobe did the same with Cool Edit.

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Interesting thread. I trained on PhotoShop back in ver 3 and have kept using it as it’s quite familiar. A little depressing to see CS2 free now. (laughs) Worth learning in my books.

PSP should be able to run in Win7. I would NOT copy registry keys from one OS to another. That can mess you up. You may need to experiment with Compatibility Mode, Admin permission, and copying drivers (as one mentioned) if it throws an error message.
Here’s Microsoft on it – a couple of versions have recommended actions:
http://tinyurl.com/oevpbg9
(the original URL was 3 lines)

GIMP is free but it’s a bear and full of weird bugs and extra steps. As mentioned, Help is lame.
Picasa is simple but careful – it will edit your originals and does some things automatically without asking.
IrfanView I’ve tried twice but found it buggy.
People may also find the reviews here useful – all freeware.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/pc/image-tools.html

Myself, aside from PhotoShop, I use
– Pixie for quick colour selection
– XnView’s XNShell quick view, etc
– Resize Pictures for quick right-click decent resizing for emailing, etc. (I do it properly in PhotoShop for quality)
I used to have a whole batch of programs I used for different things, as some describe but Photoshop now handles most of it.

And if your main thing is processing scans – PhotoShop is fantastic for that. You can set up standard processing (auto-levels, dust & scratch removal, unsharp mask) as an Action and cover hundreds of photos quite quickly. There is a learning curve but a good reference book and you’ll get to know a good workhorse over time. And free? Bonus.

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Regarding your requirement that an image editor “Can talk to a scanner with a 32-bit driver” doesn’t the scanner itself create and save an image file which you can then work on with your image editor? Or, am i missing something?

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Another one that I have been using is ChaSys Draw IES. Not as daunting as GIMP or Photoshop, but still pretty complete with features. He comes out with updates often and it’s free.
http://www.jpchacha.com/chasysdraw/index.php

tbneff

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I have been using Paintshop Pro since it was created by JASC. I can’t even remember the versions, but now I have the Corel PaintShop Pro X6, which I believe is the latest version. PSP has always been slow to start up, but once running I don’t find it to be slow at all. Some of its features, using layers, are rather difficult to learn from the help files. JASC used to provide a really magnificent printed manual, but those days are gone! I was able to purchase “Photo Restoration and Retouching Using Corel PaintShop Pro X4” for $40, and you might find this to be quite helpful. When I recently purchased a new camera (a Panasonic DMC FZ200) and began using RAW files, I was disappointed with the PaintShop Pro X6 “Camera Raw Lab” capabilities. This caused me to purchase Adobe Lightroom 5, which has extremely helpful features for organizing and managing photo libraries containing thousands of files. Also, its RAW processing features are extremely powerful for correcting all manner of exposure and color balance problems. However its Clone brush tool is not as good as that provided by Paintshop Pro. So I still use PSP for a variety of photo editing functions. Lightroom is king for photo organization, management and correction. It support for nested keyword tags is fantastic. It also supports collections and other organizational mechanisms.

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Haven’t seen it mentioned, but free is the best. And GIMP fits that category, providing about all the functionality of Photoshop.

Go to This Address

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This is an interesting thread and I don’t know if my thoughts will change anything, but here goes.

I do a wide variety (but limited quantity) of photo imaging tasks from making albums to editing images for professional and personal use as illustrations.

Here is what I use:

(1) For quick image manipulation for blog posts and emails, I do the tweaking in PaintDotNet ( http://www.getpaint.net )

(2) For processing and cataloging my lifetime of photos (I’m over 60) I use Adobe Lightroom. It is feature rich and intuitive and is a non-destructive editing system. I find it best for taking already good images and polishing them as well as sometimes rescuing images.

(3) For detailed work on images I do have a subscription to Photoshop CC ($10 / month, gives me Lightroom, too) and I really like it — best Photoshop yet. I’m glad I did not let my anger with Adobe’s changing the rulebook get the better of me. The photographer’s bundle (which may no longer be available to new subscribers, I don’t know, it was supposed to be limited time) of $10/month gives me PhotoShop and Lightroom and I can install them on two machines. I’ll keep updating my stand-alone LR so that I can have that on my laptop as well. I think I have PSCS5 on my laptop and won’t put PSCC on it. I actually find that I’m using PSCC more than Paint.Net these days for things I used to use Paint.net for.

(4) When I was peeved at Adobe for going strictly to cloud-based software distribution licensing, I looked at a variety of other packages. I found The GIMP quite opaque and not intuitive as a PS user. Contrast that with Paint.Net which I found totally intuitive.

(5) A decade ago, I got PaintShopPro because it was allegedly able to do some task better than PhotoShop and I was grossly disappointed…I have not attempted to install it under Win 7 and don’t even know if I have the disks anymore.

(6) As someone else mentioned, PS CS2 is available for free and it is competent.

(7) I have not tried the French program, but from what others have said it sounds like it is worth trying.

(8) For scanning, I have enjoyed using the manufacturer-supplied applications that came with my Nikon Coolscan 5000ED and Epson V700. I tolerate the scanning software for my other scanners, but do not generally scan to the image editing software.

(9) Here is the story of our family scanning project with more details should anyone care:
http://richardhess.com/notes/2013/08/13/a-summer-of-archiving/

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zimmerlip said:
“Loading Photoshop requires one to sit there for almost a minute reading the names from the Adobe phone book while one’s computer thinks about whether or not to let you use it.”

May i encourage you to consider adding an SSD to your system? Prices have come down a lot, and Photoshop will load within a few seconds and applying multi-layered edits will be similarly rapid. Right now you can get a current generation PNY Optima 240GB SSD for $89.99 or a 120GB model for $59.99. You’ll be editing at the speed of light in, well, no time!

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Congratulations! :rolleyes:

Jerry

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Irfanview would be #1 choice. I have used this since the Year Dot when I’ve needed to do something quickly. It is also great at batch editing too. It used to fit on a floppy disk! Still works a treat although Picasa offers most of what I need and makes for efficient online co-ordination. Serif PhotoPlus is inexpensive (I get a free education copy) and very easy to learn if you need lots of extra features.

I haven’t added links as someone may have already covered these but the thread looks complicated further down so I stopped scrolling. All simple enough to find though. Good luck.

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Rob,

I am not a registry expert, but since the registry is made up of simple key/value statements, if they had not changed between versions, the keys and values can be copied. It makes sense that the vast majority of keys and related values would not change (why do extra work).

So, yes, you can add items manually to the registry using the regedit command, but unless you know what you are doing, you can do damage.

You cannot copy the complete registry across versions of Windows–or anywhere, as I understand it, because it contains machine and OS version related information. But, there is a huge difference between the entire registry and individual keys.

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rlhess
Thanks for taking the time to reply, I’ll certainly procede with caution:)
Bob

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At the risk of sounding Neanderthal, I use Microsoft Image Composer version 1.5 every day, which I think dates back to 1998. It does everything the original poster listed as desired capabilities. And it runs just fine on Windows 8. The trick is finding it. Microsoft gave it away with Frontpage 98. If you can find someone with a Frontpage 98 disk, Image Composer requires no product key. You just install, and it works. And, yes, modest learning curve. No, you don’t have to install Frontpage. It is a stand-alone.

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paint.net? Confession, I didn’t read everything above…the thread looks terribly long. 🙂

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paint.net? Confession, I didn’t read everything above…the thread looks terribly long. 🙂

Ya, it’s been mentioned at least twice, including post #2. 🙂

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Irfanview’s “Resampling” feature is a good way to enlarge photos, offering better quality than “Resizing”. And, you can enlarge (or shrink) by choosing a percentage change (%) in size, or type in the number of pixels (horiz. and vert.) or by clicking any standard size, or even click on Double. Aspect ratio may be retained or changed. Plenty of options for most of us, and it’s free !

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Has anyone mentioned Michael Vinthers ‘Image Analyzer’ from Meesoft. It crops edits and resizes, loads quicker than grease lightning, it’s free and accepts all common formats.
As for flood fills and pasting one image into another. I still use good good old MsPaint copied from Windows XP to Windows 7 then right click on Paint and opened the properties compatibility mode to set it to run on Windows XP mode.

I need an image processing program to clean up scanned images, mainly of printed matter. I’m looking for the following properties/capabilities:

[*]Reasonable price (or free)
[*]Small, loads fast
[*]Modest learning curve
[*]Can talk to a scanner with a 32-bit driver
[*]Can handle JPG, PNG, and other common image formats
[*]Can adjust brightness, contrast, color balance, etc.
[*]Can change color depth, resolution, and canvas size
[*]Can do flood fills
[*]Lets me paste one image into another and move it to achieve an accurate “splice”

I used to use an old version of Paintshop Pro for this, but it will not run under Windows 7. I bought the current version and found that it has morphed into a Photoshop clone: huge, slow, loaded with features I don’t need, impossible to use without a book.

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Newest versions of GIMP with free add-ons are much more easy-to-learn than Photoshop, having almost all the functionality of later (except correction layers).

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