Techniques from the Photoshop pros Video

Techniques from the Photoshop pros Video Transcript

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>> Let's see here, Adobe Photoshop CS3 Single User Full Package Windows. What, six hundred dollars? Okay, what about Photoshop Element? A hundred bucks! Plus this new one doesn't even look that easy! I don't have that kind of cash, and I need to edit some photos now! What to do? Hi, I'm Molly Wood from CNET.com, and I was just playing you! You need a free Photoshop alternative, and in this edition of Insider Secrets I'm gonna give you three choices. Now there's nothing wrong with Photoshop, except that it's huge, bloated, super expensive, and more image editing power than most people need for simple edits that probably involve photos. And Photoshop Elements, it's fine, but it's getting kind of complicated and why pay 80 to 100 dollars for fine when you could get fine or even good for free. And no, I'm not talking about Paint. Well actually, I am talking about Paint! Paint.net! Now this is open source image editing software that lets you do simple image edits like cropping, rotating, resizing, adjusting colors, and even making collages. It also supports layers, so you could use slightly more sophisticated editing than with a standard free app. Paint.net, pretty slick! Down sides? It doesn't work on a MAC and our Download.com editors say the red eye fixing tool isn't the greatest. Also, it is conveniently not located at Paint.net, so find it at Download.com. Now onto the next option, which does work on a MAC. Web based image editing tools are all the rage right now; there's Picnic, Splash Up, Snip Shot, there's a lot of them. But the best and most powerful is probably FotoFlexer. Now we like FotoFlexer for it's awesome integration with the social network, so you can actually suck in photo's from your friends profiles, you can color their hair here with the services most popular feature, and then you can post them onto your own network. Very slick! It's also got this fun Morph feature, and an extremely impressive Smart Resize feature that resizes photos or lets you cut elements out of a photo without any distortion. It also does layers. And unlike Photo Shop, it offers some pretty slick how to videos on its website. Lessons are always appreciated. Okay finally, if you're looking for the most powerful possible software alternative to Photoshop you're gonna have to bring out the GIMP. The GIMP stands for the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It's open source, and it offers the most power for your lack of buck that you can find. For example, the GIMP comes with a huge selection of manipulation tools comparable to Photoshop. It's even got the magic wand smart selection tool that you've probably come to know and love if you're a Photoshop user. Its got 150 effects and filters like, blur, pixilize, noise, distort. And it has photo specific tools like, distortion correction and red eye fixes. And it has this customizable interface. And that is great, because the GIMP is not easy to use. It is powerful, and it is free, but unless you need all that image editing power, consider something a little more user friendly like Paint.net or a web based option. Okay. Now I know this doesn't even begin to cover all the basic photo editing tools that are out there, but if you're looking to really replace Photoshop or Photoshop Element, these three choices should give you the flexibility and advanced tools you need. And that, my friend, leaves you no excuse for red eye. ^E00:03:29