Buyer's Guide 2024: Digital Imaging SoftwareFrom basic fixes to professional tools for the most demanding enthusiast, there's a photo app just f |
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| By Jon CanField | |
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Whether
you want to spend time enhancing your images or you simply want to
organize, print and share them, it’s almost certain that you’ll be
spending time at a computer running one of the many digital-imaging
programs available today.
Next is the basic image editor category. This group contains the programs that will fit the majority of your image-editing needs. Prices tend to be under $100, and all of the programs are designed to be easy to use with a feature set that doesn’t overwhelm you with deep menus and technical tools. Examples of this group of software include Photoshop Elements, Apple iPhoto and Microsoft Digital Image Suite. The full-featured packages, such as Photoshop CS2 and Paint Shop Pro X, are in a different class and designed to appeal to the power user (or the person who just wants the best), with advanced features and capabilities, including batch processing of multiple images, support for larger files with more color information, and excellent RAW conversion tools. Finally, there’s a set of programs that don’t quite fit into any of the previous categories. These applications include image-organization tools, which is where many of them got their start, and RAW conversion support. Examples of this set of applications include Capture One, Bibble, Aperture and BreezeBrowser. They don’t have all of the tools that a program like Photoshop offers, but in many cases they can handle everything you’d want to do. And for those occasions when you need more, all of them are designed to work well with other apps like Photoshop.  |
