Do I need ADOBE..?

I've installed Irfanview as my basic Image Viewer and Editor ...
To replace the Junk provided my M$

Photoshop is too slow loading and a little complicated for the simple stuff ...
and I only use it when I need "More Power".

The new Photoshop Elements and Premiere looks like a good lower cost option for editing Pictures and Videos.

The new windows Movie Maker that you can get for W7 looks very crippled to me ...
as compared to what came with Vista or XP

As far as Panoramas .. I haven't tried this Freeware in W7 yet ..
But it beats anything else I've tried.

I have a friend that was trying to scan a document that was bigger than his scanner ..
So he scanned it in pieces .. Then fed the pieces to Autostitch ..
and it re-assembled the document .. automatically.
I though that was clever

Hi there
another GOOD cheapish program is PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS. You can get the PREVIOUS version to the current one for around 25 GBP and unless you are a consummate Pro photographer this can do most things a typical use would do in the full blown Photoshop. (I think some sort of layers and filters might be missing but you need to be quite serious photo editor to have a huge need for these.

Cheers
jimbo

Gimp is a good option for "complex" jobs. But Gimp is rather complicated. For simple editing, this is a good alternative ( FastStone Image Viewer - Powerful and Intuitive Photo Viewer, Editor and Batch Converter ).
For video editing I suggest this: ( Lossless Video and Audio Editor, Splitter, Joiner for AVI,FLV,WMV,WMA,ASF,MP3 files ). For $20 you get a program that is far superior to WMM (in quality and speed terms).

Creer said:

Yes, I forgot to mention in my case I also tried PSE but it doesn't support multi-layered files

????? PSE supports Layers ?????????
About the only things missing from PSE are a few special layer effects ..
The ability to make animations .. and some web design stuff.

For about 10% of the price of the Professional Photoshop ...
It has about 99% of the tools any photographer will need.

And for a little more .. You can get it with the video editor Adobe Premiere