Compare Photo editors W7 compatable

moosetracker · 07 Nov 2009

Well I am very very sad to say, I guess I have to put my beloved PhotoImpact down.. It is not working in W7, and though there is 1 newer version then what I got, all I read was that Corel Draw is not supporting it's growth anymore.

Years ago when I compares PaintShop and a few others PhotoImpact won hands down in ease of use and functionality. I was happy to see the PaintShop programs are not unreasonably priced. I saw Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate for $55.00,

But, what photo editor would you suggest?? Oh we also use it to pull in scanner items also.

harpua · 08 Nov 2009

Well, I mostly use Adobe Lightroom for editing photos, which of course is not a free app.

A couple of great FREE apps you might want to take a look at are:

Picasa (great for organizing and simple editing)

Faststone Image Viewer (the best, fast, imo, pure image viewing software available (although it does also do basic editing). I still use it for viewing even though I have LR. Highly customizable to make it display your images exactly the way you want. For example, it let me customize the scroll wheel so I could use it to zoom in and out without having to hold down any other keys (which was just about the only good feature in the native windows photo viewer).

Paint.net (an awesome free image editing "paint" program. Much more power and more intuitive and easy to work with than the native windows paint app. Developed and maintained by a current Microsoft employee, new version 3.5 just released.

A lot of people like the following free viewers/converters also:

Irfanview

Xnview

If I were you, assuming you want to at least check out the free stuff to see if it meets your needs, I would try the combination of Faststone, Picasa and Paint.net. They each excel at different things and complement each other nicely.

Adobe Lightroom is an awesome professional level tool. Unfortunately it's a little harder to learn than something like Picasa which is so easy and intuitive, anybody can figure it out right away. Photoshop Elements is also a good not free app. It's sort of like a Photoshop lite. The advantage of the Adobe apps is that with them you start to learn how to use Adobe image editing software and if you really get serious about digital photography, you're probably going to end up using their stuff anyway, so there is a benefit in getting familiar with their "system." There are also lots of great free video tutorials available online to help one learn Adobe programs. But for the casual photographer, Picasa is pretty awesome too.

sygnus21 · 09 Nov 2009

How's Adobe Lightroom performing under Windows 7 x64? I'm thinking about making the purchase, but want to be sure. Yeah I know I could always download the demo, but since you have it...

Thanks

harpua · 09 Nov 2009

It's great with W7. I'm using the native x64 version. Can't get better than that. v. 3.0 beta is now available and will likely be released as a final version soon. I'm still using 2.5 for now. Before purchasing 2.5, I would make sure that it includes an upgrade to 3.0 when it is finalized. Otherwise wait for 3.0.

sygnus21 · 09 Nov 2009

Thanks harpua,

Think i'll tryout the 3.0 beta version then wait for the final to be released. :)

Thanks for the info.

DJG · 10 Nov 2009

sygnus21 said:

Thanks harpua,

Think i'll tryout the 3.0 beta version then wait for the final to be released. :)

Thanks for the info.

I also use Lightroom x64 for working my raw files, cataloguing, printing and exporting for my web site. I really like the app. It's a little slow in some places (I still can't figure out why exporting a 150 pixel thumbnail takes 4-5 times as long as exporting the 1200 pixel image) but for the most part works very well. It's a well thought-out app that pretty much does everything a photographer needs.