Programs Available for Editing Digital Photos

Most likely, not all the pictures you take are perfect. Sometimes the image might be a little out of focus or off-center, or maybe your subject caught the glare of a flash for a "red eye" effect. The nice thing about digital pictures is that you can easily edit them to correct for these and other types of flaws.

When it's time to touch up your digital photos, you need a photo editing program. Depending on your needs, you can choose a low-priced, consumer-oriented program or a high-priced program targeted at professional photographers. For most of us, the consumer-oriented programs are more than adequate -- and, in fact, you might have received one bundled with your new PC or digital camera.

Free Software

Some photo editing programs are free. I particularly like Picasa which offers many of the same features of higher-priced programs. Picasa not only does a good job of organizing all the photos on your hard drive, it also lets you crop, lighten and darken your photos, as well as remove red eye and change the color cast and saturation. The program also offers a variety of special photo effects, including sepia tone and film grain.

Similar features are offered in IrfanView which can also be downloaded for free. IrfanView is a favorite program among eBay users, who use it to edit the product photos they take for their online auctions.

Affordable Software for the Average Consumer

If you're a casual photographer with a budget in the $100-$200 range, consider Adobe Photoshop Elements, Microsoft Digital Image, Paint Shop Pro or Roxio PhotoSuite. All of these programs offer a wide variety of editing tools and special effects. Editing functions aren't quite as sophisticated as with the more expensive professional programs but offer more than enough options for the casual photographer, at a much more affordable price.

Of these programs, a particular favorite is Photoshop Elements. Elements is essentially an easier-to-use subset of the professional Photoshop CS program. You get a one-click Quick Edit mode that takes care of the most common picture problems, as well as a Standard Edit mode that offers more sophisticated editing and manipulation, including a spot healing brush and clone stamp tool, either of which can be used to "paint over" bad spots in a picture. Elements even lets you apply your changes in layers, just like Photoshop CS does.

Professional Photo-Editing Software

If you're a professional photographer, chances are you depend on the high-end photo editing functions of Adobe Photoshop CS. This program offers an almost unlimited number of editing tools and special effects, from simple cropping and color manipulation to sophisticated image replacement and removal. The price isn't cheap (packages start from $649), but when you want to edit practically any feature of your digital photos, there's no other alternative.

When you see a photograph displayed in a national magazine or local newspaper, chances are it's been edited in Photoshop CS. Photoshop is capable of extremely fine and subtitle editing, as well as wholesale image manipulation. The individual tools in Photoshop take some time to learn, but they let you turn an average photo into a work of art.

Michael Miller is a writer and commentator on technology and digital lifestyle topics.