In February we’ll begin our creative year with one of the most commonly digital creative skills – image editing. Image editing software helps you manipulate digital images in almost every conceivable way, whether you’re resizing a photo for use on a website or touching up a faded treasured image ready to print.
If you’d like to consider the most appropriate software to be able to follow along next month, our video workflows will demonstrate these three software apps:
- GIMP, a completely free image editor and suitable for beginners
- Corel PaintShop Pro, which can be bought for a one-off fee and is suitable for hobbyists
- Adobe PhotoShop, which is most commonly purchased by monthly subscription as part of a wider collection of programs refered to as ‘Adobe Creative Suite’
GIMP
You can download GIMP for your PC or MAC here: GIMP download
GIMP has long been a ‘go to’ application for newbies and occasional image editors. If that’s you, you’ll be pleased to find such a full-featured application available for gratis.
As it’s completely free, you can download it now and start having a look around before next month.
Corel PaintShop Pro
You can download a free 30-day demo of Paintshop Pro. If you’ll be joining us for introductory workflows next month, you might want to want until then to install the demo.
This application has been available since 1990 and can be purchased for a one-off fee. It runs on PC only and is not available for Macs. A new version is released every year but differences can be minimal. Corel runs regular promotional pricing so watch out for a deal!
Adobe PhotoShop
So good, it became a verb over ten years ago! You can download a free 30 day trial of the full Adobe Creative Suite (which is now officially refered to as ‘Creative Cloud’). If you’ll be joining us for introductory workflows next month, you might want to wait until then to install it. Note that we’ll also be delving into After Effects later this year, which is part of the same suite. This means if you’ve already used your free month trial you won’t be able to do the same again in order to have a go with After Effects.
PhotoShop offers all the editing tools you could ever want and many more besides. Recent updates continue the drive towards AI-driven editing. This software is overkill for occasional or casual users but if you’ll be using it for work it could be essential for your CV. We’ll be introducing very simple workflows suitable for beginners in February.
