Every month we explore a different creative digital theme – For February 2025 it’s time to go back to basics as we learn basic image editing workflows!
Throughout this month we’ll bring you photo inspiration and video explainers to help you get started with using the free and paid photo editing software detailed below. We’ll even include a visit or two to our favourite AI-powered image generators! Here’s what we’ll cover in the explainer series:
- Resize images
- Rotate and crop images
- Apply basic colour correction
- Add text to an image
- Create single-colour images to use as backgrounds
Our workflow explainers are suitable for BEGINNERS, so if you’ve never opened an image editing application before, welcome aboard!
What software applications will we use?
If you’re just starting out there’s no need to spend a penny – We’ll be using the excellent, FREE GIMP to introduce all five of the topics above.
If you’re looking for something more powerful, Corel PaintShop Pro offers a gentle learning curve and includes lots of built-in ‘extras’. You can download a 30 day demo version now if you’d like to play along. This application can be purchased for a one-time fee:
Photoshop needs no introduction. We’ll cover the beginner workflows listed above using this industry-standard software. If you’re a brand new user you can download a free demo from Adobe. Photoshop is part of the subscription-based ‘Photography plan’, which is around 10 pounds a month in the UK and 10 dollars a month in the US at time of writing. It’s also part of Adobe’s wider ‘Creative Cloud’ suite of applications, for which a subscription runs to around 60 pounds / dollars a month.
We’ll start our first series in a few days’ time with PaintShop Pro – Don’t miss it!
