Beginner Photo Editing

My daughter has a Canon PowerPoint G9x and has been looking for a beginners editing software. She enjoys her photography with this and has a surprisingly good eye for interesting composition, mainly nature, plants etc
What would be a good non-subscription software at this level. Have been looking at things like Elements and Premier Elements but there are different year versions and frankly I don't have a clue.
I know her camera equipment is relatively simple, any pointers would be really helpful
Chris


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GIMP is free and works well.

I've used the GIMP for many years - it's something like a free equivalent of Photoshop. Pretty sophisticated but easy enough to use for cropping, brightness / contrast, sharpening, cloning out spots, copying & pasting from other images and so on.


https://www.gimp.org/

I prefer Paint.net to GIMP. GIMP is undoubtedly more proficient but I personally find it really unintuitive. Adobe Photoshop CS2 is also free to download nowadays.

Tried GIMP but gave up because there’s a very steep learning curve. Free though so nothing to lose (apart from time!) in having a look at it.
I have Photoshop but rarely use it, Lightroom does all I need to now. Is there a free equivalent to this which can do basic phot manipulations?

Is she using Windows, MacOS or another platform for her editing device?

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Originally Posted by Phil Lee

Is she using Windows, MacOS or another platform for her editing device?

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Using windows

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Originally Posted by magirus

GIMP is free and works well.

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Great programme, Bob, but I'm not sure it fits the bill of "beginners editing software" in the OPs scenario.

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Originally Posted by learningtofly

Great programme, Bob, but I'm not sure it fits the bill of "beginners editing software" in the OPs scenario.

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Would elements be suitable Tony

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For mac, I’ve always used Pixelmator Pro, although you’ve just missed their 50% sale offer I think.

The closest to Photoshop is photopea.com - frankly i don't know how they get away with it!
Its free but online so different - if i didn't want to/couldn't pay for Adobe i'd use this. Gimp is OK but a bit fiddly and the interface isn't great.

I use DigiKam for the day to day management of my photos and then RawTherapee for general tweaks to both jpg and RAW files. As with any software it takes a little bit of learning but I found it quick to figure out and it does the basics reasonably well (exposure, colour temperature, sharpness etc) . I found it quite intuitive. Once you are familiar with the basics you can delve further in. It doesn't do editing like removing objects and cloning etc.

I have tried GIMP but, like others, have found the learning curve very steep. It is undoubtedly a very powerful tool.

All of the above are freeware and work on Linux and Windows. Not sure about OS.

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Originally Posted by magirus

GIMP is free and works well.

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Originally Posted by learningtofly

Great programme, Bob, but I'm not sure it fits the bill of "beginners editing software" in the OPs scenario.

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Point taken Tony, but it's free and can be used at the most basic level until the user progresses.

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Originally Posted by Crispin

Would elements be suitable Tony

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Ideal, I’d have thought.


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photoscape is very good and free ,canons own dpp is also very good


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As has been said above Canon DPP is good in that it’s not overwhelming and the camera should have a copy included, if not I imagine Canon allows free downloads.

Moving on from that I would try and get an older copy of Adobe Lightroom that supports the G9X, I have edited hundreds of thousands of images over the last 10 years through Lightroom, yes there is no advanced airbrush tools but the use of sliders and learning to see what an image needs is important, through lots of use you can instantly see what is wrong in an image, if the white balance is off a touch or highlights burning a bit too bright etc.

It’s main capability is editing lots of images through one open library, likes of PS are one image at a time and much slower especially when you need to click tools and menu, LR all your tools are there open ready to go.

Also LR has lots of free online presets which can be downloaded and saved, great for black and whites, tones, sharpening…. the list is endless!

Many thanks for all of the advice, will have a look through these options, the input is much appreciated

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Elements is pretty good. The only thing missing from my relatively old version is red eye correction.

I'd have thought elements would be pretty much perfect. I much preferred it over photoshop as it's easier to understand and you get quicker results, which for a beginner is more encouraging. These days I just use apple photos and occasionally Luminar 4 (not free but very good and again easy to use) if I really like the image and want to maximise its potential.

Cheers,
Gary

I've always found Lightroom to be in the sweet spot of usability versus capability. I'm sure I didn't give Photoshop or Gimp enough time and space to learn but I never felt that I got off the ground. I'm about to get an Adobe Creative Cloud licence at work so I'll probably give Photoshop another go at some stage.