what software do i use on windows 7, help

picasa

paint.net

Depends on quite what you want to do with your pictures though!

Add the Gimp to paint.net & picasa & you should be able to do most things (& for free)

Photoshop Elements has 80% of the tools that Photoshop has (and lots of useful extras) for about 1/8th the price (c. £80).

While not free, it will produce much better results and give more flexibility than paint.net or picasa and has a much easier learning curve than wither Photoshop or The GIMP (Graphics Image Manipulation Program, in case anyone was wondering!)

picasa

I downloaded this today and was pleasantly surprised with what you can do without parting with any money.

It does enough for correcting a lot of things on your pictures.

What are you looking to do with your photos? What are you looking to have the software to do?

I use Adobe Lightroom as my main photo suite - It catalogues all my images (90k+ at the moment) and keeps them all in order. I add keywords, titles and descriptions to images which helps me find them quicker in the future and allows photo editors to gain valuable information such as subject, taglines and captions.

Lightroom also allows me to do basic editing - cropping, exposure adjustments, levels and sharpening etc (much more, if you've got time) plus I can then watermark images and upload them direct to my Photoshelter website and export them in to customers galleries.

I'm guessing it's more for personal use and you're after editing, cropping and playing around with images?

For something basic and free I'd recommend Picasa - it's got all the functionality you're likely to need plus you'd get a better understanding of how much you'd use the software and what functionality you need before parting with your hard earned readies.

If you've used Picasa and want something a little more indepth and with more bells and whistles, I'd say go to Photoshop Elements rather than Photoshop CS4 or CS5. The cost of Photoshop is astronomical - I have a copy and to be honest I've never really used it, certainly never used more then 20-30% of what's in it. Next time I'll probably just get Elements myself.

Hopefully that's helped a little?

DB

I am looking to lower modify that sort of stuff

Try this website

http://pixlr.com/editor/

like an online photoshop

What do I use help

CS5 ftw

I am looking to lower modify that sort of stuff

In that case, you will need something that works with layers and has god 'selection' tools: try GIMP as a (free) starting point - for most peoples needs it is more than a rival for Photoshop.

Check whether Photoshop Elements (now on version 10 for around £80 or less, I believe) works with layers and has some very easy to use and fairly accurate selection tools.

Failing either of these, it will have to be the full version of Photoshop (but not the 'Extended' version) at over £300.

.... and has god 'selection' tools.....

I was always lead to believe that there was 'only one true God'

I was always lead to believe that there was 'only one true God'

There is only one god of photo software - Adobe (at least they think so).

If there was only one true God, he would despair at my ability to type!

There is only one god of photo software - Adobe (at least they think so).

ay. . . CS5 and Content Aware Fill