Fixing Common Digital Photo Problems With Four Free Image Editing Programs

Nowadays, almost everyone has a cameraphone or a digital camera to capture memorable scenes that we like to enjoy over and over again or to share with others. However, we usually don't get good results if we just take a photo direct from a cameraphone or a digital camera to print or upload to a Web page.

We feel it's the perfect picture except for some minor problems. And some of the common digital photo problems we often have to deal with include:

• the image is overexposed
• the image is underexposed
• the colors do not display well
• there is too much clutter in the background
• the image does not have the correct file format
• the file is too large and download too slowly etc.

With a little bit of effort and time, you can easily fix these common digital photo problems by using an image editing program to optimize an image for print or for the Web. All you need to do are some basic editing such as cropping combined with adjusting the color, contrast and brightness of an image. You can digitally correct and enhance your precious picture into a dynamic photographic image that you proudly show off to your relatives and friends.

Some basic editing features you should look for in any image editing program include:

* Rotating: You can rotate a picture clockwise or counterclockwise or use custom or fine rotation to precisely rotate your picture at various angles.

* Flipping: You can flip your picture horizontally or vertically.

* Cropping: You can crop away unwanted content from one or more edges of the picture. Trim to cut out unwanted background, to enhance strong vertical or horizontal orientation, or to focus on a particular part of the subject.

* Resizing (or resampling): You can change the size and quality (resolution) of the image to prepare it for the Web or for printing. Some programs have custom or preset selections to resize the image for the Web, e-mailing, or printing.

* Brightness (or lightness) and contrast: You can correct the brightness and contrast of your picture. Some programs do the correction automatically while better programs enable you to select the level of correction to apply.

* Color correction (saturation): Some image editing programs enable you to make basic color corrections. You may be able to correct only the whole image or a selection in the image.

* Sharpen: Some programs allow you to sharpen the whole image or a selection in the image.

These are some of the features of a good image editing program that can correct a dull snapshot into a great picture. And the good news is there are lots of free software on the Web that can do the job wonderfully well.

Here are my four favorite programs.Try them out and find the one you're most comfortable with and have lots of fun with your photos.

1. IrfanView 4.20 by Irfan Skiljan - 1.25MB (Freeware)

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative Freeware graphic viewer for Windows and image editing program. Lots of useful features and easy to use.

You can download IrfanView and the other applications at FileHippo listed at the bottom of this Hub. 

2. Paint.NET 3.35 by Rick Brewster - 1.41MB (Open Source)

Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run XP, Server 2003 or Vista. It is meant to be a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with all Windows operating systems.

Paint.NET has many of the powerful features that expensive commercial applications have, including the ability to use layers. Paint.Net requires the .NET Framework 2 in order to run.

3. The Gimp 2.4.6 by The GIMP Team - 17.12MB (Open Source)

The GIMP is a multi-platform photo manipulation tool. GIMP is an cronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program and is suitable for a variety of image manipulation tasks, including photo retouching, image composition, and image construction.

It is often used as a free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop and is not a Photoshop clone. The project's mascot is named Wilber.

The GIMP has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. It has most of the features of the popular Adobe Photoshop and it's totally free.

4. Picasa 2.7 Build 37.63 by Google - 5.83MB (Freeware)

Picasa helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you will recognize. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized.

Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips. And Picasa makes it a snap to share your pictures, you can email, print photos home, make gift CDs, instantly share via Hello, and even post pictures on your own blog.

The latest version includes Web Albums (along with other improvements), but requires that you request an account from Google.

These four image editing programs are just as good as the paid-for programs. You do not have a spend any money to use them to edit and enhance your pictures into great works of art.