Photo Integrations Inc.

In the past, photo editing was time consuming and tedious.  Anything beyond simply lightening or darkening a picture meant hours of painstaking work.  Something as simple as painting away a feature involved making an entirely new picture, with the object being replaced by tiny bits cut out of other parts of the picture.  The extensive work involved in, say, painting out one of Stalin’s former colleagues, probably took days.

The world of photo editing today is completely different.  Paint programs like Photoshop make it simple to improve the features of a photograph, giving the photographer a bit more leeway with lighting and exposure.  Unfortunately, they also make it very simple to change the photo, and present something that wasn’t really there when the picture was taken.

Photojournalists have a responsibility to present facts, not fiction.  Editing the picture to right a color cast is not the same as changing a dull grey sky to a brilliant red sunset.  Adding smoke, or multiplying the number of people in a scene, do not make the picture more “dramatic” or “more representative” of what happened–they lie to the viewer, in the same way that putting a celebrity’s head onto another person’s body is a lie.

At what point does the photographer cross the line from “improving” a picture to “improving upon” it?  When he adds or subtracts elements that change the message or meaning of the picture.  Adding or removing information, even by simply cropping out hurt or blurring critical information, is the line that photojournalists must not cross.

Keep these facts in mind when editing photos.  If a picture is “artwork,” and not meant to be a scene of reality, then the artist is free to edit as he chooses.  But a photojournalist is not an artist, and news photography is not supposed to be art.

If you’re serious about photography, and if you’re looking for the best and most powerful photo editing program around, the de facto standard and market leader is Adobe Photoshop CS2.

Unfortunately, with it’s steep learning curve and equally steep price tag, Photoshop is overkill for the people who just want to play with their pictures.  Photoshop CS2 has every possible feature that a digital photographer could want except a low price.  What other programs are available?

Adobe recognized that their flagship product was a bit much for the beginner, so they scaled it back.  With a few of the more complex features removed and a price tag under $100, Photoshop Elements still packs quite a punch, and might be considered the market leader in it’s own price range.  It has the same basic interface as the full powered Photoshop, and most of the same functionality.

Elements’ leading competition is Corel’s Paint Shop Pro XI, and some reviewers prefer Corel’s product to Adobe’s.  Paint Shop Pro, in general, is simpler to learn in many areas, and is just as powerful in most of it’s tools.

Both Elements and Paint Shop Pro have red eye removal features and bundled photo organizer programs, and quite literally run neck and neck in terms of features and ease of use.

Another product on the market is the Microsoft Digital Imaging Suite.  With the latest version, Microsoft has added wizards to help novice users work their way through the program.  While the new features are an improvement, most reviewers still don’t rank this product as highly as either Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro.  One feature that really stands out in Microsoft’s package, though, is the slide-show program called Photo Tale, which is much better than the equivalent in Elements.  Photo Tale is offered separately as a free download.

There are a handful of products in the under-$100 price range, with products available from Adobe, Corel, and even Microsoft.  But, there are also a variety of programs available in an even lower price range–free!  Freeware programs (where the owner has released the program for download without payment) and open-source programs (where the programmer has released the code to the program for others to expand upon) are both available on the Internet for anyone who wants to take the time to look for them.

At the top of the list of free image editors is the GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP.  Originally designed for Unix, GIMP is free shareware and is open source–which means programmers can add features without having to wait for a parent company to upgrade the program.  GIMP has a variety of filters, effects, tools and abilities, and some reviewers compare it favorably to Photoshop CS2.  Installation is a bit of work, since there are two install files.  And unlike other downloadable shareware or freeware programs, there are no spyware or adware programs bundled with the Gimp.

Google’s Picasa program rates highly.  But, Picasa is focused more towards organizing images as opposed to editing them, so it’s nowhere near the power of a Photoshop or a GIMP.  But, it still has a selection of image tools, like color correction and red eye repair.

There are other open-source or free image editing programs available.  Paint.NET is an image editor written in C#.  Pixia was originally designed for the anime (Japanese animation) community.  And OpenCanvas was originally designed as a sketch program for drawing tablets–it will remember the sketch, stroke by stroke, and will even turn the sketch into an animation that shows how the item was drawn, line by line.