What do you use to edit your photos?

You're totally right, it's definitely more fun to take photos that don't need much tweaking. I'm not there yet though, but hopefully I will be soon :) Then again, a very good photographer once told me that great photographers edit their good photos so they become even better. And he's right, it has to be beautiful already to begin with otherwise no amount of editing will make it really awesome. :)

Oh I'm that way too for the most part. Success or Failure. There are times when I spend a lot of time on one photo and then still end up not liking it. Sometimes when I have photos that don't really pop or look particularly great, using some actions in Photoshop gets them really better and good enough to share. Let's not give up and keep on at it! :)

I'm not that good with photo editing I guess, I can change something that's half good into better but if it's already good I don't really know where to start. Sometimes I make several versions of one picture just to see what I can do, but I'm still very much at the try and fail phase.

I'd love to start staying away from my photoshop too. These days I don't upload my photos without running them through there (for most of them). I figured I should take more care when taking the photos so all I would need is add my watermark and it's ready for upload! Oh well, there's just a lot of possibilities when you learn photo editing, no? thanks for sharing!

When you learn more things about photo editing Photoshop can get really fun and addictive as there are so many things you can do! That's the reason why I got so addicted to it in the past

ADDICTED is indeed the term to use! I've also found that there are so many free actions that one can download and use. So even if I don't know so much, I can improve my photo. I've found though that not all actions work on different photos the same way, so one still has to know how to manually tweak the settings. I've got a lot to learn but I'm trying to stay away!

I do some digital scrapbooking and many use Photoshop Elements for that, and also to organize their photos., I've heard it's a pretty neat program.

your welcome :) obviously, adobe photoshop is most powerful editing tool so far. If I have enough time, I'll try to study even the basics of it. :) for now, I'm contented with Picasa.

Oh yes of course, we don't want our focus looking fake or obviously edited. I think that any software you use there's a tendency to over do it. What I like about Picasa is that it's plain and simple. It tells you exactly what it's going to do with your photo. They're like the actions in photoshop. While in Photoshop, you have to do them manually or else load actions that others have created. Thanks for the comment :)

Bryce is a 3-D rendering program that is used to generally edit or create geometrical shapes and/or landscaping. They can be made in a realistic manner or made to look surreal. Bryce, in its earlier days, cost in excess of $500, but today you can download Bryce 5 for free, as long as you are willing to download another software program that the company publishes. It definitely beats paying $500 but you need a great deal of RAM to make the rendering run smoothly.

Ohh thanks for sharing,I still find Adobe Photoshop CS3 still a bit complicated, but with the help of tutorials it becomes easier and I find really a powerful tool :) I haven't heard of Bryce 3d before, what does it do?

I read that GIMP is open source, it's good that there are a growing number of applications and software that are that way. Thanks for sharing :)

I first heard about PSP in an e-group I joined, the ladies there are awesome at creating tags and banners and their own websites too. There was a PSP workshop and I learned the basics from them. I think it was v9 that I started out with. I would definitely appreciate a more simple one but has the same functionality. I don't really like that sometimes the editing software takes away what's important about photos and enhancing them, rather than the other way around. You know what I mean? Thanks for sharing and pointing out Gimp. I'll checkout it out sometime.

thank you! Can you give tips on where to learn more about using photoshop for editing? Do you read tutorials or stuff? I sometimes use actions and they make everything easier. :)

Hi! I have not tried PhotoFiltre and already, I am excited about the many new photo editing software that this thread has revealed to me :) I love photoshop although I learned to use PSP first. Now, I edit with Adobe Camera Raw, and then finish up with PSP. Just because. If I could find one software that I will stick with for editing my photos from start to finish, i will definitely make the switch. Cheers to more learning! :)

Hey thank you so much for letting me know about Paint.Net I have never heard of it before even though I thought I was pretty familiar with MS products. I thought they only had Microsoft PictureIT and I didn't much like that. I checked out the site for Paint.net and see that it has support for layers too, much like the PSP and Photoshop. I think this one's really worth trying. thanks!

I've heard about LightRoom too, and saw that there are also some free presets (?) that other users are offering for download and personal room. But what is it really for? I mean, how different is LR from Photoshop?

I love Adobe Camera Raw, that one's quite easier to use compared to Photoshop itself although I was trying both out at the same time. I'm not doing very well yet, but I keep on trying.

Come to think of it, I think we used to have ACDSee. But at the time I didn't do any photo editing at all. Yes, the photos can really become professional looking with some tweaking on Photoshop.