Photo editing software

You only need this software if you want to alter the print in some way. There are (and probably always will be) lots of programs available to do this and they range in price from virtually nothing to several hundred pounds. As you might expect, the more you pay, the more you get in the way of facilities for altering your pictures, but you can get a great deal for nothing.

Those who have made a print the old fashioned way will know that you could adjust the brightness, contrast and colour as well as enlarge, rotate and crop your print - and that’s about all. Even the most basic digital photo processing software will allow you to do that and usually, a great deal more besides. If you want to do those things but are short of funds, I can highly recommend Irfanview, a very popular and useful digital photo viewer and more.

That is not the only program of this type available. In fact, any photo editing program, including free and shareware programs are likely to have these basic functions.

Advanced techniques

Some darkroom workers used more complicated procedures like selectively darkening or brightening, cutting and pasting or retouching the image. If you want to do something like that, you may need to look at the commercial offerings. The most well known of these is probably Photoshop.

There is a popular myth amongst many photographers that they need Photoshop (costing £100's) for editing because it's the "industry standard". The myth is not so much about Photoshop, but about what the phrase "industry standard" means. First and foremost, it probably is the best software, but more importantly, people in the industry can take courses in it and it's compatible with other "industry standard" software.

Photoshop, quite rightly, costs several hundred pounds and is very much designed for the professional market but there are many alternatives that, for the non professional (and even some professional photographers), represent much better value. The range and quality of software available below £100 is astounding and getting better with each new version - but what's the best value?

Next page - Best Value

Editing

Many photo editors can do a great deal more than just enhance your digital image for printing, although that is what they are more commonly used for.

The top editors can also:

• Fix converging verticals

• Fix digital noise that occurs at high ISO settings

• Correct lens distortion and aberrations

• Combine several images into one composite picture

• Add text to the image

• Duplicate the effect of putting a filter in front of the lens. The only one that cannot be duplicated is a polarizing filter.

It is the shear number of functions available that can make these programs quite daunting for the first time user.

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