OT: Photo editing software

[Aspen]

Any suggestions for the best software to save photos to a computer and do some minor editing such as cropping and red eye reduction? Do you back up to an external hard drive?

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . has many of the most useful tools of regular CS3-CS4. It lacks the advanced repro tools and some others, but for what you are asking it's pretty much perfect. Goes for about $100. Photoshop is the industry standard.

There are other tools available for editing. Phot Mechanic is a good one . . .

http://www.camerabits.com/site/brochure.html

Adobe's own "Bridge" software also works pretty good.

BBD

[Lurch]

A good open source alternative to Photoshop is GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) , it does all the same stuff for the most part if cost is an issue. I use Photoshop Elements myself, but used GIMP when I was in college and didn't have the spare cash. Learning curves can be a bit steep if you want to do much with either, so it depends on how hands on you want to be.

As for backing them up to an external hard drive, take it from me, back up somewhere! I lost about 5 years worth of photos due to a failed hard drive, and I still regret it. There are some really cool and really cheap online backup services such as Mozy (http://mozy.com/) that give you a couple GB and unlimited storage pretty cheap.

[Lincoln]

Lightroom2 is great for cataloging, adjusting basic levels, cropping and making minor fixes (like red-eye). If you're on a Mac then the current version of Aperture is a worthy competitor.

[morty]

+1 Photoshop Elements. Does everything a non-pro could want and more. Just burn a back-up DVD every so often.

[rickbb]

I've been backing up to an older hard drive but just got a WD Passport 500GB USB drive that I use as a second backup. It is wallet-sized and enables me to carry years of photos in the side pocket of my laptop case. Probably other good, similar products by other manufacturers; the form factor is ideal.

[11.4]

You didn't say whether it's Windows or Mac. If Mac, look at Aperture from Apple. It's got many of the features of Photoshop but works from a different perspective. Where PS is focused on making unique changes to one image and then going on to the next image, Aperture allows you to apply adjustments to a group of photos. This way if you shoot 20 images of a particular scene, you can adjust all of them in the same way (which is perfect when all of them are shot under similar conditions and need the same adjustments. it's not as expensive either.

In Windows you don't need much for what you're trying to do. Even the internal photo management software in Windows will do that for you. Definitely don't need to spend much money, if any.

[Aspen]

If you are running MAC OS I PHOTO works very well. I use it even after having the opportunity to try others.

For Microsoft based machines - listen to BB Dave :)

How about iPhoto as an option? Thanks for the help all.

[Steevo]

iPhoto makes cropping & red eye removal a breeze. Its also good for minor color adjstments and simple effects such as B&W, sepia etc. I find it useful for archiving my images as well.

[Michael Maddox]

GIMP is great if you really want to work on things. It's 90% of Photoshop's power, available for free as open source.

That said, for really good quick-and-dirty work, I rely on IrfanView, another wonderful free product. It's great for quick resizes, color correction and other knock-outs for publish time and web work.