Digital photography is a great way to express yourself and the wonderful thing is that you don’t have to be a professional to enjoy it. But while we all love taking photos, it’s not all that much fun to manage them and edit them if you don’t have the right tools. In this article I’m going to list my favorite five digital photography software tools that will make working with your images a lot easier.
1. GIMP
GIMP is a great free photo editor that can almost work as a Photoshop replacement. I’m saying almost because even though GIMP has tons of advanced features, it still doesn’t offer all the options Photoshop does. But it’s free, so you should definitely consider downloading it. GIMP can be a bit difficult to get the hang of, but there are lots of useful tutorials online. GIMP works on Windows, Mac and Linux.
2. DropShots
What’s the point of taking great photos if you are not planning to share them with your friends and family? DropShots is a very nice website that allows you to do just that and lots more. It’s a great Flikr alternative because it’s easy to use, has powerful photo sharing features, and even has a Cloud-based image editor with lots of filters, effects, and color processing. Best of all, it’s free.
3. Duplicate Photo Cleaner
Managing your photos can be a nightmare, especially when you have to go through several nearly identical images to find the best shot of your subject. Duplicate Photo Cleaner is a digital photography management tool that can make that a lot easier because it will find all the similar images and let you view them side-by-side. You will then be able to decide which to keep and which to delete. It even supports RAW images, so you can insert your SD card and start managing your photos right away without having to convert them into .JPG.
Duplicate Photo Cleaner will also help you find duplicate photos. This program is free to try and the full version costs $39.95. I found it definitely worth the money.
4. Fotor
If you can’t be bothered to use full-blown image processing software like Lightroom or Photoshop, Fotor is a very easy to use free Cloud-based alternative. With its help you can do all the basic edits and color processing that you may want. You can also create cool collages and other photography stuff like cards. It’s free, quick and you won’t have to download anything because Fotor is 100% Web-based.
5. RAW Therapee
If you shoot RAW images and need a light tool to work with them, RAW Therapee is something you should look at. It’s free to use and has functions like file conversion, denoising, image enhancing tools, and basic editing tools.
Hopefully, these digital photography software tools will help you make the most out of your photos and turn editing and managing your images into a whole new experience.