There are stacks of computer programs that will help you with your photography – programs for sorting out your images and editing them, managing them, programs to convert one file type into another, programs for creating panoramas or resizing your images, programs for making slide shows. The choice is vast.
Unfortunately, commercial versions of programs to do these things can be very expensive. For example, the full version of the image editing program Photoshop costs a great deal more than most cameras.
But don’t despair. There are many excellent photography-related programs that cost nothing (though if you care to make a donation I’m sure the creators would appreciate it).
These freeware programs cover the whole gamut of photography from when you are planning a shoot to final printing of the image.
Here are a selection of some of the best ones that I’ve found. For each one I have used I have added a few personal comments. If you know of any others that you’d recommend, please let me know and I’ll add them to the list. Also, if you have experience with any of these programs, and would like to add a review comment about it, please contact me with the details. Tell me, too, if there are any programs to be avoided.
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Planning a shoot
The Photographers Ephemeris (For Mac, PC and Linux)
An excellent program that shows you where the sun and moon will rise and set, for any day of the year, in any part of the world. This is perfect for planning that landscape shot, enabling you to get the light just right. It also shows from which direction the sun and moon are shining, (or not, as the case may be) for any hour of the day or night and displays it by means of lines on a map or satellite image.
Note: This program requires that you have Adobe Air (also freeware) installed on your computer.
Review: I use this program regularly for my landscape shots, and it displays the information clearly and graphically, in an easy-to-understand manner. It also provides a lot of explanatory notes and related information. Recommended.
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Image browsing/sorting
Faststone (For PC. Other operating systems – not stated)
A fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and basic editor. Includes image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and colour adjustments. Gives access to EXIF information. Supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CRW, CR2, NEF, PEF, RAF, MRW, ORF, SRF and DNG).
Review:
I use this as an image browser and can highly recommend it. I do not use it for conversion of files, or any image editing, so cannot comment on those features. However, compared with ACDsee, the commercial image-browsing program (an old version of which I have) this works just as well, and is superior in some respects.
There are many other image viewers available, both paid-for and freeware. Wikipedia publishes a useful table giving basic comparisons between them all.
Visipics (For Windows 2000 and above, Linux)
One of the problems with digital photography is that it’s so quick and easy, you end up huge number of images. Then you edit them, tweak them, re-size, save and re-save … and before you know it, your hard disk is bursting at the seams.
It’s a safe bet that quite a few of the images you have on your disk are duplicates. Visipics is quick and easy-to-use program that finds all your duplicates and allows you to delete them.
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RAW conversion
Step OK (For Windows 2000/XP and above)
Can be used to convert RAW files to JPEG or TIFF. Compatible with most camera models on the market. Supports batch conversions.
Reviews:
I have no experience with this program as I use software provided by the manufacturer of my camera. However, it gets good reviews (4 out of 5 stars on CNET Downloads, and ranked No. 77 in digital photo tools).
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Image editing
The Gimp (For Mac, PC and Linux)
This is the mother of all freeware image editing programs and a very versatile graphics manipulation package. It is open source software and so is constantly being updated.
Review:
I have used this a little and can recommend it so long as you are not looking for the full ‘bells and whistles’ sophistication of Photoshop. If you just want to tweak the colour and contrast a bit, maybe adjust curves, this program is excellent. The UK Magazine ‘Practical Photography’ (April 2010 issue, p.111) in a review of photo editing programs, says this of The Gimp, “… is (like) a hand-me-down camera. It’s not quite as good as the current model, but works perfectly well, and it’s free.”
Star trails (Windows 2000 and above with Microsoft.NET installed)
A neat little program that allows you to create those amazing shots of curved star trails in the night sky. You take a whole series of long-exposure night shots, spanning several hours if you want, and then blend them together to give one image. This program cleverly adds the light from the stars together without over-exposing the background.
Review: I use this program from time to time – it’s a rather specialist application – and it’s good. The instructions are a bit sparse and not terribly clear, but once I worked out how to sue it, it gave excellent results. You will have to play about with it a bit to discover how it works.
Hugin panorama stitcher (For Mac, PC and Linux)
An open-source, freeware program that allows you to assemble a mosaic of photographs into a complete panorama. Panoramas can be made from an amazing range of shots, both horizontal rows, vertical rows, or a combination of the two. Weird and wonderful panoramas – such as those ones that look like tiny planets – can also be created with this program. Browse through the gallery on the Hugin site to get a feel for the range of possibilities.
I have not used this program yet, but I intend to download it and play around. I’ll report back when I’ve some experience.
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Image resizing
Faststone Photo resizer (For PC. Other operating systems – not stated)
Have you ever received a full-sized image by e-mail? You know the sort of thing – an e-mail that takes forever to download and, when you finally get it, all you can see is a tiny portion of the top right.
If you are going to e-mail your photographs, make them smaller (1000 pixels the long side is about the maximum size I’d recommend). The same applies if you are planning to put them on a web site, though the sizes will be different. That will depend on the layout of your website.
Most image editing programs have a facility to resize images. But if your doesn’t, or you want a stand-alone program, the Faststone Photo Resizer works well.
WARNING – Don’t use this program to make images larger. The results will be terrible. For successful upsizing you need a sophisticated program that carries out a process called ‘interpolation’. You can upsize successfully with Photoshop, but I don’t know of any freeware programs that will do this.
Another good image re-sizer is VSO Image resizer. (For PC)
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Watermarking
TSR Watermark software (Windows XP and above with Microsoft.NET installed)
One of the headaches of putting your photographs up on the web is that they may be stolen. Any image that appears on a computer screen can be pinched and saved to someone else’s hard drive.
One way round this is to put a transparent watermark across the image – your name for example, or a copyright notice. This can be done with many image-editing programs, but it can be a bit of a fiddle. TSR Watermark software enables you to do this simply.
Note: Whatever photographs you put up on the web, watermarked or not, alwas make sure they are a reduced size and low-resolution. Watermarking is not an infallible way of preventing piracy. But thieves cannot do very much with reduced-size, low-resolution images.
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Display
PhotoStage (Windows 2000 and above)
A very comprehensive package for creating slide shows in almost any format you can imagine. Gives a variety of zoom, crop and fade effects. Lets you set your photos to a soundtrack, record your own narrations and overlay text captions. And allows you to record your slide show for presentation on TV, PSP, your mobile phone and more…
Reviews:
I have not used this program as I’m not into making slide shows, but it features in the March 2010 issue of the UK magazine Practical Photography, and they recommend it.
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Cool thanks for this!
My pleasure Brian. Hope you find them useful. I’ll be adding more from time to time, so keep checking back!
Hey Alistair, thanks a lot !!
Hi Alistair
I seem to have managed to remove the junk you referred to earlier; guess it may well reappear!
See you too are still well into photography. Currently trying to establish a small business with my daughter (see website above) concnetrating on events and portraits but maybe going into weddings.
Still welll into stock though prices have plumetted in the last couple of years.
Thanks for the freeware ideas; I’m currently well into Photoshop but a fan of Firefox, Google Chrome and Thunderbird!
Keep in touch
Mark
Great to hear from you Mark … another old ‘Zambia hand’. I use Firefox and Thunderbird, too … and Photoshop. The Gimp is a great image editing program, but it doesn’t *quite* have the facilities of PS – particularly the upsizing by bicubic interpolation.
My pleasure. I hope that you find something useful there.
Many thanks for this informative summary. I teach basic digital imaging and am always on the lookout for additional resources that may benefit my students and assist them in accomplishing their imaging goals. Will certainly try these out and incorporate into my future classes.
Hi Alistrair,
Thanks for listing photographic freeware.
For RAW conversion I would suggest RAW Therapee (http://www.rawtherapee.com). And for image browsing XnView is also worth trying (http://www.xnview.com/en/xnview.html).
Kind regards,
René.
Thanks René. A couple of other useful freeware links. Your contribution is appreciated.