Basic free photo editing software

S.M.B.

Hi,

I recently set up a CMS website which allows the site owners to upload photo's to various image libraries.

I'm looking for a basic free photo editing software package that I can recommend to my client so they can resize their images to a certain size (225 x 300, 485 x 300 or 225 x 170).

Anyone got any suggestions?

Axwell

http://www.gimp.org/

daymobrew

Photofiltre has a lot of cool stuff in a simple package.

charlesD

I would second the Gimp. It can do pretty much anything Photoshop can do and is free. To resize images, just goto the Image menu and select "Scale Image"

Thoie

I use Gimp a lot and can recommend it.

However if all they're doing is resizing, take a look at FSResizer. From their blurb:

• Convert and Rename images in batch mode
• Support JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIFF and JPEG2000
• Resize, crop, change color depth, apply color effects, add text, watermark and border effects
• Rename images with sequential number
• Support folder/non-folder structure
• Load and save settings
• And much more...

I use that if I want to resize a batch of pics all to the same settings.

Myxomatosis

Paint.net

Easier to use than GIMP

herya

If they are looking for basic functions XnView can do the job (resizing, contrast, jpg quality, cropping, format conversion etc), it's fast, very versatile, makes a great image browser too.

For anything that requires simple image manipulation etc. I'd recommend either Photofiltre or Paint.NET for their simplicity/tasks value.

GIMP is a great package but may have a bit of a learning curve for a newbie.

S.M.B.

Thanks for all the links,

I'm looking for as basic a package as possible to make it easier on the client as they wouldn't be too experienced with image manipulation.

They'll be getting high quality 'catalogue' photos and all they'll need to do is resize and crop.

I'll take a look through the suggestions and see which will suit the best.

p

Myxomatosis wrote: »

Paint.net
Easier to use than GIMP

Seconded.

Though, what CMS are you using? A lot of CMSes allow you to setup tools for image resizing & cropping.

S.M.B.

p wrote: »

Seconded.

Though, what CMS are you using? A lot of CMSes allow you to setup tools for image resizing & cropping.

I'm using CMS Made Simple and I do have it set up to resize to either of the 3 desired sizes using the 'force width, fit height' option but i'd like the images to all remain uniformed with the same height and width.

Using the 'force both' option leads to image distortion.

Axwell

Is it possible to just force one dimnesion i.e. force the height and it will adjust the width to suit?

S.M.B.

Axwell wrote: »

Is it possible to just force one dimnesion i.e. force the height and it will adjust the width to suit?

The 'force width, fit height' option does this but images with vastly different heights will make the gallery look very unbalanced.

Also, Paint.NET is a handy little editor. Thanks to whoever recommended it.

Axwell

S.M.B. wrote: »

The 'force width, fit height' option does this but images with vastly different heights will make the gallery look very unbalanced.

Also, Paint.NET is a handy little editor. Thanks to whoever recommended it.

A force height fit width would be a better option im suprised it doesnt work that way.

S.M.B.

Axwell wrote: »

A force height fit width would be a better option im suprised it doesnt work that way.

There's a 'force height fit width' option available too but it disrupts the layout of the image gallery even more so.

I don't think there's any way to avoid basic image editing using the CMS options unfortunately.