Free/Cheap Photo Editor Program Recommendations

[Bocephus86]

Hi All,

My girlfriend has been into making custom cakes and is trying to take the next step into marketing what she makes for people. She's looking for a free (ideally) or cheap photo editor program than can do just a few "basic" things:

1. Auto-enhancement abilities (she has described this as something on iPhone that autoadjusted the picture for maximum sharpness/color??)
2. The ability to add text over the image and control the font/color/affects (effects?)

Basically, a simple & safe photo editor. She doesn't need to edit video and doesn't want (or need) anything too complicated. Her goal is to sharpen up/enhance the colors in her cake pictures and then put some text over the top of it so she can post to instagram and the like.

She's tried iPiccy. She noticed that, when uploading some photos, the color is washed out once she posts them. She sends them from her iPhone to the PC to do the posting.

She's also trying Pollar and is wondering if it's worth the 20 dollars to get the text editing ability or if there is something better out there to use.

I figured this would be a good place to ask as I don't even take pictures, let alone touch them up...

Thanks in advance

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[PK Cronin]

The best free photo editing program that I'm aware of is GIMP. Affinity is a cheap photo editing program, Affinity Photo - Professional image editing software, but I've never actually used it myself. I'm a huge fan of Adobe's Creative Suite, but it is subscription based and pretty costly. They do offer discounts to students and certain types of educators. If she fits either of those criteria, and she's serious about moving forward in that type of career, go with Adobe's products.

 

[Bocephus86]

Appreciate the recommendations. She tried GIMP originally but downloaded it from a fishy site and I had to do a fresh windows install as she picked up some type of trojan. Luckily it was one of the first things she did on her new PC so she didn't loose much but now she's gun shy on it, even when I found the actual website to download it safely from. I'll see if she's willing to try it again.

Affinity looks like a good option though, I'll let her know about it. Thanks again!

 

[Individual 1]

There is a Humble software bundle this month with a photo editing program for $20.

Humble Software Bundle: VEGAS Pro: Discover Creative Freedom (pay what you want and help charity)

 

[guinness]

Also second Affinity Photo, it's around $40-50, Mac or PC.

It has some features of Photoshop or PS Elements, with layers and whatnot, and the layout is similar to both. I primarily use it for it's dehaze function, as Lightroom 5 doesn't have it, but too cheap for the CC subscription.

 

[CBJx614]

Snapseed I think it is, by Google is pretty good and it's free

 

[Dolemite]

Paint.net and the gimp are two of the top ones.

 

[CanadianHockey]

GIMP is pretty good but not the most user intuitive.

 

[The Head Crusher]

GIMP was what I first learned on before I went to photoshop

 

[karnige]

paint.net is pretty good