Well the new computer finally moved in and I’ve been busy getting ‘Igor’ up to speed. As usual I’ve been looking for software for working with digitial images of all kinds.
A couple of weeks ago I spotted a sunset that was so breathtaking it literally had me running to the house for my camera, but I couldn’t get a photo fast enough and was dissappointed with the images. Last night I installed the Gimp (Igor didn’t complain even though it was the experimental 64-bit version) and had a little fun with one of those sunset images. It made up for the disappointment of not being able to capture the moment. Here’s the result;
I didn’t worry about noise reduction with this photo as I applied so many filters to it I lost count. The file of the final image was way too big and I’ll have to look at ways of avoiding that in the future, but I was having too much fun to pay any attention this time around.
The Gimp impressed me with the changes that have been made since I last used this software. Notably some good help features have been added to a friendlier user interface, though it is still a pretty complex, deep program and it takes time learn how to make the most of all of the Gimp’s features and capabilities. I did find a good online reference book called Grokking the Gimp by Carey Bunks, which is also available for purchase in print. It might make good bedtime reading as there is just so much to learn.
But back to the noise. That is one thing I haven’t been able to reduce in some of my digital photos where I’m happy with results. There may be ways of doing it with the software I already have but I haven’t managed it yet. That sent me on a search for an open source or free noise filtering program for digital photographs.
My search led to reviews that suggested a stand alone program would generally get the best results, but what I came up with was the Helicon Filter which contains a number of image editing features. Helicon Filter version 4.93.2 is now available as a free download. Version 5 is available in beta and I believe it is available as a free 30 day trail after which it reverts to the earlier version. I was really impressed with how well Helicon Filter 4 cleaned up digital photo files. I didn’t find it difficult to learn and though it wouldn’t necessarily be the software I’d choose for photos I wanted to manipulate into something else entirely, this looks like standout software for photographers to me. There are also other programs available that photographers, especially anyone interested in macrophotography might want to check out. Prices seemed reasonable too.
Here’s a photo I cleaned up and ‘framed’ using the Helicon Filter 4.93.2;
I didn’t have nearly as much luck in my search for vector drawing software but I’ll save that for another post. The image editing software I did find gave me many of the tools I was looking for and I know I will be using them often.
Click here to go to my links page for more image editing software.