An overview of 2D graphics software and utilities for the home user.

This article is for anyone who might be looking for any software for creating or modifying pictures on the home PC. I specify "2D" - meaning flat images such as digital photographs - because I will have a separate article for 3D graphics applications. It is not aimed at professional graphics designers and artists but rather at casual users and those who might like to start a new hobby. Some of these programs are free while others are quite modestly priced compared to their professional counterparts.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

This article deals almost entirely with a type of computer graphics known as "Raster" or "Bitmap". Another type, called "Vector" graphics, is not covered here. The Wikipedia links will explain the differences in detail but a quick tip to indicate which type you are dealing with: if you enlarge a bitmap image, you will eventually notice the pixels (little square blocks of colour) - especially along sharp edges and outlines. A vector image can be enlarged indefinitely without any pixellation. On the downside, however, the vector format is suited to lines, regular shapes and blocks of solid colour and does not do so well with irregular shapes and shades. The image editors described below are generally referred to as "Bitmap Editors" while there are specialist programmes, such as Adobe Fireworks and Flash and Corel Draw, which are designed for vector graphics.

On This Page:

• Background: Graphics file formats.
• General Tools and Utilities: Picture viewers, organisers, albums and basic editors.
• 2D Graphics Editing Software: For the more serious projects.

Background: Graphics File Formats

An important consideration when working with computer graphics is the file format (.bmp, .jpg, .png, etc.). If your picture is going to remain on your PC and never be shared or uploaded anywhere else, then the file format isn't much of an issue (except, perhaps, for disk space considerations). This Wikipedia article gives a good overview of file formats but here are a few common types:

• .bmp : Microsoft Windows default format. Common and widely accepted but uncompressed, therefore the image files are large.
• .gif : Smaller file sizes (i.e. better compression) than .bmp but best suited for images with large blocks of the same colour. An example of what I mean would be a cartoon like The Simpsons - flat colours with very little shading and gradients. Photographs have lots of subtle shades and gradients and are less suited to the .gif format. Also supports transparency: good if you want to place an image over a background and allow some of the background to show through.
• .jpg : Probably the most common format. Excellent compression so, compared to .bmp, very small files with some loss of quality as the compression rate is increased. Very well suited to gradients and shades but has no support for transparency.
• .png : Has many of the advantages of both .gif and .jpg in that it supports transparency and can handle gradient shading. Compression is not as tight as .jpg but the most serious drawback until recently was that this format was not supported in some internet browsers (notably - and predictably - Internet Explorer). This has now changed with the latest releases but many people still use old versions of the browsers so some Website designers have been reluctant to adopt .png.

Below are two examples which clearly show the difference in the way gradients are handled by .jpg and by .gif:

.JPG format photograph with a gradient from darker blue to lighter blue in the sky.

.GIF format: same original photograph. Note the "banding" of the gradient from darker to lighter.

By the way, if you set your computer screen colour quality to only 256 colours (the same as that supported by the .gif format) you will see similar banding in all gradients.

Tools and Utilities

Sooner or later you are going to end up with a proliferation of pictures, perhaps scattered all over your hard drive. At this stage, you might find that the built-in picture viewer that came with your PC is not up to the job ... you want it to do more. Fortunately for you, there are lots of utilities out there - many of them completely free - that will help you view and organise your collection. Some will create albums for you, some will give you basic editing tools for, say, red-eye removal or adjusting the colour and contrast of a photo.

These days, the dividing line between viewers such as IrfanView and "proper" editors such as PhotoShop Elements is becoming increasingly blurred. It used to be that viewer software would do only that: display images on your computer screen. The better the viewer, the more image file types it supported. These days, if you visit their websites and spend a little time reading through the features included, you might be forgiven for expecting to pay a substantial sum for such a package. However, even some of the top-rated applications are still being given away for nothing. Before taking a look at the products, let's mention a few of the features common to most of the later image utilities.

Resize

This is one feature I use a lot, especially for web sites when I need to shrink a picture to fit within a restricted space on the page.

Crop

Again, very useful cut-out tool for trimming unwanted background detail from a picture.

Screen-Shots

Especially handy if you create tutorials but also for common tasks such as emailing someone a picture, or snapshot of a particular area of interest from an application you are working with. The better tools for this purpose allow you to select an area of variable size and shape and save it to a file or to the clipboard.

Annotate

Another essential: the ability to mark the picture with arrows, circles, a highlighter pen effect or just added text. For example: you wish to send a group photo to a friend but you need to point out yourself in the crowd. So you annotate the photo with a red arrow pointing at your head and some text saying "this is me".

File Type Conversion and Compression

Convert from .bmp to .jpg or indeed from any type to any other type ... very handy, especially for web graphics where file size can dramatically affect the speed at which a web page opens in a browser. Some types, such as .jpg, can be compressed from 100% down to, say, 75% with an acceptable loss of picture quality.

Batch Convert and Rename

Apply the conversion described above, not just to a single file but to a set of images. Also, being able to rename a block of image files is very useful too. For example: when you download your pictures from a digital camera, the files usually have some non-descript naming format such as "100_0047.JPG". So it is quite neat to be able to select all of those images and batch-rename them to "France 2008 ###" where "###" is substituted by a sequence number.

Red-Eye Removal

Possibly the most commonly advertised tool: everyone knows what it does and usually how to use it. I don't consider it essential but for those who don't have a separate graphics editor, then it probably is.

Other Features

More of the non-essentials that generally come with "proper" photo-editors: Hue/Saturation/Brightness/Contrast adjustment tools; special effects such as grayscale, sepia tone, blur or sharpen, drop-shadows, etc. These are all convenient and if you don't have alternative photo-editing software, then you could probably get by with one of these enhanced image viewers.

Image Viewers

While this is not a comprehensive list, it will give the reader some idea of what is available. A web search for comparative reviews will help make up your mind if you are looking to install this type of software. I have provided links at the top-right of this page if you wish to connect to the manufacturer's site.

ACDsee 10

This is a commercial program with a price tag but it does have many faithful customers who seem to swear by it. It pitches itself as a Photo-Organiser rather than an image viewer (and perhaps would be more at home in the Album software category) but it does seem to have all the above features built-in. Many will find the organiser capabilities something of a blessing although I, personally, don't have enough pictures to justify spending money on such a feature. The same company also market the ACDsee Photo Editor.

FastStone Image Viewer

Like the others listed here, FastStone is an image viewer and then some. It is free for home use and I have used and recommended it often. It has all the features described in the section above, plus some others including slide-show presentation and an image database for organising and quickly finding your image files (this feature can be turned off if you wish).

IrfanView

A very well-known and well supported viewer with tons of features. I have used this one too and have enjoyed it. If anything, it has a little too much going for it - a little too much complexity, perhaps? That's just a personal view and, as it is also free, there's nothing to stop you downloading it and trying it yourself.

XNView

Like IrfanView, this one has a wealth of features and is free for personal use.

Albums and Organisers

Apart from viewing and adjusting your images, you might also like to organise them. This could be purely to make them easier to find and work with on your home computer, or you might like to create an album on a CD to send to friends and family. Alternatively, you might like too publish them online in some form of gallery. Some of the individual applications below might fulfill one or two of those functions while others might handle all three. Again, this is not an exhaustive list (links to be found at the top-right of this page) but it will give you a good start.

ACDsee 10 (again):

I did mention in the previous section that this software pitches itself as an organiser, and so it is and so it belongs here. This is one that does cover all three functions mentioned above: organiser, personal album and online gallery. In addition it integrates with Microsoft PowerPoint and online photo-sharing sites such as Flickr and SmugMug.

Jalbum:

As its name suggests, Jalbum does albums. Whether private or published online, this will do a fine job of displaying your pictures neatly and attractively ... and it does so for free. I have used a much earlier version of this software for a website gallery and was very happy with it. It seems to have come on in leaps and bounds since then (hence, perhaps, the frog logo?). If you don't have your own website, Jalbum.net provides a community site for sharing your pictures online.

Google Picasa:

Picasa is one of the free applications that Google give away in order to encourage you to use more of their services. Google are very big these days and are consequently able to produce good software. Nevertheless, I sometimes find their approach a little too intrusive for my liking - but that is just a personal opinion so don't let it put you off trying Picasa or any other product from Google. As you can see, I use their AdWords on this site and, like everyone else, use their search engine all the time. Anyhow, to get to the point: Picasa does a little of everything and that means organising, sharing and even editing your pictures. They will provide you with up to one GigaByte of web gallery space once you have created an account with them.

Adobe Photoshop Express:

Not to be outdone at their own game by the likes of Google and others, Adobe have come to the web-apps (online software applications) party with Photoshop Express. Again, this is free and it requires you to sign up for an account. Again it will help you organise your pictures, edit them and publish them to your own gallery on their web site. I've seen some good reviews for this application so you might like to give it a try.

Image Editing Software

Some of the utilities already mentioned have a selection of useful editing capabilities but that is not their primary purpose. The next step up in sophistication (and complexity) is the image editor. As happened with the vacuum cleaner (Hoover) and the disposable ball point (Biro), the most well-known Photo-Editing package, PhotoShop, has become the generic term for all of them. And like "(to) hoover", it has also become a verb so you will hear comments about celebrities having been "photoshopped" to make them look smooth skinned and blemish-free.

So what is the difference between the tools available with the basic editors described above, and the purpose-built editors such as Adobe PhotoShop? Well, for a more in-depth answer to that question, this Wikipedia article will explain a lot. For this summary, however, I'll just mention some of the features that I use often:

Basic Editing Tools

Selection Tools

These provide different methods of selecting areas of an image, either by hand (those on the left in the picture) or automatically with the Magic Wand. This will select areas of a similar colour and shade. They can all select positively or inversely. For example, if you have a head against a clear bright sky, in order to select the darker head, you would select the plain sky with the magic wand and then take the "inverse" option which would switch to a selection of everything BUT the sky. You now have an outline around the head. The Crop Tool simply performs a cut-out of a regular shaped area from the original image. In other words, it crops the unwanted excess around the selection of interest.

Fill Bucket

Fills a selected area with a colour or a pattern ... and the pattern can be any kind of repeating image you like. Handy for adding patterns to pictures of fabrics, for example.

Brushes

Essential for hand-painting directly on to an image. Once again the brush can paint a single colour or a pattern and the size and shape of the brush can be adjusted almost indefinitely. There are often "plug-in" brushes for creating specialist effects and patterns - these are commonly available for all versions of Photoshop in particular. Some other applications also support Photoshop plug-ins.

Eraser

Does what it says but what is especially useful is the fact that, like many other tools, you can select the level of transparency so that you can create see-through effects. Also particularly useful when working with layers (see below).

Blur and Sharpen

Also self-explanatory. One very common use for the blur tool is to give a picture that "depth-of-field" effect which blurs the background behind the foreground object, thus making it seem to stand out. I often notice this on the BBC News website.

Clone Tool

My favourite. In short, it will paint over one area of an image with a selection from another area of the picture (or from another picture). This is the way that unwanted objects are removed from photographs. See the examples below.

Now you see it ...

Now you don't.

Some Photo-Editors to Consider

Reminder: links to these products are in the Link Bar in the right-hand column of this page.

Adobe Photoshop Elements

This is Photoshop-Lite: the reduced feature version of the famous professional image editing package, available for a fraction of the price and targeted squarely at the home and casual user. But don't be mislead by this "lite" description; this product has many of the features that the professionals use and the major differences are in areas that the amateur is never going to worry about anyhow. By this I mean that the graphics industry is about more than just photo-editing and it requires the finished article to be presented ready for print in magazines, billboards and all other types of media. Unless you are a career graphics designer, I don't see any reason for paying the hefty premium for the full product.

Serif PhotoPlus

Serif have a long history of producing software to challenge the market leaders but at a lower price. They attempt to pack in as many features as possible so that you get lots of "bang for your buck". In recent years, however, the major players have stared to bring out products - such as Adobe Photoshop Elements - in the same price bracket. Serif would say that they still offer far better value for money when you compare feature-for-feature. Some of the computer magazine software reviewers seem to agree with them too because Serif consistently achieve decent reviews for their products.

Corel Paint Shop Pro

For many years, Jasc Paint Shop Pro was the popular alternative to PhotoShop and was the product of choice for most amateurs. Then, in 2004, Jasc was bought by Corel and Paint Shop Pro became just one of many graphics products in the Corel suite. Nevertheless, it is still selling at a competitive price and is still feature-rich. I would recommend that you compare the features and prices on the respective websites before deciding upon any of these products.

GIMP

GIMP is short for "GNU Image Manipulation Program" and the "GNU" bit tells you that it is free. If you are looking for something with which to dabble in the world of image editing without bruising the credit card balance, then this might be the answer. On the other hand, users have often commented upon its user-unfriendly interface and complexity, so it might end up putting you off venturing further. I have it (because it is free) but I rarely use it (because I have a couple of paid-for alternatives). Perhaps, if I had not had the funds, or if I had persevered, then I might have come to love the GIMP as many others have done.