I’d like to do some simple manipulation of photos, far less I’m sure of what Photoshop is capable of doing. Anyone have a recommendation for a PC-based program that isn’t as expensive as Photoshop?
What do you want to do?
Google’s Picasa is great for simple photo management and tweaking. It’s free.
Paint.NET is free and able to do very basic image editing tasks beyond photo tweaking.
Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements are sub-$100 programs that have probably 80% -90% of Photoshop’s features.
The GIMP is a free and open-source program that can probably do most things Photoshop can do, but is far, far uglier and far, far more difficult to use. I wouldn’t bother with it unless you were desperate, hardcore, and a true masochist.
GIMP is the standard answer to this question. I’ve never used it, but it’s the best free alternative to Photoshop that I’ve heard of. Alternatively, Photoshop Elements, or maybe even Photoshop Lightroom will suffice your needs. They all have free trials.
Gimp is free. It’s a lot more basic than Photoshop, and I personally find the interface a bit of a pain in the butt to use at times, but it’s certainly worth giving a spin.
Edit: :smack: Also, what everybody else said.
I’ve used GIMP and photoshop a lot, and GIMP can do much of what most people use photoshop for. However, it was designed by people who know nothing about user experience and it shows…but it’s free.
Edit: D’oh beaten!
OK, that’s my true opinion. I have used it for an hour or so, but didn’t want to poison the well against GIMP. A lot of people seem to swear by it, and it seems to have a lot of Photoshop’s functionality. That said, I found it completely a pain-in-the-ass to ue, but, then again, I find Photoshop completely intuitive, where a lot of users say that PS is a pain in the ass, so who knows. It doesn’t hurt to give it a whirl.
Gimp is free produced by the kind of people who find coding complicated graphics software fun, whereas Photoshop is a multimillion dollar brand, with a multibillion dollar company funding the r&d and paying people whose sole job is interface design and testing. You gets what you pay for. 
And if you’re working primarily with photographs (as opposed to other types of images), Adobe Lightroom and Corel AfterShot Pro are a step up from Picasa in terms of features, harder to use but a lot more powerful.
They’re about the same price as Elements or Paint Shop Pro, but more tailored towards the digital photographer than the image editor. If the difference isn’t immediately clear, explain what you’re trying to do and we can provide a clearer answer.
I’m glad somebody asked this question, as I was wondering the same thing. I have been trying to use GIMP, but find it to be poorly documented for the raw beginner (i.e. it seems to assume an amount of familiarity with what are, to me as a raw beginner, advanced concepts and functions). Perhaps I need to work my way up to that program.
So, while I’m not the OP, I’d like to thank those who offered easier suggestions. I’ll try them.
Since there is no “correct” answer, let’s move from General Questions to IMHO.
samclem, moderator
The main thing that helped me learn to use the GIMP was taking a Photoshop course. So I don’t think they are that different, except that the GIMP has fewer features, albeit features the novice or even intermediate user probably won’t need.
Photoshop Elements. It’s about $70 and will do everything an amateur needs it to do and more. I would recommend finding a class on the basics of it, however.
Hijack: What follows is a slightly hyperbolic, well, rant, after a decade of trying GIMP and wishing it would be more like every other Windows program.
My understanding of the problem with GIMP is that it was developed under a completely different mentality.
Photoshop: A company sees a market (digital artists), makes a niche product just for them, tailors it to their use.
GIMP: A bunch of geeky software engineers see Photoshop, think “Wow, that’s expensive. We can build one just like it the same way we built Linux.” They apply the open-source philosophies of modular, community-driven design and built a very powerful image editor from the ground up that easily rivals Photoshop in functionality. Trouble is, they forgot that the rest of the world doesn’t consist of geeky software engineers, and digital artists especially just want tools that work, not tools that stubbornly adhere to non-industry-standard ways of doing things for the sake of idealism. So you end up with this extremely powerful, extremely unusable, program designed by a committee of rabid engineers and software freedom fighters – the same people least inclined to do usability focus groups and take new users’ concerns into account. In their world a newbie is not a potential new customer, but a raw recruit who will learn by fire if s/he is to be found worthy of their software; after all, they owe the user nothing… they already gifted their meticulously engineered program to the world.
The GIMP is generally the worst answer to give to a Windows user new to image editing. Car analogy: Soccer mom asks for a car to drive the kids around. Instead of finding her a Toyota, you get the Mythbusters team out to build a performance human transportation machine. It fuel costs only half the amount, has equivalent engine power, is outfitted with custom recycled tires from Adam’s garage that are 25% more fuel-efficient, can be customized to transport any type of cargo with only six power tools, and is even road-legal in Siberia. Trouble is, its accelerator and break pedal are reversed, the steering wheel was replaced by a Freedom Stick, and the tires can be found in no other shop in the world. Oh, and there is no key… you don’t need it; if you find Document XBRR4-A(s)4d, it clearly describes the three wires you need to cross to jumpstart it. What do you mean you don’t like it? It’s free, it does everything you need it to, and sure you might need to spend a few weeks learning how to drive again, but it’s free!
Richard Stallman is their hero, what more needs to be said.
I tried to teach some non-tech savvy people to use GIMP face to face, but had to give up… Those same people grasped Photoshop very quickly.
I think people recommend The GIMP because it is free and that seems to be Internet priority number one these days.
That being said, if you’re a teacher or have a school aged child or student in the house Adobe software can be bought relatively cheaply… I picked up the cs 5.5 master collection last year for about 25% of retail through the education store and Lightroom can be had for less than £60 and Photoshop for less than £200.
Well, I’m glad to hear that my opinion of GIMP apparently seems to be shared by others. Everything up to now has, to me, always been GIMP this and GIMP that when it comes to Photoshop alternatives. I thought I was the only idiot who didn’t quite understand it.
I use a combination of Picasa and Photoshop Elements. I’m not one to spend a whole lot of time manipulating my images, so between the two I have more than enough tools to suit my needs.
Unless Photoshop has gotten much easier to understand, I don’t get it. The options are all the same. The tools are the same. Sure, you may have to hunt around in the menu for a bit, as the options aren’t in the same places, but they’re all there.
Can someone explain to me what is hard to use about the GIMP, compared to Photoshop? I seriously don’t get it. None of your analogies fit at all. Have you even used the GIMP since, say, version 2.2?
Does Paint Shop Pro even exist any more? I thought Corel rolled it into some other application that cost more and did less. I’m still using PSP 8 for most of my graphics stuff, but I also have The Gimp installed for some of its advanced features. For basic photo editing (removing red-eye, cropping, changing saturation, etc.) I just use the software that came with my camera.
I haven’t the faintest clue. Last GIMP I used was maybe 3 years ago. No idea what version it was on at the time. I just remember it being clunkily laid out and layers were a pain in the ass to deal with, and I do everything in layers in Photoshop. Everything. Maybe it’s changed in its current incarnation, I don’t know.
I found this website which amuses me so. The critical posts to that thread are exactly how I felt my brief time using GIMP. It wasn’t a matter of getting used to the interface. The whole setup, visually, was a trainwreck.
To be fair, I have the same issues with Open Office. Everybody talks about how awesome it is, what a great free substitute for Word, etc. I can’t stand it.