There used to be a huge difference between home and professional photo editing software, the two now appear to have almost blended in to one with the exception of one piece of software that is in a whole new ballpark when it comes to features and price, Adobe Photoshop. This article will review the difference between them and tell you which is the best value for money for the features you get.
Photo Pos Pro Photo Editor – Free
It is always useful to have a free option in a list as not everyone can afford to spend hundreds of dollars on software. One of the best features of this program is the ‘batch operation’ option it has where if you are cropping or resizing numerous photos you can do them all at the same time instead of individually. It has many of the options that an older version of Photoshop has like CS2 such as layers and masking, gradients as well as textures. It would be a good download is CS2 wasn’t available to download for free now off the Adobe website but it is still a viable alternative.
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer – $89.99
This is a reasonably expensive piece of kit but really does deliver on all fronts; it has a massive amount of features such as the ‘Magic Erase’ tool which can remove anything from a photo, and I do mean anything! The only downside is that they have missed out on a basic tool which is being able to take still images of videos.
Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Elements – $699 & $69.99
Putting Photoshop in this with the rest of the competition is like putting a four legged horse in with a bunch of three legged horses for a race, it is by far the best software out there, it is used by the top graphic designers in the world and that is why it costs $699. It is unfair to judge the others against this because of that price difference so I’ve chosen to include a more home/amateur photographer friendly Adobe product in Elements. Elements is perfect for everyone whether you are a portrait photographer in Auckland or a sports photographer in New York. Elements has all the features you could need, it lacks nothing and has the experience of the Photoshop developers brought to it. For $69.99 it is definitely an excellent price.
Portrait Professional 11 – $55.99
This software has been created with the selling point of being fast at processing and being easy to use, they have put sliders on the editor at the side of the screen to make it as easy as possible to change an image quickly. An unusual feature of it as well is that it can be used as a standalone program or as a plug-in for Photoshop.
Corel PaintShop Pro X5 Ultimate – $49.99
For $49.99 this is definitely the pick of the bunch, it is the only other program to have all of the features that Adobe Elements has for $20 less. It regularly wins reviews because of how user friendly and easy to use it is. It has enhanced photo blending capabilities, photo mapping to take location information from your photos and lots of social media sharing options.
Author Bio
Sarah Hewitt is an experienced writer who writes about anything and everything that interests her, this can range from travel to business, sport and electronics. You can contact her via her Google+ page.