Best Free Photo Editing Software

With the holiday season fast approaching, it is time to grab the digital camera and start taking photos. Even if you don’t always get the perfect shot, you can go and make changes or improvements using one of  photo slideshow software ,and turn your photos into photo DVD .

Picasa – Google’s Photo Editor and Also A Online Sharing Version
If you want to both edit and share your photos online, Google has an online application called Picasa that can do both. One of Google’s new applications created in recent years, Picasa has many features and is very easy to learn and use. You can edit your pictures, then organize them into web albums and share them with friends and family online with Picasa Web Albums application. It also gives you a great way to safeguard important photos just in case your home computer loses your original copies. You can also order prints and even elements with printed pictures for gifts.

Ifranview – Best known for viewing but also has photo editing capabilities.
Extremely easy to learn and use for basic photo editing like cropping, color adjustments, special effects, and file formats. It was first published in 1995 and if you just want to crop and rotate, change the file type, or adjust the color balance of a picture, this is a good tool. Extremely simple but and easy to learn than more complicated image editors. It is small, fast on any computer, and also has a great slide viewer too.

Photoscape – Extensive capabilities and small learning curve
If you need pixel editing features and other advanced editing tasks, Photoscape is a great choice. With tons of different features and also quick to learn. Photoscape has different modules for various editing tasks that include a viewer, editor, batch processor, converter, print layout tool, screen capture, combining photos and even a search function using face recognition. This is an excellent free photo editor for children and beginners.

All the above free photo editing software has the basics and can provide the novice with a free solution for digital photo editing. You can find their website by searching by name in Google (too many links to put in the article). All the software has great support and it is fairly easy to find answers to questions online. Some offer tutorials, some did not even need tutorials since they are so easy to learn and use.

Create Simple DVD Template Photoshop

I have Premiere Elements 7, as well as Photoshop CS3. What I want is a very simple DVD as  a presentation.I want to be able to click on each clip as it is needed without the less elegant minimizing of a player window, clicking in a Windows directory window, locating the correct clip, double-clicking, and starting up again. I have carefully marked each clip with a "main menu marker" since there is no reason to select "scenes"--this is not something that would ever be played like a movie; rather the clips would be used, usually in order, to accompany a talk. For that matter, a text menu would be ideal.


I tried to modify the "Generic Text" template from this site, using Photoshop CS3, but have no idea how to link the names of the clips to the actual desired action. Is there documentation online somewhere? Here? Is this something that can be put together quickly or would I be better off abandoning PE7 and purchasing DVD Architect, instead. (It's not so much that adding another program is expensive, but it's one more bit of software to maintain from one more source, that will be used infrequently--potentially years between uses--and one more risk element as a small staff tries to respond to the needs of our presenters. Etc., etc., etc..... I'd much rather be pointing people, starting with myself, to tools that are used more frequently--in our case, PE and PS.

Ideas? Advice? Pointers?

Make Photo Slideshow for iPhone

This iPhone tutorial will contain following two parts: one for how to view slideshow on iPhone, and the other teaches you how to make a photo slideshow to watch on iPhone.

Part 1: How to View Slideshow on iPhone

Follow these instructions to view slideshow on iPhone photo album.

• Step 1: Make sure you have photos on your iPhone and there is at least one photo album. Usually there is the default one called "Camera" album.
• Step 2: Enter the photo application by clicking the "Photo" icon on the home page.
• Step 3: Enter any iPhone photo album you wish to view as a slideshow.
• Step 4: Hit the triangle "Play" icon at the bottom of the screen. And you can now enjoy the album slideshow of high quality iPhone photos.

Part 2: How to Make Slideshow and Watch on iPhone

How to convert photos to slideshow with music and then upload on iPhone? I have converted photos to iPhone video a few days ago and now I shared the step by step tutorial here for your reference.
Here is what you may need to make photo video for iPhone

• 1. Some digital photos and background music (optional);
• 2. A photo to video converter which can burn digital photos to MP4 format video;

Easy Steps to Make Slideshow for iPhone:

I made my iPhone video with Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder, which is an easy to use photo slideshow software and can burn various video formats including MP4. You can download Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder here to begin your iPhone slideshow production.
Step 1: Install iPhone slideshow maker and import media.
Step 2: Add photo styles for iPhone slideshow.
Step 3: Personalize your iPhone slideshow.
Step 4: Preview and create slideshow for iPhone.

Upload Slideshow Video to iPhone

Here is the detailed tutorial to upload slideshow video to iPhone:
Step 1: Install iTunes. If you don't have it, download from here: http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
Step 2: Run iTunes and create a playlist (click file -> create list). Then drag your iTunes slideshow video to this playlist
Step 3: Sync iPhone slideshow video to iTunes by clicking the Apply button at the bottom right corner.
Note: Make sure your music video didn't exceed the limits of iPhone video as follow:
1. H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats;
2. H.264 video, up to 768 Kbps, 320 by 240 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats;
3. MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats