Beginner DSLR user needs some software...

Soldato
Joined
25 Nov 2009
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5,392
Evening all,

Been endlessly snapping all sorts on my new D3200 and have blamed the subjects for most of my failings :D

I've imported them onto the PC but have nothing other than windows stuff to view/tweak on.

What free software is out there that you guys would recommend?

Thanks!
 
GIMP ?

Free, gotta be worth a shot before dropping money into PS.

Lightroom is what you want really :) Photoshop can come later if you need it but Lightroom does pretty much everything you'll want to do with your photos and it does it in a way that's easy to learn just by randomly pressing buttons and seeing what happens :) Photoshop can certainly do more but it's not as straight forward (for me at least!)
 
as has been said lightroom is what you want.
and as has been said, 9 pound a month gets you lightroom plus photoshop via adobe cc.

and as hasn't been said, you can download a free 30 day trial of lightroom (and photoshop)

:)
 
I almost exclusively use Fastone Image Viewer (www.fastone.org) for picture enhancement as it's so simple and quick to use and then I move on to Irfanview for file size changes as it does batch processing.

I have Photoshop Elements and as a result of using those two programs I hardly ever touch it. Hope this helps.
 
What do people think of Acdsee?
I don't like the subscription based adobe situation (as a hobby user) and Acdsee seems work well for me, I've purchased it and feel happy but it never seems to get mentioned as an alternative.
 
What do people think of Acdsee?
I don't like the subscription based adobe situation (as a hobby user) and Acdsee seems work well for me, I've purchased it and feel happy but it never seems to get mentioned as an alternative.

Don't have to subscribe for Lightroom, you can still buy it :)
 
I mostly use Lightroom, I've got photoshop too but don't tend to edit photos too much - Lightroom is v.useful to quickly adjust the exposure or apply filters etc..
 
Is the Nikon editing software not any good? I think it is Capture NX-D or View NX-i that comes bundled on the CD. That should surely be better than Windows stuff, and it's free. You can also download from the Nikon website as well.
 
The Nikon software isnt bad for a free product, i did use it for a while but its not a patch on Lightroom. I splashed out on buying that and never looked back. If you get the physical version for abround £100 you will have it for a few years before looking to upgrade. I just also got Elements 14 too as i got it on an offer, but not had chance to have a play with it yet.

The Nikon RAW converter is actually by far the best there is for Nikon RAW files, much better than Adobe, but the rest of the software is pretty poor in comparison.
 
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