Photo editing software

Hey

I hope this is not to much of a boring question ....

..... bur now that Im up and running with my trust D40, Im looking at doing
some photo editing and wondered if any had any prefs on what software to
use.

Im just trialing Corel Paint Shop Pro XI which seems nice, but doesnt seem
to support my Nikon RAW files. I've used PS Elements in the past (v2 and v3)
but found it to be clunky and slooooooow.

I cannot afford the Photoshop packages, more of low to medium budets

Does anyone have a fave and why?

Thanks

Simon

"Plebism" <plebism RemoveThis @gmail.com> wrote in message
news:Eib6i.26191$Ro3.6510@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
> Hey
>
> I hope this is not to much of a boring question ....
>
> .... bur now that Im up and running with my trust D40, Im looking at doing
> some photo editing and wondered if any had any prefs on what software to
> use.
>
> Im just trialing Corel Paint Shop Pro XI which seems nice, but doesnt seem
> to support my Nikon RAW files. I've used PS Elements in the past (v2 and
> v3) but found it to be clunky and slooooooow.
>
> I cannot afford the Photoshop packages, more of low to medium budets
>
> Does anyone have a fave and why?
>
> Thanks
>
> Simon
It will depend on what types of editing you want to do. If all you really
want to do is crop, resize, print, adjust color, brightness and contrast
almost any editor will do the job, and many of them are even in the free
category. The more you want to do with the editor the smaller the choices.

As you have stated your question, the list of responses you are likely to
get could be rather long. Maybe if you give us a bit more information of
what types of editing you regularly do, and what you would like to do, the
list of possible editors that fit your needs will be a bit more manageable.

As to PS Elements, for most uses this is the top of many lists. I agree that
with older computers this could be fairly slow and since there are so many
things it can do it can be a bit confusing to use. But that is going to be
the same for most anything that has that many options. The more functions
any program or device has, the more controls it will take to control those
options. But I have found that with newer computers (with higher speeds) and
with experience that helps you to find and use the functions you need
quickly, PSE can be a very comfortable program. IMHO.

Of course for some of us (like me) no one program can ever be the best for
every use, and you may find that (again like me) you will have several
editor programs.

Randy

==========
Randy Berbaum
Champaign, IL