Pro image editor for free Options

[pandy]

Picture Window Pro is a photo editor and a very capable one at that. It's not a program that also handles drawing like for instance PSP. It performs 48 bit processing and can save 48 bit image files, something that is desirable if you work with RAW and actually hard to find. It surprises me that the different camera vendors' own image editors seldom (never?) are 48 bit. What's the point of the huge RAW files if the major part of the image data is discarded as soon as you start to work with them?

The program is outdated according to the author, not that I notice that. So he is working on a total rewrite. Meanwhile the last version can be downloaded for free. The price used to be about $90, I think.

Picture Window is different. It's not a Photoshop like program. There are no layers and ready-made actions or what they are called. You need to do the steps yourself (but they can be saved as workflows if you like). In a way it is to Photoshop what a text editor is to Dreamweaver (winking at Christian here ), something I appreciate. I'm not very experienced with photo processing, but I like that I'm at least given a chance to understand what I'm doing and not just learn what buttons to click.

As I hinted, I'm no wiz at Picture Window and only use a fraction of the things it's capable of, so don't expect me to teach you the tricks. But I like it very much and have used it for around 15 years for the little photo editing I have done. Now I at long last have bought a "real" digital camera and I'll try to learn more. That's how I discoved it's given away for free. I wanted to see if there was a newer version I should upgrade too. There was, only it turned out to be much cheaper than I expected.

Download it. If you find it too complicated at first, save it for later. I think it's the only image editor of its kind and it won't be a free download for ever. Also grab the manuals and tutoriols while they are available.

An interesting fact for older folks around here may be that the author is Jonathan Sachs, the creator of Lotus 1-2-3.

http://www.dl-c.com/