Great Free Editing Applications (and what the Professionals Use) – How to Make Money Taking Pictures

Damaris (QUESTION):
Do you know of any editing apps? Either free or that you have to buy?

Phillip (ANSWER): 
Yes, look up Picasa, it’s great. This is Google’s free photo organizing and editing system. Once you download the application to your computer, it will automatically scan your entire computer for photos and make them easily viewed in the left hand navigation column. This is probably the best free photo program you can use. Download it, play around with it, and find out what you can do with it. It is probably way more powerful than most people realize.

Also, for a Photoshop-like program there is GIMP, which is a funny name for a completely awesome Photoshop clone. Check it out! Hope that helps. Nearly all of the professionals I know use Lightroom for managing and editing large quantities of photos (like for a wedding/event), and for higher end retouching they use Photoshop. Both of those have a pretty steep learning curve, but they can do a lot.

$$$ Tip:

If you are going to buy Lightroom, don’t do Adobe Creative Cloud (CC). Everyone I know, as of today, October 18th, 2015, says that Lightroom CC is extremely slow and culling through weddings and editing takes 2-3x longer than it used to. Buy Lightroom version 5.7.1 and enjoy the last best version on the market. Maybe there will be future updates to Lightroom CC to speed it up, but for now, the newest version is not the best version. I think you can get the older version for about 25 dollars online, from what I’m seeing. Adobe CC is $9.99/mth, and you will be losing money after just a few months. What features are you lacking by using version 5.7.1? Panorama, HDR, and dehaze. All gimicky features that are not geared towards professionals. You can find these features in Picasa, for free.

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