Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on June 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Windows only
When it comes to photo editors there is definitely no shortage of them available. It’s almost a guarantee that a Windows user can find a freeware application that will do all the things they want, and more. Some prime examples are Paint.NET, PhotoFilter, and the feature-rich Photoscape. Today we’ve got another one that we would like to add to our favorites: Photo! Editor.

What makes this application so special? Aside from being freeware it offers a lot of features that are often too complex for casual users, and presents them in a way that most people will understand. You can do all of the common tasks such as rotate images and remove red eye, but there are also several features you won’t find in most standard image editing applications.

Once you get the program fired up you should see something like this:

(Click to Enlarge)

–Click…Done!–

Photo! Editor doesn’t want to confuse you with settings that you won’t understand, and for that reason it has several auto-correct features that take only a single click. This includes removing the red eye, enhancing the colors, and removing noise (despeckling). You’ll find all of these options located on the main toolbar.

For those of you that want a little more control over the settings you can click the arrow located next to each of those buttons. Then you will be able to configure the details for each of those settings, and tweak them until you’re little heart is content. Each time you try to manually configure a setting it will provide “instant help” along the right side of the screen. That way you won’t have any troubles trying to figure out how a feature works.

I do want to say that the feature for removing the noise actually works well. Below is a portion of a photo that I took several years ago with a 1MP camera, and because of the lighting there was some significant noise. Take a close look at the left portion (unedited), and then look at the right half (with denoise applied). The program significantly improved the photo by smoothing everything out.

(Click to Enlarge)

–Make Up (Remove Blemishes)–

How many times have you wanted to touchup a photo before, but thought it was too much work? This photo editor has what’s commonly referred to as a healing brush, and it can remove blemishes from just about anything with very little effort on your behalf. To demonstrate this feature I snagged a photo of a car that had some rust on it, and gave myself 30 seconds to try and improve it using the healing brush in the program. Here are the before and after shots:

It’s obviously not perfect, but you also have to consider how large the areas were that I was trying to fix. In most cases the healing brush will be used to repair tiny blemishes on faces, and so this example is a little bit overkill. Oh, and there is even a special healing brush it includes that can be used to whiten teeth in a photo.

–Straighten Images–

Imagine that you just snapped an awesome photo of the sunset, but realized when you got home that you didn’t have the camera level with the horizon. What program would you use to rotate the image so that the horizon is beautifully level? Can’t think of one? Well, you can use Photo! Editor now.

In this app all it takes to straighten a photo is drawing a line that goes along the horizon. It will then take that information and straighten the image accordingly.

(Click to Enlarge)

–Caricature (Have Some Fun!!)–

I found this image of an adorable dog, and I just couldn’t hold myself back from using it with the Caricature feature. How this works is you open a photo with the Caricature setting, and then start warping it. Here’s what my initial screen looked like:

(Click to Enlarge)

I played with the photo for less than a minute, and all I used was a simple click and drag technique. After I was done I think it’s safe to say that the dog looked a little more interesting than it did before:

(Click to Enlarge)

I think this is actually my favorite feature of the entire application, and the best part is that it’s so easy to use. Go ahead, open up some photos of your friends and go to town! You know you want to.

P.S. You are 100% liable for any relationships destroyed with friends and family due to embarrassing photos created using this feature.

–Overview–

If you do decide to give this app a try I’m sure you will see why it’s so great. It’s very straightforward, and has all kinds of features I haven’t found in traditional photo editing applications before. Let us know what you think, and be sure to post links in the comments to some of the caricatures you make.

Get Photo! Editor
Thanks to Radu for the tip!

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