Editing Your Photos for Sharing, Printing and Scrapbooking

Since purchasing our digital camera in Feb 2004, we have embraced digital imaging — we sold 2 of our 3 film cameras (I couldn’t part with my Nikon SLR! Not yet!) and never looked back.

Since then, I have searched high and low for the best photo editing software that is easy to use/learn and more importantly one that fits my budget (and believe me, my budget is quite low) — And then, I found it! While browsing through my Creating Keepsakes Magazines (Nov 04 issue I think), I found what I wanted — the Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 (pictured above). I’ve read the reviews and realised that this is exactly what I was looking for!

To know more about the software’s functionality, click on the review. This is one of reviews I read before purchasing the software. It came highly recommended for beginners to prosumers.

While it is essentially a photo editing (and printing) software, it is also bundled with ‘Creations Wizard’ for creating ‘Scrapbook’ pages. However, at the time, It retailed at US$99.99 and to me, that was still expensive. I knew I only had to wait a few months for the price to come down and it did! I bought mine from Amazon for US$49.95. What a steal!

Oh, and of course, this purchase did not come out of my pocket as it is my husband’s wedding anniversary gift to me but he does not know that yet (Our anniversary is in July but what the heck, I have to have it!) — See, I’m following my 10 shopping tips for the scrapbooker. This purchase justification fits nicely with tip no. 7.The precious item arrived yesterday and I played around with it for a bit and even without reviewing the manual, I was able to navigate without trouble! It even gave me hints on what the next step is (like it predicts what you want do next).

The software’s red-eye removing tool is heaven-sent (In one of the reviews I’ve read, this was highlighted as one of its improved features) — You only have to select the area around the eyes, drag the red-eye removing tool and it removed the red-eye just like that!

The photo I played with to check the red-eye removing tool is of a blue-eyed boy. Once the tool removed the red eyes, it revealed a very realistic looking pair of blue eyes! I was rapt! I’m so particular with this because when I tried removing the red eyes using the photo editing software that came bundled with our Canon camera a few months back, the blue eyes looked grossly fake.

I haven’t played around with the ‘Creations Wizard’ yet to create scrapbook pages but will post about it soon. For more tips on this function, go to Photoshop Elements 3.0 Scrapbook Function.

One thing to take note though is that the ‘Creations Wizard’ function is only available in Windows.

If you own a similar photo editing software or a different brand, please do drop me a note to let me know how you find it and what you like about your own photo editing software.

*Disclosure: Yes, I am an Amazon.com affiliate, so if you purchase through the photo link above, I’m supposed to get a commission from them. However, I’m also a genuine user of the software. I will only recommend items in my blog that I am happy with.