Photo editing in Windows 11

[Pukmeister]

Chaps, following on from Crumbles’ old wedding photo posting, I’ve dug out my old wedding photos and scanned them into my PC and now want to use photo editing software, hopefully with an easy user interface and maybe helpful AI tools to sharpen foregrounds, blur backgrounds, remove scratches and dirt marks, red eye etc.

Windows 11 platform, I have a powerful and fast 8-core desktop with 32Gb Ram, acres of SSD free space and a powerful GPU so not limited by hardware.

I was thinking maybe Adobe Lightroom 5 or perhaps Photoshop Elements, I don’t mind paying a little but not keen on buying a bloated complicated suite of unnecessary options I will never use or need.

Software recommends please.

 

[RobA]

You could start with Gimp or Pain.NET. Both are free to download and between them you can do most things. RobA.

 

[sparkplug]

Yeah - if it's just for bits and bobs then one of the free ones should work.

If you already know Photoshop a bit then photopea could be another one to consider

Because I do vector and page layout stuff as well sort of semi commercially (it used to be my job but I just do odds and ends for a few old clients and friends) I decided to buy the Affinity Suite (half price in the black friday sale!) which I think is the right balance for me in terms of a paid for solution.

One off payment, free updates up to when there's a major release and then you either carry on using what you've got, or you pay a reduced rate to upgrade to the new version.

A licensing model that works for me.

 

[Pukmeister]

Some of the free ones work by uploading your images to them, manipulating, then downloading again with a watermark (removed once paid). Presumably this is due to the "heavy lifting" requirements of an AI tools process ?

Others require a monthly or annual subscription.

I'd prefer to keep everything on my PC if possible (including the application itself) rather than up/downloading images, and I'd prefer a one-off payment such as Lightroom though I guess I could just subscribe monthly until I have completed what I want to achieve.

I think I have an old official boxed licensed copy of Adobe Photoshop from probably Win7 or earlier somewhere on DVDs I could try that though I have a feeling it won't be happy playing under Win 11.

I could get an installer key for Lightroom online for less than a tenner such as CDKeys or Kinguin, then try installing this set of plugins on top ????

https://www.ukgser.com/community/threads/great-opportunity-for-free-photo-editing-software.254344/

 

[Barnoe]

I'm with @RobA, Gimp at https://www.gimp.org/ is superb.

I used photoshop for years as part of my job, and switched to gimp when a new employer wouldn't pay for the Adobe PS licence.

Been using it a few years now and you can do a lot with it.
It seems difficult at first but there is a huge online community for it, so a quick google search with what your trying to do usually brings up a step by step.

You have nothing to lose its FREE

 

[sparkplug]

Yup - if you want it on your PC then Gimp is a good shout.

 

[Pukmeister]

My only concern with GIMP was having to learn a new and possibly not intuitive user interface. I was aware of it from my old days trying out Linux distros.

Seeing as I'm under no time constraint to get the job done (its just a desire to back up my old Wedding images and archive them) I can try GIMP and learn to use what I need from it in slow time.

Thanks for the suggestions/recommendations.

EDIT: Thinking about it, I can make good use of my time when sat at work when waiting between jobs by putting photos on my 1Tb portable NVMe drive and using my personal HP Laptop to play around when bored and stuck at work and learn GIMP, then archive and print if needed at home.
Specs on the laptop should hopefully be okay for photo editing (11th Gen Core [email protected] Ghz with 20Gb Ram on Win 11 64 Bit).

 

[EPG_19]

Pay for Adobe subscription and then cancel or affinity photo