Need help on selecting a software program

Need help on selecting a computer software program to maximize my digital photos and videos with. Want a reasonable priced one with as many bells and whisles as possible. Ideally would like one that has caption writing ability for photos.

Just purchased a nice digital camera and video camera prior to taking a 40 day vacation. Have hundreds of photos and video clips saved on my laptop which I brought with me on the vacation to daily down load my pictures and video onto.

Any and all help appreciated.

There are a number of options out there. I would suggest Photoshop Elements. It's under $100 and it's available in Windows or Mac versions. Most importantly, it's the most popular, so there are LOTS of 3rd party books about it, and LOTS of web sites discussing it (try Google'ing for it and see how many books are in Amazon). Reviews have suggested it has much of the functionality that full blown Photoshop has, which is a lot more money, and learning time. Reviews:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/adobeelements3/

As far as video, I'm not as familiar with that, however, Adobe does make a Premiere Elements, which they sell in a bundle with Photoshop Elements. Reviews:

http://www.videoforums.co.uk/guide-adobe-premiere-elements-71.htm

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1650473,00.asp

http://videosystems.com/mag/video_editing_everyone/

Thanks!

Appreciate the timely input. Will check them out.

Thanks again.

Depending on your experience level there are a ton of different options. Actually one of my newest favorites is from Google.com

They have a FREE tool called Picassa which manages all of your media..basic options included so it isn't recommended for advanced users, but it is great for basic edits, organization, renaming, etc...

Appreciate the input.

Certainly the price is within my budget. :)

Thanks also

Another great option is Paint Shop Pro (often referred to as PSP). This is a full-featured, highly advanced editing suite similar to the full-function Photo Shop CS (Elements is a stripped-down version of Photo Shop).

Note that any of the highly advanced suites require some learning curve, but if you want to be able to learn and really have enormous editing capabilities and all of the most advanced features, your best two choices are going to be Photo Shop CS2, or Paint Shop Pro 8 or 9. Both are professional-level editors, capable of the most advanced functions - but you can use the more basic functions initially until you learn the others. Both have extensive tutorials and websites to help you maximize your understanding and learning of them.

The advantages of Paint Shop Pro over Photo Shop are #1) it is significantly cheaper! The full-function pro version (8 or 9) is available for under $100, versus $300-500 for the Photo Shop CS version. #2) Paint Shop Pro has some basic and extremely easy to use auto functions such as one-step photo fix, one step cropping, noise removal, red-eye removal, quick straightening, etc which can be used by even a novice before you learn the more advanced features. Photoshop doesn't include some of these easy shortcuts, so it requires more learning to use even the simple functions. Basically, PSP has the capabilities of Photoshop CS AND the price and simple usability of Elements, all in one!

I have both PS Elements and PSP8...and for the past 3 years have used PSP almost exclusively. It's just faster, easier to learn, and has lots more functionality...making the move to PS CS unnecessary. And I have been learning the advanced editing tools such as layers, levels, curves, scripts, noise filters, CA/PF removal, and lots of other amazing tools that allow you to manipulate photos beyond anything you ever imagined.

(you may notice I created my signature in PSP...though it was a 5-minute job. I took a photo of my hometown at night, layered a photo I took of a ship pulling out of St Thomas, erased the sky from the ship photo, cloned the ocean into the background shot, then added a text layer using Disney fonts for the cruises...cropped, resized to 700 pixel width, and merged all layers. It isn't a pro job...but it only took 5 minutes!)

Hope that helps!

Will look into PSP.

Have noticed your photo on your posts here and about various threads. It is very eye catching. You did a great job on it. It is the typing on a photo that I am mainly interested in. For example on a photo I can type:

"X" Cathedral

Florence, Italy

With my digital camera already having a visible date stamp on the photo I now will have complete record and info on photo for future reference when after seeing a zillion cathedrals in Italy they all begin to look a like after a while.

Thanks for the great input.

No problem...you may also be interested in using the 'captioning' function many of these editors include. These do not print information on the photo itself, but attach text information to the picture document and store it in the file information. This allows you to bring up the standard EXIF information of the photo (most digital cameras automatically store your EXIF info with each shot - the camera used, aperature, shutter speed, ISO value, zoom amount, date, time, etc.). You can add a paragraph of info to the EXIF with any comments or details.

During a slideshow presentation on your computer, most slideshow programs allow you to bring up this caption information and display it on screen. This way, you can have your photo info, but without having to put all the captioning on the photo itself.

That's more of a long-term project, but something to consider for the future. For now, a small caption at the bottom of the photo near the date with a location shouldn't be too intrusive, and any photo editing suite will give you basic overlay capabilities.

Good luck!

Thanks once again.

Hi Commeaux,

Try logging onto http://www.computeractive.co.uk which is the website of a computer magazine I get over here. Their site has loads of reviews and reccommendations on all sorts of things and there are great free downloads from browsers (I now use Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer) to anti virus, firewalls and spyware blockers. You should find links to digital and video photography for software recommendations which should point you in the right directions. You can also download "Workshops" which tell you how to do various projects like creating slide shows, image editing etc.

Hope this helps.

All the best from Bonnie Scotland.

Gordy.

Thank you very much for the information you provided.