How to Select Mac Imaging Editing Software

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By Richard Burke
eHow Contributing Writer

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Select Mac Imaging Editing Software

During the 1990s I managed the United States demonstration facilities for a European photographic manufacturer. All of our facilities were equipped with Macintosh computers, and it was there that I gained my first experience with image editing. We exclusively used Adobe Photoshop, but I didn’t just want to buy Photoshop automatically when I purchased my own Mac computer. Instead, for a few weeks I experimented with and tested a variety of image editing applications. I would like to share my findings in this article—since I suspect that many of you are also confused about what to use.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Macintosh Computer running OS-X

Step 1

iPhoto

The first program to consider is the one that comes with OS-X for free, iPhoto. This product is already installed on your Mac when you receive it. There are some real advantages to using iPhoto. It is easy to use and has a very sophisticated image organizer. It is also easy to create photo projects and contains a variety of image editing and special effect tools. It does not compare to Photoshop or Gimp as an image editing or photo design tool; however, it is free and you already have it. For most people this will be the only image editing tool you will need.
Step 2

Aperture

Aperture is another program created by Apple for professional photographers and serious amateurs. It is kind of like iPhoto on steroids and sells for $199 List ($170 Street) as of this writing. It offers complete photo metadata management and has an excellent “stacks” feature, which allows you to flip through stacks of digital photos and compare them. The viewing area is called a light table and is like a light table that professionals would have in their studios where they sort stacks of transparencies. There is even a loupe tool allowing you to take a quick magnified view of an image section. Aperture has a full suite of image editing tools, however, does not have selection tools, special effects, text tools or other “photo design” tools. This is a great tool for photographers, but not necessarily for photo designers.
Step 3

Photoshop Elements

Adobe Photoshop Elements ($90 as of this writing) is almost identical to the PC version. I really see no reason to use this program over iPhoto. iPhoto has a better photo management system and similar tools to those of Adobe Photoshop Elements. It is also faster to open files and edit them. Both programs have similar project capabilities and iPhoto comes with your computer.
Step 4

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is the largest selling software product in the world, except for computer operating systems. At the price of $999 (as of this writing) it is also the most expensive software. It is also happens to be the best image editor with the most features and abilities. It allows complete control over the image and also allows the addition of text and other graphic objects. It is a photo editor, designer and to some extent a web designing tool as well. It is not an image library manager like Aperture and iPhoto. In an ideal world it would be nice to be able to use Aperture as an image library manager and Photoshop as an image editing and photo design tool. Most professionals have the $1,000 to spend to do this; most amateurs do not.
Step 5

Gimp

Finally, there is GIMP. GIMP is a free open source image editor that has similar capabilities to Photoshop. It runs under OS-X, but you need to have X-11 installed. The GIMP installer will do both, but X-11 will remain open after you close GIMP. There is really nothing you can do in Photoshop that you can’t do in GIMP, and oh, did I mention it is free? It has excellent selection tools, RAW import filter and special effects, brush tools and text tools. It also has more animation and video tools than Photoshop. After all of this research, I decided to be cheap and use iPhoto as my image management system and GIMP as my image editor. There are other image editing solutions available, but trust me, these five programs are the five best available.