If you drool over gorgeous photoshop enhanced pictures, but your budget=zero, you should definitely give GIMP a try. It's an open-source program, so new stuff is always coming out.
Here are a few tutorial links to get you started! They're all from the same blog- check out his yummy recipes, too! (Funny story- I found this blog a while back, and it was MONTHS before I figured out that the writer is the brother of one of our friends.)
It's not an intuitive program, but follow the tutorials a few times- you'll get the hang of it, and the price (and outcome) is unbeatable!
Here are a few "straight out of camera shots" followed by the same shot enhanced with the first tutorial above. It only takes about a minute per picture- it would be crazy to do this to the 100's of pictures I take every month, but totally worth it for the "love it" pictures!
Another free program to try is Noiseware Community Edition. (Make sure you scroll down to "Noiseware Community Edition, there are a bunch of downloads on that page from Imagenomic.) It smooths out grainy photos with one button.
(Straight Out of Camera, SOOC)
With GIMP "enhance" tutorial- the picture was so dark to begin with, the graininess and "noise" are really noticeable when I brought the color levels up.
Here it is after Noiseware
Give it a shot! (You can click on the pictures to see them larger, if the benefits I'm touting aren't immediately visible- my small pictures don't always appear to their best advantage on this blog :)
Here are a few "straight out of camera shots" followed by the same shot enhanced with the first tutorial above. It only takes about a minute per picture- it would be crazy to do this to the 100's of pictures I take every month, but totally worth it for the "love it" pictures!
Another free program to try is Noiseware Community Edition. (Make sure you scroll down to "Noiseware Community Edition, there are a bunch of downloads on that page from Imagenomic.) It smooths out grainy photos with one button.
(Straight Out of Camera, SOOC)
With GIMP "enhance" tutorial- the picture was so dark to begin with, the graininess and "noise" are really noticeable when I brought the color levels up.
Here it is after Noiseware
Give it a shot! (You can click on the pictures to see them larger, if the benefits I'm touting aren't immediately visible- my small pictures don't always appear to their best advantage on this blog :)
