I recently had my work laptop re-imaged and haven’t had the chance to re-install some of my photo app’s. I realized this on my recent flight to Ireland. So, before I left for Orlando, I made a point of digging out the software CD that came with my 5E. It has a little editing app that also processes the “picture style” settings in the camera. While I can load CS2 on my laptop, I prefer not to. The work laptop isn’t exactly a power house and Adobe can suck a laptop battery dry after a short time.
As is usually the case, I forgot the CD at home. So, instead of waiting until I got home to edit and process the pictures, I decided to download an app I read about on TechCrunch and Scobleizer called Paint.NET. It’s only 3.6 megabytes instead of 350 for the trial version of CS2. That in itself makes it worth a try.
Overall it works pretty well. It’s quick and fairly full featured and the adjustment options (hue, saturation, auto levels, etc) make pretty good adjustments at the default values. It also has a sharpen tool similar to Adobe’s Smart Sharpen feature.
I’ve only tried it with JPEG files. I hadn’t read the docs for it yet and wasn’t sure of its RAW support. You can read more about the app on the sites mentioned above (click the links).
I’d definitely recommend giving it a try. I edited the pictures of the fireworks on Flickr using Paint.net. I was fairly impressed.
If you like it, drop the guys at Paint.NET a line and maybe even a small donation (they take PayPal).
R.
