Do I have to use a picture editor?
Strictly speaking, you don't have to use a picture editor. But if you don't have one, you will be very limited in what you can do. You can still print images, but if they need to be cropped first or need to be enhanced, you won't be able to do it. If you want to send your images via email, they will be very big, probably too big for some people to receive them. If you want to use a picture as wallpaper, you'll have no way to rotate it.
This is what you can do if you don't have a picture editor:
- Upload pictures to a photo sharing site for others to view and print
- Take the image to a photo lab for printing
- Print at home on your ink jet printers
If you have a picture viewer that also rotates, you can also:
- Use your images as screen savers and wallpapers
If you use a Photo Kiosk, you can:
- Crop your images so that the subject is as big as possible and distracting backgrounds are stripped away
- Perform simple enhancements to the color and exposure of your images so that they look better when printed
In addition, photo labs and ink jet prints have settings to let them adjust the color for you. You can't preview the results though and there are no controls to adjust what they do in order to do a better job.
If you have a picture editor, you can do all the things listed above easier, cheaper and with better results and you can also:- Sharpen the image so that fine details are exposed
- Remove digital "noise" from the image so that colors are smoother
- Lower the resolution of your image so you can email them, use them as wallpaper and upload them to web sites without it taking forever
So it's up to you. If you still aren't sure whether to spend the money, you may want to start out without one and see how it goes or you may want to download a free trial version before you commit your money to yet another program.
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