Editing Images, What Can Be Done?

I've always been gun shy about trying anything like Photoshop. Looks like this program is spectacular!

There's something relatively new that might compete with Ulead, it's current and still being upgraded and updated and affordable. I have no connection to this software. Free 90 day trial, which already made me like it. Instead of some barely useful trial that I couldn't get into what the software was about.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/ $24.99, not an annual, not a sub, not one of those tricks. $24.99 for the license.

Personally for editing, I have Adobe Photoshop Elements. Baby Brother to full Adobe PS. But when they went to Creative Cloud and subscription, that was the end for me. Elements is stand alone, not CC subscription. And most of my editing is real world photo, News and Editorial, where creative editing is unethical. I don't do much with creative alterations.

As long as this is about editing software, Irfanview is my most used for quick editing, conversion and all kinds of things. FREE! I love free. https://www.irfanview.com/main_download_engl.htm IView is not a complicated editor and does many simple tasks. It's your basic free, utility.

@coop how do you make those backgrounds? Nice colors. Some of them look like they could be seamless, where the pattern repeats and there are no ends. I mean matching edges on the sides and top and bottom, which makes them full the desktop, with no apparent borders.

You and I think alike Coop! I just got done making visuals for UPI in case others wanted to see the interface. I only did a circular text, and made one modification just as an example.

The following three basics allows intuitive creation/editing.
1. Left clicking selects (nothing new here!)
2. Right clicking an item you are working on brings is for editing.
- A menu allowing logical selections for editing options (access to popups, shadows, etc.)
3. Using the "Easy Palette" is the easiest/fastest way to modify objects/text (enlarge the pic and look at the Easy Palette options available).

Opened and typed the text using the selected text tool.
Note the editing Pop Up.


Click the Easy Palette Button at the right






All of this can be done using the tool bar at the top, or if you prefer memorizing every little step to make an affect...use the menus.

Again - knowing the easy palette is there and selecting or right clicking a tile is what makes everything after that intuitive.

BTW - if you accidentally, for example - close the initial text pop up, what do you do?

Well since you are working on text...the best most logical place to find how to open the pop up again would be...the text correct?
- Right click the text and the menu that comes up has multiple options for editing, shadows, pathway, etc, including showing the pop up again.

I found how to use this program by remembering left to select, right to have options come up. And when I didn't know where to go, I just right clicked on what object I was working on.

I also do a lot of color editing. Like changing black white photos into color. I do it the layer method.

The original image was a picture of me just a few days old.

I suspected a warp tool.


In UPI the borders are editable using the Easy Palette (EP) as shown above for the text. Actually any object you are working on is changeable by the same means as above.

Glowing options etc. are in the EP. Again, they are all in one logical place and all together (and like above, editable with a right click).

@cop
Know what I mean Vern?

Affinity program:
I just spent several hours with the free download of Affinity - the program suggested by PPoro. I watched the 2 hour tutorial and was impressed with some of its features. But just as with Adobe, you have to know where to look for (menus, buttons, etc.) in order to get the options you desire. power is there, if you want to spend a long time learning the layout of the program and where to go to find each of the options.

Putting text on a curve is easy in Affinity if: You already know where the path tool is, where the nodes tool is, what kind of nodes you are adjusting (and how to change them), where the places are to adjust the letter spacing on the curve, when you know here to go to adjust the inter-letter spacing, etc.

The power of UPI is in the approach.
1. Type text - an auto pop up allows all editing shown in the Affinity tutorial.
2. Open Easy Panel (the one thing you have to know its location and what it is).
3. Select what you want to do to the text from the menu (change material, emboss, path, etc., etc.)
4. Choose a tile and click.

UPI User-Friendliness/Intuitive Concept: When you make something, rather than having to try to remember where to go for each change you want, al similar changes are categorized together (like a menu) in the Easy Panel. Clicking on a selection there brings up a visual representation of tiles showing what will happen if clicked.

They devoted a section of the Affinity tutorial in how to find the text editing pop up when you accidentally close it. You have to remember to go to the view panel, find the selection to show the pop ups then select the proper popup. OK - a memorized pathway.

UPI?
Remember the concept of logic and simplicity.

Where would you think would be the easiest place to locate something having to do with text (including the pop up)?
How about linking it to the text itself?
So right click the text and a menu of many text-editing-oriented options appears including to show the pop up.

I will say Affinity has some features I really like...I guess this is to be expected over a 10+ year old piece of software such as UPI. I would definitely choose it over Adobe b/c there is no leasing and its only 25.00! It does appear easier to use and has some other options than Photoshop does not.

Some people will understand when I saw UPI is worthy of calling it Amiga-Computer-minded for usage.

Ernest's image is so distracting I didn't see Rodney!