path: root/consumer-digest.txt

Today's digital camera is no longer a digital camera. The lens has left the building and now tags along in our pockets, our purses, our overnight bags. Thanks to cellphones, tablets and laptops, cameras are embedded into our daily lives, and that means we're no longer just capturing life's milestones, we're capturing everyday moments -- the sidewalk on the way to the gym, the sunset at our children's soccer practices, even the food on our plate is fair game for today's pervasive camera lens.

The ubiquity of the cameraphone means there's a good chance you've got a camera in your pocket right now. And the tiny, but powerful cameras in today's mobile phones mean that most of us have more pictures and movies than ever before, which has led to an explosion of new photo and video editing software options for the consumer.

A camera in every pocket means that more than ever we're awash in digital images. Some images we want to share with friends on Twitter, other videos we might post for family on Facebook and still other photos end up on the wall, framed in all their 8x10 glory. It's not always easy to organize and edit such vast libraries of images, but thankfully a new crop of photo and video editors has come along to help with the task. The best so-called editing software on the market today doesn't just fix red eye or crop close-ups, it organizes as well, helping you sort, group and filter through your photos to find the ones you'd like to edit.

Just as what we think of as a camera has expanded, the range of editing software has also grown. You no longer need to choose between expensive, complex software aimed at professionals and very basic editors that can't do everything you'd like. Today's photo and video editing software options cover a wide spectrum of editing needs, from easy-to-use mobile apps for those who just want to crop and adjust an image before posting it to Facebook, to desktop software that's capable of creating high quality images suitable for framing. There's even a whole new category of sophisticated, but reasonably priced (sometimes even free) mobile apps that can edit your images right on your phone. 

Long-popular high-end editors like Adobe Photoshop CS5 or Apple's Final Cut Pro are still the place to turn when you want to go beyond the snapshot or YouTube movie, but much of what's new and exciting about today's photo and video editing software is found where the camera increasingly is -- on the small screen.

==The rise of the mobile editor==

You take your photos and capture video of life's little moments from your phone, why not edit them there as well?

Make no mistake, you aren't going to put together professional quality videos on your phone, nor will you be able to print large images -- phones and even tablets lack the processing power necessary to run full-fledged photo and video editing software -- but that doesn't mean you can't put together a fun little movie on your phone and share it with friends on the web.

Apple sells a simplified, but still very capable, version of its flagship iMovie video editor for iOS. If you're shooting video from your iPhone and want a quick way to make a few edits and post the results to YouTube or Facebook then iMovie fits the bill. Using iMovie you can combine still images and videos, add musical soundtracks, create fades and add effects like the Ken Burns-style photo panning that Apple made famous in the desktop version of iMovie.

If your phone runs Google's Android operating system you won't find anything quite like iMovie just yet, but Google does offer a video editing suite for the tablet version of Android.

When it comes to photos the mobile story is even brighter. Photo editors on the small screen are quickly growing to rival their desktop cousins. Adobe even makes a version of Photoshop designed exclusively for mobile platforms like Apple's iOS or Google's Android. Photoshop Express, as the mobile version is known, can handle all the basics -- cropping, rotating and fixing red eye. If you want to go further with your images you can even adjust the exposure and saturation, apply filters such as soft focus and add effects and borders. As with any good editor you can always undo and redo changes, including stepping all the way back to the original photo. Once you're done, Photoshop Express can upload the results to Facebook and other online sharing services.

There are, according to Apple, over half a million apps available in the Apple App Store. The Android Market is similarly choked full of applications and choosing among the myriad options can be tough. Among the things to look for in a good photo editor on mobile devices is a noise reduction filter. Always a problem with digital images, noise -- the small amounts of grain and speckling that sometimes mar your photos -- is even more of a concern with phone cameras. A quality editor will offer a way to smooth out those flaws and give your images a more polished look.

But part of the appeal of editing on the small screen isn't fixing blemishes and striving for photo realism. In fact it's quite the opposite. Call it the playful nature of the medium, or just a way to hide the shortcomings of cellphone cameras, apps like Instagram (iOS), Camera360 (Android) and BubbleGum (Android) have popularized the rise of the deliberately low-fi photo. 

These apps can, with a few touches of the finger, transform your images into something that looks like it just climbed out of a shoebox you haven't opened since 1974. Colors can be faded and washed out, light leaks added and scratches and blemishes tailored to suit the mood. Once you've got a suitably aged photo you can even add borders to make it look like an old Polaroid or film negative.

The lo-fi photo trend is even spilling over into desktop software. Analog for the Mac and InstantRetro for Windows can give you that same lo-fi look on the desktop.

== Desktop Photo Options ==

The cellphone camera has the advantage of always being with you, but sometimes it's just not enough. Your child's first birthday, the dream vacation to Paris, some photos deserve more than just your phone. There's no denying that a phone can't match the results of digital SLRs, video cameras and even some point-and-shoot models. Today most of us take two types of photos, the semi-disposable ones that end up on Facebook and more thoughtful images using a traditional digital camera to capture something special. And something special deserves better software. 

Fear not, the photo and video editing world isn't all Instagram and Facebook photos. In fact there's a new middle ground of editors that often offer tools that can both polish your images for printing and create fun special effects photos for sharing online.

All of the image editing software available handles the same set of basic tasks, such as cropping your photos or removing red-eye. What sets the good options above the rest are the organizing and searching tools they offer. The best photo editing and organizing hybrids can wrangle your tangled images into well-organized, easily searchable collections that make it easy to then edit the images you love.

Today's photo editing software can organize your images with intelligent tools like facial recognition or geographic data. Facial recognition can group your photos by person. It's never perfect on its own, but with a few corrections on your part, the software can become almost alarmingly intelligent at sorting your family photos. Some software can also plot your vacation photos on a map using the geographic data recorded by your camera. For those without geographically-aware cameras there's typically a map where you can drag-and-drop photos to add the data yourself.

Fortunately for consumers, the advanced features of today's best photo editors do not necessarily mean more expensive software. 

If you spent over $1000 on your camera and consider yourself a serious hobbyist then you might want to invest in a high-end editor like Adobe Photoshop CS5. However, if your camera costs less than Photoshop ($699 retail) it's tough to justify the hefty price tag when there are cheaper and even free options that perform nearly as well.

Photoshop does offers some advanced editing options you won't find in less expensive alternatives, like the ability to edit different layers of a photo, fine tune color settings and correct for lens distortion. But if you'd like to have many of the advanced features of Photoshop without the price tag, the awkwardly named GIMP image editor can do nearly everything Photoshop does and doesn't cost a thing.

Most consumers will be better off skipping the high-priced software and sticking with free editing tools like iPhoto (Mac) and Google's Picasa (Mac, Windows). Google's Picasa makes an excellent choice for consumers just jumping into the photo editing world and will automatically scan your computer's hard drive and pull in all your images without you needing to lift a finger. Like iPhoto, Picasa offers facial recognition photo sorting so you can find all the photos of your kids in a single view. You can also drop your photos on the built-in map so you can search for them by location. In addition to these advanced features Picasa also offers a timeline-based view for sorting your shots by event or date and the ability to organize them into "film rolls." The application manages to wrap all these features in a simple, intuitive interface that doesn't take long to master.

Picasa is tightly integrated with Google's sharing service of the same name, giving you a gigabyte's worth of free online storage for sharing your images with friends and family. For those who want to use other online services, plugins can be used to upload photos to Facebook or the online shutterbug favorite, Flickr.com. Picasa is not just about online images though, the application is more than capable of creating high quality prints suitable for framing.

Apple users can find similar features in iPhoto, which comes free with a new Mac or is available as part of the iLife suite for $50. IPhoto can do everything Picasa does and also works with Apple's new iCloud service to backup and sync your photos across a wide range of Apple devices.

If Picasa or iPhoto leave you wanting, you can step up to a several different editors in the under $100 range, the most notable of which is Adobe's Photoshop Elements 10. Elements 10 is a stripped down version of its sibling, Photoshop CS5, but it still offers plenty of more advanced editing tools like lens correction, curves controls for toning, black and white conversions and dozens of easy-to-use filters and effects. Elements also integrates with Facebook using the service's face-tagging feature to help organize your library. Elements is available for $99.

Mac users have another option in the form of Acorn, a photo editor that's aimed at the middle ground between iPhoto and Photoshop. At $49 it's cheaper than Elements and supports many of the same features like masking, filters and even layers within your photos. As an added bonus, Acorn can import and export layered Photoshop images.

If you do decide to spend the money on something more advanced, whether its Acorn, Elements, Photoshop CS5 or something else, be sure to try before you buy. All of the applications listed offer a free trial period so you can evaluate how well the software meets your needs before forking over your hard earned cash.

== video editors ==

Thanks to consumer demand created by services like YouTube, video is a must have for today's point and shoot cameras. Even some high-end phones can ably shoot short movies, sometimes even in high definition. Unfortunately, while the cameras are capable, editing videos is still no simple task. Video editing software is far less intuitive and requires more computer horsepower and disc space than photo editors. 

While turning your video clips into movies worthy of the big screen is more difficult than editing photos, improvements in software have made the process somewhat less painful. The free options available can handle simple tasks like combining movie clips, adding music and effects and then burning the results to DVD or uploading them to the web. 

Much of the complexity, and need for a powerful computer with a large hard drive, comes with more advanced and more expensive software.

One important thing to keep a close eye on when you're shopping for video editing software is the file formats it supports. Not every editor can work with every camera's file format, especially when it comes to today's high definition video cameras. Be sure to find out what format your camera saves movies in and ensure that the software of your choice can edit it before you buy. 

Most consumers will be well served by the free options that ship with today's computers. The two most readily available free video editors are Apple's iMovie and Microsoft's Windows Movie Maker. Windows Movie Maker and iMovie both offer timeline-based editing where you can drag-and-drop video clips and arrange them into a longer movie. From there it's easy to add a soundtrack, polish transitions and fades or add built-in effects and titles.

Another option for the budget-minded consumer is the wealth of online editors. Video Sharing websites like YouTube offer free basic video editing tools into the site. Just upload your movies, splice the tracks together and add some music. You won't find any fancy features, but the price is hard to beat. The downside is that you have to upload what are often very large movie files over the web. If your internet connection speeds are not up to snuff online video editors can quickly become an exercise in frustration.

Any budding auteur looking to do some more serious video editing will, unfortunately, need to reach for their wallet. Video editing software can be very expensive with options like Adobe Premiere selling for $799. Apple's once similarly priced Final Cut Pro was recently revamped and now sells for $299. 

As with Photoshop, Adobe makes an Elements version of Premiere for $99. Premiere Elements is again a stripped down version of its sibling, but when it comes to video editing stripped down is good news for newcomers. Premiere Elements still isn't the easiest software in the world to master, but if you've outgrown Windows Movie Maker or iMovie and aren't ready to commit to the more expensive software, Premiere makes a less expensive step up.

Fortunately 30-day trial versions are available for Premiere, Premiere Elements and Final Cut Pro so you can take them for a test drive before you commit.