Here’s something that I wrote to a friend, who’s just taken up photography:

Try GIMP, which is free, unlike the overpriced Photoshop (unless of course you get a pirated version, which is quite easy to get). I find Picasa (a very basic program) adequate for my very basic zoomings and croppings, and for me, an added advantage is that when I use it to email photos, it downsizes them for me. I’m sure many new post-processing programs have come up recently…trawl the net for some.

My personal…er…focus… is documentation, not the artistic photograph, so I have long since discarded the idea of enhancement/manipulation of images. (I never shoot in RAW, even on the DSLR, a fact that will make most serious photographers shrink back in utter disgust.)

But it’s a good skill to learn. If you want to…attend one of the post-processing workshops in Bangalore. They are all very good!

Of course, the important thing is to get a good photograph first, but I love the fact that the processing is our hands now, not some nameless technician in some colour laboratory, who’s using a leftover batch of chemicals on our precious images!

You can also, on the net, pick up tips on some basic techniques. We are all generally short on time, and often, when we don’t post at once, we never get around to it at all. My photography is pretty basic, and I look forward to your rapidly going past that stage!

What’s YOUR take on post-processing? The eternal debate on “is it enhancement or manipulation?” rages on…..