Photo Editing: Is It Better To Have Software Or Use Online Editing Sites?

Before we can get into answering the question, "is it worth spending dollars on online photo editing service when you can do it at home?" we need to decide what exactly photo editing is. Basically, this is the scenario - you have a digital camera and you have taken some shots; when you load them to your computer and look at them at a normal size, you see that there are some aspects of the picture that are not great. Photo editing is the ability to correct or change some things about your photo.

Using editing software or an online editing service, you can alter the size, color, brightness and contrast of the original digital image. You might want to change the orientation of the photo by rotating it, you can mirror-reverse it by flipping and you can remove part that you don't want by cropping.

There are other applications that can be used to further enhance your photos, like adjusting the hue and saturation, cloning, burn and dodge, erase and add text. You can do layering to further modify your images and use special effects and borders to make something special.

You can buy photo editing software like Photoshop, and load it to your computer, but it is fairly expensive, particularly if you won't be using it very often. Some of the applications require patience, time and perseverance to master. There is photo editing software you can download from the internet, but you might find they only have a limited number of functions available.

If you don't think you have the time to master photo editing software, an online photo editing website could be a solution for you. There are some free sites where you can use the web-based services to do some basic editing. Many of these sites are very user-friendly and you perform the editing tasks on the web without needing to download software.

Paid membership photo editing sites are available online as well. These seem to average about $ 25 a year for membership, which allows you access to their editing tools which are more extensive than the free sites. There are photo editing websites that have both free and paid memberships, so you can join for free and try the services out. There are also sites that will edit your photos for you.

So, in summary, and to answer the question that we started with, "Is it worth spending dollars on online photo editing service when you can do it at home" - it depends on what editing tools you need to use, how often you will be wanting to edit photos, how much time you have to spend on editing photos and whether the several free online editing sites will be sufficient for your needs.

Faby Stone has been in the business of online photo editing for over 3 decades. Visit his website to find the most cost effective photo editing idea.

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