by Simon Meeds
Following my tutorial on this topic at the Practical Evening on 20th November 2023 I was asked if I would list the packages I talked about, so here goes...
The first thing to remember is that "free" software usually means "free" not as in "free beer", but as in "free speech". That is you may freely copy the software, but if you use it frequently you may like to pay something to the developers. You can usually name the fee.
Paint.net
This was developed by some students as a possible replacement for Microsoft Paint, which at the time was a very basic drawing application. I used to use it for very basic edits when it was important to start up an application quickly, do the edit and get out, for example resizing an image to put on the web.
It works only on Windows 10 or 11, not on earlier versions nor on Mac OS or Linux.
Since I used to use it many new features have been added and I suggest it is similar in functionality to later versions of Photoshop Elements. For example it includes layers functionality.
I would recommend looking at it if you use Windows and are looking for a relatively simple yet quite powerful editor.
When you visit the website linked below be careful to click on the right "Get it now (free download): paint.net..." link and then on "dotPDN", otherwise you may end up downloading some other application or paying Microsoft to download Paint.net.
https://www.getpaint.net/
GIMP
Gimp has been around since 1996. It can be considered to be similar to Photoshop and indeed there is a package (PhotoGIMP) which can be added to it that is supposed to make it even more like Photoshop.
Even without PhotoGIMP it provides a user-experience much more like the mainstream photo editors than it used to.
Like Photoshop it is targeted not only at photographers but also at graphic artists, so it has a huge range of things it can do. Like Photoshop you can also add plug-ins, but unlike Photoshop you won't typically be paying for them unless you decide to be generous of course.
I use GIMP when I want to do something that darktable (see below) won't do, for example if I want to combine aspects of more than one source image in my final image.
GIMP can be installed on Windows, Mac OS or Linux.
www.gimp.org
darktable
darktable (lack of upper case "d" is intentional) is very similar in its aims and fairly similar in its execution to Lightroom. It is mostly used for organising and editing camera raw files although there is no reason you can't organise and edit jpgs and other image file types as well.
I use this for the vast majority of my image editing.
I believe like Lightroom (correct me if I'm wrong), darktable uses modules which can be applied independently of each other and in any order. Their settings are written to a so called sidecar file (the image file remains unchanged) and when the image is rendered on screen or exported to an image file by darktable in a pre-defined order (not usually in the order you specified). Multiple instances of most modules can be applied, and advanced users may change the order in which they are applied (not usually advised). This is effectively an alternative approach to the layers used by photo editors such as Photoshop.
The one caveat I would mention is that while darktable has quite a good facility for creating High Dynamic Range (HDR) images, it does not include a way of aligning the component images, and as such can really only be used for HDR when the images have been taken using a tripod.
darktable has excellent documentation and is covered by a number of YouTube channels. I would in particular recommend the channel of Bruce Williams who is Australian. I quite like his presentation style and he pitches it at a good level: not too advanced and not too basic. Look out initially for his latest "noobie" videos to get you started. He's been moving house so he's currently a little behind.
darktable can be installed on Windows, Mac OS or Linux.
www.darktable.org
Chocolatey
This isn't photography-related, but I mentioned it to several people. If you use MacOS or Linux you will be used to using some sort of package manager (names will vary). It offers many of the software packages that are available to you for installation without you having to go off discovering them on various websites.
In the last few years Microsoft has introduced the Microsoft store, but that is more to do with selling products than making applications available. For example Paint.net and I think darktable can be purchased from the store - i.e. these "free" packages are sold at a fixed price, which isn't really in the spirit.
Chocolately provides a gateway to many "free" packages for Windows, usually making installation a one-click operation. You can browse the available software or search by keyword, read the description and then, if you wish, hit "install".
chocolatey.org
Miscellaneous
I looked briefly at some other packages, but I don't have much experience of them. Here are links for some of them:
Hugin - Panorama photo stitcher
Luminance HDR
HDRMerge
RawTherapee - cross-platform raw image processing program
Some updates
The original article above was written in November 2023. Things move quickly and the following updates were added in July 2024.
darktable now includes a limited capability for compositing (combining) images. I have not tried it yet and I would still probably go to GIMP if that's what I wanted to do.
Bruce Williams is back to making videos and he has recently produced three describing the updates in darktable 4.8 as well as a newish Noobies guide. You can find his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@audio2u
There is a new darktable YouTube channel worth a look. In each video Darktable Landscapes takes you though editing a landscape image. It's not too advanced, but you probably need to have looked at least at one of Bruce Williams' Noobies Guides first or something equivalent.
Since I wrote the above I have successfully used Hugin to stitch panoramas. For me it always reports that it has failed at the last step, but in fact it has worked so I don't mind too much.
I have also tried Luminance HDR to produce HDR images, but I have not been very satisfied. I can't remember whether I managed to create the final image or not, but the process wasn't what I was looking for. I may try again or look for alternatives.
The first thing to remember is that "free" software usually means "free" not as in "free beer", but as in "free speech". That is you may freely copy the software, but if you use it frequently you may like to pay something to the developers. You can usually name the fee.
Paint.net
This was developed by some students as a possible replacement for Microsoft Paint, which at the time was a very basic drawing application. I used to use it for very basic edits when it was important to start up an application quickly, do the edit and get out, for example resizing an image to put on the web.
It works only on Windows 10 or 11, not on earlier versions nor on Mac OS or Linux.
Since I used to use it many new features have been added and I suggest it is similar in functionality to later versions of Photoshop Elements. For example it includes layers functionality.
I would recommend looking at it if you use Windows and are looking for a relatively simple yet quite powerful editor.
When you visit the website linked below be careful to click on the right "Get it now (free download): paint.net..." link and then on "dotPDN", otherwise you may end up downloading some other application or paying Microsoft to download Paint.net.
https://www.getpaint.net/
GIMP
Gimp has been around since 1996. It can be considered to be similar to Photoshop and indeed there is a package (PhotoGIMP) which can be added to it that is supposed to make it even more like Photoshop.
Even without PhotoGIMP it provides a user-experience much more like the mainstream photo editors than it used to.
Like Photoshop it is targeted not only at photographers but also at graphic artists, so it has a huge range of things it can do. Like Photoshop you can also add plug-ins, but unlike Photoshop you won't typically be paying for them unless you decide to be generous of course.
I use GIMP when I want to do something that darktable (see below) won't do, for example if I want to combine aspects of more than one source image in my final image.
GIMP can be installed on Windows, Mac OS or Linux.
www.gimp.org
darktable
darktable (lack of upper case "d" is intentional) is very similar in its aims and fairly similar in its execution to Lightroom. It is mostly used for organising and editing camera raw files although there is no reason you can't organise and edit jpgs and other image file types as well.
I use this for the vast majority of my image editing.
I believe like Lightroom (correct me if I'm wrong), darktable uses modules which can be applied independently of each other and in any order. Their settings are written to a so called sidecar file (the image file remains unchanged) and when the image is rendered on screen or exported to an image file by darktable in a pre-defined order (not usually in the order you specified). Multiple instances of most modules can be applied, and advanced users may change the order in which they are applied (not usually advised). This is effectively an alternative approach to the layers used by photo editors such as Photoshop.
The one caveat I would mention is that while darktable has quite a good facility for creating High Dynamic Range (HDR) images, it does not include a way of aligning the component images, and as such can really only be used for HDR when the images have been taken using a tripod.
darktable has excellent documentation and is covered by a number of YouTube channels. I would in particular recommend the channel of Bruce Williams who is Australian. I quite like his presentation style and he pitches it at a good level: not too advanced and not too basic. Look out initially for his latest "noobie" videos to get you started. He's been moving house so he's currently a little behind.
darktable can be installed on Windows, Mac OS or Linux.
www.darktable.org
Chocolatey
This isn't photography-related, but I mentioned it to several people. If you use MacOS or Linux you will be used to using some sort of package manager (names will vary). It offers many of the software packages that are available to you for installation without you having to go off discovering them on various websites.
In the last few years Microsoft has introduced the Microsoft store, but that is more to do with selling products than making applications available. For example Paint.net and I think darktable can be purchased from the store - i.e. these "free" packages are sold at a fixed price, which isn't really in the spirit.
Chocolately provides a gateway to many "free" packages for Windows, usually making installation a one-click operation. You can browse the available software or search by keyword, read the description and then, if you wish, hit "install".
chocolatey.org
Miscellaneous
I looked briefly at some other packages, but I don't have much experience of them. Here are links for some of them:
Hugin - Panorama photo stitcher
Luminance HDR
HDRMerge
RawTherapee - cross-platform raw image processing program
Some updates
The original article above was written in November 2023. Things move quickly and the following updates were added in July 2024.
darktable now includes a limited capability for compositing (combining) images. I have not tried it yet and I would still probably go to GIMP if that's what I wanted to do.
Bruce Williams is back to making videos and he has recently produced three describing the updates in darktable 4.8 as well as a newish Noobies guide. You can find his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@audio2u
There is a new darktable YouTube channel worth a look. In each video Darktable Landscapes takes you though editing a landscape image. It's not too advanced, but you probably need to have looked at least at one of Bruce Williams' Noobies Guides first or something equivalent.
Since I wrote the above I have successfully used Hugin to stitch panoramas. For me it always reports that it has failed at the last step, but in fact it has worked so I don't mind too much.
I have also tried Luminance HDR to produce HDR images, but I have not been very satisfied. I can't remember whether I managed to create the final image or not, but the process wasn't what I was looking for. I may try again or look for alternatives.