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In today’s commercial and entertainment industries, graphic design plays a significant role. Today, there has really never been a better time, to be a digital artist, whether it be for money or fun. Thanks to an impressive array of graphic design software, it has never been easier. Over the last few years, the functionality of photo editing software has exploded, it seems like it is now only your imagination that can possibly hold you back. Computer Art…What is it? Well, as it is difficult to explain what a traditional artist is, so it is true for a digital artist. This is probably because the digital art form has only materialized over the last decade. Not limited any longer to the graphics designer advertising products, or digital artists producing commercial artwork, or even the CGI artist creating realistic movie effects. Advancements in computer design and programming have allowed digital art to expand, and to encompass anything that the digital artist can conceive of. Digital artists work in many forms, where they be for web graphics, Magazine covers, or even on TV shows. Typical tools of the trade for the computer artist include photo manipulation, and image montaging. Computer programming, to manipulate the pixels in weird and fabulous ways, 3D modeling, in computer games and 3D animations…so the list goes on and on. Digital artwork is also ever growing for creating pure imagery for personal use to…often being uploaded onto places like facebook, and other social media photo sharing sites. Digital art has reached into, essentially, every aspect of human activity that involves the visual senses. It also show no signs of slowing down, it’s growth continues to speed up like a juggernaut, gaining momentum at every turn…

 What Photo Editing Software is suitable for Digital Art

 Any photo editing computer software has the potential to create digital art. Obviously the better the quality of the software, the more uses it will have. Simple computer image manipulation, is in itself a form of digital art. More sophisticated image editing applications, feature an ever expanding functionality, make the arena of enhanced digital imagery amazingly exciting, and full of untapped potential. Often overlooked, but the ability to draw digital images from scratch, is a very simple from of digital art. Combine that with image manipulation techniques, and the horizons grow extremely rapidly.{Using the pc as a simple drawing pad, is perhaps the most simple form of digital art, this takes us back to the original pen and paper} Microsoft Windows has Paint pre-installed. This is probably the easiest way to start using your pc as a drawing pad. Unfortunately, the simple paint falls very short compared the more professional programs, such as Photoshop. Pretty much like trying to draw an oil-painting masterpiece with a box of crayons.

For the digital photography enthusiast, becoming well acquainted with photo editing is one of the digital photography basics that can make a world of difference in how well a photograph turns out.

Image editing software to a digital photographer is what the dark room is to a film photographer. The difference is that photo editing software makes photo editing something that anyone can do without setting up a darkroom.

Plus, with photo editing software you can do both standard image editing, such as cropping and adjusting color, and with the right software, you can also try your hand at photo manipulation.

Image editing refers to all changes that are made to a photograph. Photo manipulation is what photographers sometimes refer to as “trick photography” where you can do things like changing backgrounds and other things. (For some fun examples of photo manipulation, look up the “National Geographic Photo Foolery” page online.)

Before you choose a photo editor, you first want to understand the type of image editing you want to do. In this article, we will highlight the most popular types of photo editing software so you can understand the differences between each of them.

Picasa: Google’s free photo editor. If you are just getting into the very basics of digital photography, this will serve you well for a while. It’s really intended to be more of a photo manager and online photo album both very handy applications, but Picasa also handles the most basic editing. Picasa offers basic editing functions like retouching where you can remove scratches or blemishes. Like many photo editors it has red eye remover. It also has fun applications like creating screensavers with your photos and integration with Google Earth.

If you’re ready to advance from digital photography basics and do more with your images, consider one of the other photo editors.

Adobe Photoshop Elements: The market leader in photo editing and manipulation, it’s more user-friendly and less costly (approximately $90) than its big brother, Photoshop CS4. It’s great for the photography enthusiast and there is even a free trial version.

Adobe Photoshop CS4: This has everything a professional photographer or graphic artist needs. It sells for approximately $700 on their site, but it’s offered for half that by some vendors and may offer a free trial version.

Paint Shop Pro: This is a close competitor to Photoshop Elements and also runs about $90. They also offer a 30 day free trial.

The GIMP: For such a powerful program the name certainly doesn’t fit it but instead is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. This photo editor is open source (aka freeware) and continues to improve and has a good community of users if you need help. It is available for Unix/Linux platforms, as well as Windows (NT4/2000/XP/Vista) and Mac operating systems (OS X). It doesn’t have everything you get with Adobe Photoshop CS4, but it does have more than Paint Shop Pro or Elements and is used by some professionals.

No matter what photo editor you have, read through the guide or help sections so you understand what you can do with it.

It takes time to learn but you will be impressed with what you can do with your images.

For example, here are a just a few of the things you can accomplish (the top 5 even with just Picasa):

• Crop
• Resize
• Lighten or darken shadows, highlights, and midtones
• Correct Colors
• Remove blemishes, a stray branch, a logo, or anything else you don’t want in the picture
• Blur Backgrounds (Photoshop Elements, Paintshop Pro and The GIMP all offer background-blurring applications. Picasa doesn’t.)

You can also create all sorts of special effects with a photo editor. For example you can turn your photo into an impressionistic painting. You can also convert a color picture into a black and white image to better capture the tones and highlights.
Or you can choose sepia for a vintage look.

And with photo editing software, you can also more easily create pictures that can go in any size picture frame whether it’s a small picture frame or a 4×6 picture frame or larger.

Even if you don’t care about special effects, learning the basics of even the most basic photo editor will allow you to fix mistakes made in photographing. Just by cropping your picture can make a big difference in how your photograph turns out. That is why photo editing is an important part of learning the digital photography basics and why it’s important that you learn it. Before you know it, you will be editing and producing quality images perfect for displaying in a metal picture frame.