Photo editing software?
Okay so i use a nikon d3000 and i shoot in RAW. I upload them to my computer and edit them with picasa then picasa turns them into.jpg files which reduces the photo quality. Is there any free or cheap software i can use to edit pics that keeps the quality or increases it. If it helps i usually just upload pics to flickr or facebook.
Gimp is a great photo editing tool with almost all the same capabilities as photoshop, For RAW files in gimp install UFRaw.
If you are just displaying your images online, .jpeg compression, and any quality you might lose, will be completely undetectable. About the only time you can even see any loss in quality from saving in.jpeg format is if you are doing full size high quality prints. Flickr and facebook automatically downsize photos which affects quality much more than you saving in.jpeg. In addition, you will not be able to upload RAW images to facebook or flickr as those, and most other websites, can't display RAW.
First, when converting anything to JPG, quality is diminished. In fact, when you convert RAW to anything else, quality goes down. JPG is a compressed picture format to keep file size down. Quality loss is a major part of that compression.
Lastly, if you intend to upload your pictures anywhere on the internet, you might as well lower quality and file size to make uploads faster and more sane. Uploading to social networks such as Flickr and Facebook automatically lowers picture quality and sometimes size. There's nothing you can do about it.
Picnik: http://www.picnik.com/
FotoFlexer: http://fotoflexer.com/
GIMP: http://www.gimp.org/....gimp.org/
LunaPic: http://lunapic.com/editor/
Free Online Photo Editor: http://www.freeonlinephotoeditor.com/
Adobe Photoshop Express: https://www.photoshop.com/express/landin…
Sumopaint: http://www.sumopaint.com/
PHIXR: http://www.phixr.com/
Splashup: http://splashup.com
Pixlr: http://www.pixlr.com/editor/
Picnik, FotoFlexer or Lunapic are great all round web based and FREE editing tools. Adobe, makers of the expensive Photoshop, now has a free website version in Photoshop Express. If you need/want more features downloading GIMP is a great options. Still free, but you have to download the software. There are also free tools to add text blurbs, to make collages, to put your photo into other images. There are a number of tools that allow you to put the image of a face into other photos for some fun creations. Check out the links below for more ideas.
http://www.edit-photos.net
http://www.squidoo.com/...photofunia
http://www.squidoo.com/...nhancement