In the view of most people, Adobe Photoshop is second to none… in terms of quality however is out of the reach of most people due to its very high price tag.

So, many people give up and some remain using Microsoft paint.

But little do people know that there are many awesome alternatives that are free out there and can get you started and work very well like Photoshop.

Do a search on Google and I’m sure you’ll be very amazed…

Why? I’ll tell you. Soon, 90%+ people in the UK will be digitalised and thus there will be a greater need for more traditional people who will be few but priceless!

I’m sure you will agree with me on this one right?

So even though it will be useful to know your Gmail from royal mail, it’s not something that’s life threatening. Many of you out there won’t agree but sooner or later we may see that need.

This is true in one sense only, which is that it’s probably the best image editing program out there!

There are many good pieces of software out there. Some of these are listed below:

• Paint Shop Pro
• Corel Draw
• Serif Photoplus
• Adobe Fireworks

There are a few more but these are the more popular ones. Getting used to Adobe Fireworks and Photoshop will allow you to take your image editing skills to the next level!

Back in the days, photos used to only take 5 mins to take and then it was simply added to a Magazine or Newspaper. Those were the days when working with photos was simple and easy.

These days, you need to do a whole degree in photo editing to even be considered and then further courses on this and that and everything photo related.

Back in the days, a small process in Photoshop would have taken a hundred times longer and would have only been possible by experts in the field who have decades of experience. These days, even a 5 year old will gain the same result!

Now that’s technology for you! Is that good or bad?

In a nutshell, it takes your working canvas and presents you with a number of compression options with a visual preview of each one.

Choosing whether to save a file as a PNG, JPEG or GIF can be tricky but I have a simple rule you can follow which should help you pick.

• First, choose between PNG24, JPEG quality 60 and GIF 128 Dithered.
• Identify which is the smallest file size.
• Compare quality differences
• If a JPEG is only 2-3KB more than a GIF but has less noise and and has a sharper qualityto it, then use the JPEG.

The thing to remember is that image size isn’t the only factor, you still want your artwork to look good without taking forever to load on a webpage or email.

It is used as a shortcut really to simply marquee a selection and then to select crop from the Photoshop menus.

First select the crop tool from the panel, now pick an area in your photo you would like to crop.

Now you will notice the selected area is brightly highlighted and will allow you to move or expand the area if needs be.

After you are happy with your selection go ahead and crop the image, which will give the appearence of opening a new document with your selected area only available.

This tool is very handy when it is required to create a new photo from a larger existing photo. The crop tool allows you to achieve this with 2 or 3 clicks and saves you time when it is required to cut a lot of web images up in to specific sizes.

The crop tool can be selected with the C key.

Basically put, the eye dropped selects the exact colour that you click on in the photography. This is a very powerful tool which can be used to effectively edit and manipulate and image to add or remove elements from a photo, such as passer by in the background of one of your better shots.

The tool can also be used when you have other windows such as the gradient colour choice open. If a pop up window asking you to pick a colour is open, you can click a colour in the background and it will automatically use the eye dropped to get the desired colour.

If you don’t already know what this tool does, it tries to select an area, much like the marquee tool, however this time it selects and entire area matched by colour automatically.

What this means is that if you have lets say a red ball on a black background, the magic wand will try to select the red ball so you can cut it out quickly and effectively with only one click.

This method is often the best way if time is crucial to the project however it can be quite inaccurate if a lot of colours are on the photography, or if the photographs compression produces noise, such as a low quality JPEG.

Another handy tip is to change the tolerance which is in the top left of the screen in the form of a number.

The close the tolerance number is to 1 the more picky it will be about selecting the pixels.

This tool works well after a selected area has been created with the marquee tool.

Simply put, it allows you to choose 2 colours to draw a line with creates a gradient between the 2 points you create.

This tool is very handy when it comes to creating background images or applying a filter effect over your photos.

Select the marquee tool and select your photos area. Now choose the 2 gradient colours which can be find in the top left corner of your work area.

Now select Black to dark gray. If you create to points, one at tthe top of the photo and one at the bottom you will create a giant gradient which covers the area of the photography. Now in the layers tab select the layer you created with the gradient and set the opacity to 10%.

The effect will now be of darkening the picture. The same effect can be done in reverse if you choose new colours and gain a lightening effect to the picture.