Photo editing does not need to be expensive
If you would like the ability to edit your photos that Lightroom provides but would rather not spend the kind of money it takes to have it, a great alternative is DarkTable. A virtual light table and darkroom for photographers, it allows you to edit your work in a clear, easy and, best of all, free way.DarkTable is an open source program that brings many features to the table, not the least of which is the option to work with raw image files. Raw images are photos in their purest form, with no touching up or anything by even the camera. While that is more of a thing for professional photographers, it’s far from the only exciting feature.When it comes to touching up photos, you can quickly adjust contrast, brightness and saturation. You can also mess with shadows and highlights, as well as toy with the base curve and exposure controls.There are also tools to touch up your photos’ tone and color while correcting it further with things like sharpen equalizer, de-noise and de-fringe. Pretty much, you will have the power to make whatever change you want, as well as some others you probably never even thought to do.If you have experience editing photos, you will understand what these tools can do for you. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, let’s just say you can take a good photo and make it great. Or, if not make it great, adjust it to look the way you prefer.Take this photo, for example. It’s a bit on the bright and washed out side, with the colors not being as vivid as they could be.
