Digital Photo-Editing for Seniors

[phil_v.]

A friend who lives in a senior community asked me to give a short

course (3 or 4 2-hour classes) in photo-editing to a group of

interested seniors.

 

From what my friend has related, all of these individuals have been

using a digicam for their travelling snapshots and on average, their

knowledge is limited to point & shoot (using commercial print-

processing), with most possessing basic PC-literacy.

 

Initially, I considered Photoshop Elements 3, but after thinking

about it for a while, I believe PSE3 would overwhelm them! So under

these circumstances, which photo organizing & editing software would

be the best choice?

 

Although a freeware product would be a definite plus, it's not

absolutely necessary - my primary goal is to select the most

suitable product for this particular audience (and the class'

duration).

 

Thanks in advance,

Phil

[john_bright]

'PaintShop Pro' would probably suit them best. All the bars along the top can be fully customised. You can do away with all the clutter and just leave them with the facilities and procedures that you teach them (Levels, Color correction, Sharpening etc).

 

Good luck

[imaginator]

Photo Filtre (note the spelling) It's free, easy to learn/use, and has many filters. Did I mention it's free?

[imaginator]

<A HREF="http://www.photofiltre.com/">PhotoFiltre</A> Click on English (it's available in many languages)

[byronlawrence]

Personally I think PSE3 would be just as good as any other worthy program.

 

the way I would go about it is to spend the first class teaching the seniors about the computer and file management esp for the photos they take.. you know step one these are the files you have made with the camera this is were you keep them... etc. general stuff. and at the end of class go over starting up whatever photo program you plan on using. tell them to work on getting familiar with that until your next class.

 

on the next class go over starting up the photo program again (reiteration) and then start in on opening files and getting familiar with saving files and basics about color and adjusting levels etc.. that kind of stuff. show them an entire process. probably pointing out most of the automatic functions, and some of the fun effects that are available.. if there are any. let them work on that and get familiar with the program until next class... more homework.

 

the the third class go over more photo stuff and printing. and have them do examples in class or work on an example in class for them. make sure they follow because you intend to have them for homework do this to a photo of their choice. for the last class.... again even more homework.

 

then the last class have them display their results and talk about them.

 

I go through this to say that with a plan like this I think that PSE3 is not overkill.. maybe PSCS@ is but not elements. Gimp is a freeware program that would probably work too. Paint shop Pro probably also works well but I don't think it is free.

 

anyway that is how I would go about it. but so much of it really depends on the resources available. do each of them have access to computers? or is there one computer to go around? what teaching aids do you have? a projected monitor in front of a class room is ideal but not everyone has one of those.

 

so that is my two bits.

[mr._smith]

Image Analyser 1.24

 

http://www.meesoft.com/

 

It's free.

[phil_v.]

I sincerely appreciate your responses and suggestions.

 

Considering that this group of seniors rely on a fixed income (social security), I do prefer to introduce and teach a freeware product. Howerver, upon checking out PhotoFiltre, I find a few significant disadvantages for raw-beginners... First, it lacks a decent user-guide (in English) and secondly it doesn't provide much in the way of photo organization.

 

I have yet to check out Image Analyser, Picasa, Faststone (and I'm sure there are others in the freeware category)!

[mr._smith]

Phil,

 

Be sure to come back and tell which software you've choosen and why. That would make it easier to suggest similar software in the future.

 

Good luck with the seniors.

[phil_v.]

Byron~ Thank you for the thought that you put into your suggested teaching plan.

 

To answer your concluding questions, some of the seniors do have their own PC and they all have access to a PC-room within their senior community, with printers and internet access (that's where I will be conducting the class). Unfortunately, there are no teaching aids (e.g., project equipment) available. :(

 

~Phil

[ericwarnke]

ACDsee. It does EVERYTHING you need it to. It can download, catalog, do minor corrections like cropping, brightness, red eye, ... and won't break the bank retailing for about $50 ( you could probably get a discount if you worked it right ). It's one nice all around package that would give them more than they need. I would teach a second Advanced photo work that could include PSE3.

[oskar_ojala]

I don't think PSE3 would be bad, as you're not supposed to describe every feature to them! I think that a task-oriented approach where you show the tools relevant to the task at hand (e.g. remove red-eye, increase contrast). This way, you only need to touch the necessary features and those more interested may use the same software to increase their skills.

[ross_lipman]

Serif PhotoPlus 6.0 and Ifranview

 

Serif makes older versions of its software available for free as an enticement to upgrade.

 

Interface is polished and capabilities are quite good.

 

http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/PhotoPlus/default.asp

 

Ifranview is a very compact and simple program that will resize and allow for basic image correction. It is FREE !

 

http://wwww.ifranview.com

 

Another consideration may be to search for free image/graphics editors on sites such as tuocows.com or download.com.

 

Best,

 

Ross

[bobatkins]

Picassa. It has very simple basic editing plus it organizes images. It's also free - a huge plus.

 

Stuff like Elements, PSP, besides costing $100, are just too complex for people who just want to do simple image corrections.

[aaron_w.]

While several of the above suggestions may be doable, given the circumstances of seniors with low-income, I would only consider Picasa and Faststone for the following relevant reasons:

 

- Both are easy to learn and use.

 

- Both feature a very nice viewer/organizer.

 

- Both provide basic, but quite capable editing functions.

 

- Both are free (so there should be no reluctance on the part of the seniors to download/install either one).

 

Picasa (now owned/distrubuted by Google) has a unique GUI - perhaps the most user-friendly GUI I've seen in any such product (which should facilitate a very short learning curve)! However, Picasa's folder/file concept ignores hierarchical file strucures that may be in place and as an IT man I personally find that disturbing. Finally, Picasa is quite resource-hungry, so it will run like a slug on older PCs!

 

Faststone Image Viewer (don't be put off by its name - it's much more than just a viewer!) uses a more generally accepted approach for its GUI, a hierarchical file structure, and standard editing procedures. As a result of the latter, editing in Faststone is somewhat more technically-oriented than with Picasa, but not so much so that it would be difficult to learn. Finally, Faststone is far less resource-hungry than Picasa and will run on most older PCs.

 

After considering the pros & cons (and hopefully I haven't overlooked anything important), I believe Faststone is the overall best pick for the situation.

 

Picasa: http://picasa.google.com/index.html

 

Faststone: http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

[phil_v.]

Aaron, your overview of Picasa and FastStone was most helpful in final decision. Actually, I had already downloaded both and started 'playing' with them. Since I have a relatively new PC with a 3GHz P4 processor and 1GB of RAM, I haven't seen any objectionable performance on the part of Picasa, but as you are an IT guy, I certainly accept your related comments. That in itself is enough to swing me over to FastStone, because while I don't know anything about the senior's personal computers, I found out that the PCs in the senior community's PC-room are 6-year old Dell's (so they are probably not 'speed demons')!

 

Besides the performance issue, I also noticed the downside of Picasa not even listing the 'parent' hierarchical folders (in its folder-view) to the 'child' folders containing my pictures and thereby hiding a meaningful association!

 

So by now it's probably evident that I've chosen the FastStone Image Viewer, for all the reasons you presented, to teach the seniors (after learning to use it myself!) and since it's freeware, I'll burn copies on CDs to distribute to them so that they can do their 'homework' between class-sessions.

 

Thank you and everyone who helped me in this decision process. ...Phil

[imaginator]

Bob, you used to recommend Photo Filtre. Is there something you don't like about it, ot just that the other programs are better (free programs)?

[aaron_w.]

Bob may feel differently, but as far as I'm concerned the major downside of PhotoFiltre (as well as its sister-product, PhotoFiltre Suite) is that they are poorly documented/supported in English. I can not read French (unfortunately) to comprehend the more extensive support available in French... Compounding the issue is that using PhotoFiltre is not nearly as intuitive as Picasa or FastStone.

 

Cheers, Aaron