Digital Historian Series: Using Digital Tools For Archival Research  Tags: historical_research technology digital_camera digital_historian_series history  

• Image Editors
• OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
• Photo Sharing / Organizing
• Comments
  

Discuss this topic here.

There are lots and lots of different programs available for editing your photos. A few are discussed here, but there are many others available.

Photoshop

Photoshop Elements is available on most UIUC library computers. It is a version of the powerful Photoshop software, and will be able to make just about any change to a photograph that you need. Though it does not have all the tools and functionality of CS3, Elements is generally easier to use for someone unfamiliar with the program or someone wanting to do minimal editing. Elements is also cheaper to purchase. Newly released (as of March 2008), Photoshop Express is Adobe's free online image editor. Still in beta, Express offers 2GB of storage.

Tutorials:

For tutorials on using Photoshop, check out the UIUC undergraduate library's website: http://www.library.uiuc.edu/ugl/about/adobe.html

Trial:

Trial versions of both Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Elements can be downloaded from the Adobe Website.

Purchase:

Students, faculty and staff can purchase Photoshop through the UIUC Webstore. Both Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Elements are available for Mac and PC at a discounted price. Upgrades from previous versions of both are also available.

Free Programs

There are a lot of free image editors out there; they vary in degrees of difficulty, but all are free to download and use. Some popular ones include:

• Photoshop Express
  
• Picasa by Google
  
• Paint.NET
• GIMP

What is it?

From Wikipedia: "Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text (usually captured by a scanner) into machine-editable text."

If you have photographs of printed or typed sources, OCR may save you from having to re-type information, and makes files full-text searchable. Note: OCR works best when the image is clear, not crooked, and there are no obstructions. This still does not ensure that Acrobat will properly be able to perform the OCR -- it may still copy as a bunch of gibberish. However, it is potentially a useful tool in your research.

Software

You will need Acrobat Professional or Standard, available on many UIUC library machines, to convert your images to PDF files. Both Adobe Professional and Standard are also available for purchase at the UIUC webstore or trial download from the Adobe website.

There are a several places online that allow you organize your photos, and, if you like, share them.

Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/

Flickr allows you to upload photos to their server, tag them, group them, and, if you like, share them with others. Free and paid accounds available.

Picasa - http://picasa.google.com/

Has a downloadable client on your desktop to keep photos organized, allows edits, and allows you to share your photos. Free.

iPhoto - http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/

Mac users who have the iLife suite can use iPhoto to organize and store their photos, with the option to upload them to their .Mac account. The undergraduate library has links to tutorials for iLife.

Photoshop Express - https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html

Allows you to preview edits before making changes and helps you organize your photos; share them with other accounts (such as Facebook and Picasa) and offers 2 GB of online storage. Currently only supports JPEG files. Currently in beta, free.