Simple program to do layers

Topic

New Reply

I am not sure how to word this but I am looking for a simple to use (hopefully free) program that will allow me to change certain colours within an imported photo.

For instance, I took a picture of a room in my house and now I want to highlight just one wall and change the colour to see what it looks like. What do you use for that type of thing? The last time I used Photoshop it was Version 4 and I think maybe GIMP will take me to long to learn so I am wondering if there is something “simple” ?
Any comments much appreciated.
Jack

Reply | Quote

Replies

As you are familiar with Photoshop, you may want to consider Adobe Photoshop CS2. It’s been free from Adobe for a while now. Just follow this link and get an Adobe ID. Or have a look at this article for more info. (In fact, you can download the full Creative Suite 2 if you want.)

I’ve used it on Windows 7, have never tried it on Windows 8.x, and have just installed it on Windows 10 to check it works… it does.

Hope this helps…

Reply | Quote

Adobe Photoshop CS2[/B]. It’s been free from Adobe for a while now.

Thanks for the information, Rick!

Reply | Quote

Thanks for the information, Rick!

Happy to help. Let us know if you experience any problems. I downloaded and installed it remotely on my daughter’s Windows 7 laptop only yesterday.

Reply | Quote

GIMP is great but fairly scary to learn. I always have the help to hand and Google.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

GIMP’s no harder that PhotoShop, Paul. If you want a simple layer based editing program, you can give paint.net a shot (requires dot net of course).

http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

Reply | Quote

If you know Photoshop CS2 then Corbett’s suggestion makes the most sense to me.

If you are not comfortable with Photoshop then I might suggest Photofiltre v.7 (free) which I find intuitive.

Reply | Quote

Thanks for all your comments/suggestions. I am heading to south Florida to escape the winter for a month and I will take paint.net and photografix with me to try/test and see what I come up with.

Reply | Quote

I want to highlight just one wall and change the colour to see what it looks like. What do you use for that type of thing?

I’m no expert, and it’s a while since I’ve done much photo editing, but I don’t think you need layers for this. If the wall is all one color, you should be able to highlight it [‘rubber band’ it, box select it, whatever] and then use a “fill” tool to replace the current color with another. Afaik many cheap and easy photo editors have such functions.

I just did a quick n dirty via Irfan View which I use, and it worked. It’s in the menu as Image > Replace Color. You may need to install the plugin pack to get the function, I don’t remember.

Work only on a copy of your original image of course, so you always have the original safe for a restart.

Layers function mightn’t be enough, you might need “layers masks”, which is a higher function–just mentioning if you go the layers route. Eg Paint.net a few years ago had layers, but didn’t have layers masks–but it probably has it now.

Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Elements are cheaper [under $100, occasionally much less on sale] commercial programs which have layers masks. There are free options, but I’m not familiar with any of those which popped up on a quick search, so Paint.net would be my first choice to check.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

Reply | Quote