PhotoScape Review: Free Ultimate Photo Editor for Windows

PhotoScape is basically a photo editor, but that term doesn’t do it justice; it’s capable of much more than simple retouching. There’s also an image viewer, batch editing, a built-in screen capture tool, and a slew of filters and effects to spruce up any photo quickly. PhotoScape has a number of modules, which I’ll go through quickly here.

The Viewer

The viewer isn’t particularly impressive, but it gets the job done. It has a typical thumbnail view, a folders list on the side, and a bigger preview window, as well as a few tools for rotating photographs, examining EXIF data, and so on. The maximum thumbnail size is rather small, and no sorting options appear to be available. You won’t use this tab very frequently because each of the other tabs in PhotoScape has its own thumbnail browser.

The Editor

The editor is where you’ll find the majority of the options. You may use this tool to make a variety of tweaks and effects to your images. From one-click auto-levels and contrast to sophisticated color curves and the ability to load and store presets, there’s something for everyone. There are several color and tone changes, as well as a variety of filter effects ranging from the practical (noise reduction) to the entertaining (cartoon). You may also add a selection of entertaining and unique frames to your images.

There’s an object tab in the editor where you may add text, shapes, and speech balloons to the photo you’re working with. You may stamp a number of clip art items onto your working file, as well as any other photo or image from the clipboard. There’s a rich text tool for formatting text, as well as a symbol tool that enables you search through all of your computer’s symbol fonts and drag them into your image. These objects may be scaled, moved, and rotated once they’ve been added to your page.

A versatile crop tool with a circular crop option is also available in the editor. Red-eye removal, mole remover, and mosaic are among the region editing options. The red-eye and mole tools might be better, but they suffice for fast touch-ups.

Undoing and redoing Any adjustments you don’t like will be undone by pressing any of the buttons. And when you save your adjustments, you have the choice to back up the original photo before overwriting, save under a new file name, or save your file in a chosen output folder.

Batch Processing

You can use the Batch Editor to apply practically all of the editor’s functionalities to several files at once. Frames, objects, text, color and tone modifications, sharpening, scaling, and a variety of effects are all included. Before exporting one or all of the photographs with your edits, you may check the outcomes. You may also save your batch editor settings as a configuration file to use them again in the future.

Page Layouts

The page module is a multi-photo layout tool that offers over 100 grid layout options. To make a fast collage, simply drag & drop your photographs into the boxes. Individual photographs may be moved and resized to suit the grid boxes, and the arrangement can be adjusted, with margins added, corners rounded, and frames or filter effects applied to all photos in the design. After you’ve finished your layout, save it as a new file or send it to the editor.

Additional Features

Among the other modules are:

Combine: make a horizontal or vertical strip or grid out of many pictures.
Create a frame-based animation from numerous photographs with AniGif.
Print thumbnail contact sheets or photo package layouts.
Splitter: divides your image into numerous images using a grid.
Take a screenshot of your whole desktop, a window, or a specific area of your screen using Screen Capture.
Color Picker allows you to sample colors from any location on your screen.
Raw Converter is a simple tool for converting RAW camera data to JPEGs.
Batch rename files with custom text, dates, times, and serial numbers.

Conclusion

Overall, we’re impressed with how much this picture editor has to offer without losing usability. It does, however, have a few flaws. We saw Korean characters in a few dialog windows, and the wording used to describe the functions was not always clear. Because the application can only deal with one document at a time, you’ll have to save and shut the current one if you wish to change the photo you’re working on.

It also means you won’t be able to conduct more complicated editing, such as creating a picture montage with many photos that fade in and out. There are a few pixel-level editing capabilities available, although they are restricted. However, it will suit the most of what the normal individual will want to do with images, as well as providing a number of entertaining extras.

PhotoScape operates on Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista/10 and Mac and is free for non-commercial usage. My PC did not receive any adware or spyware alerts as a result of the software, however the website and online assistance do include text adverts. Several movies show the program’s functionality in the online help. It is one of the better free photo editors out there, and it’s certainly worth checking out.