Saturday, April 16, 2011

Sagelight Image Editor

I'm going to pause the gemstone blogs for a post to tell you about this great little gem of an image editor I saw mentioned in the ArtFire forums. It's called Sagelight . I have found this to be a great editor. It's super easy for me to use, and if it's easy for me, then it should be easy for everybody. It's really user friendly. It isn't one of the free editors like I blogged about at the end of last year, but right now, it's on sale for $39.95. That price is good until the end of May while the creator of this gem does some tweaking and upgrades with some of the functions.

I went to the above link and read about it, then downloaded the 30 day free trial. Before two weeks was up, I couldn't wait to get it. Here is a link that shows you some of the results you can get using Sagelight. I get very useful information from the blog, and these YouTube tutorials are a dream for somebody who is moderately technically challenged. You will see references to Lightroom which I have seen mentioned on photography forums. It's a Photoshop program that goes for $89. I have looked at it-didn't like what I knew would be a massive learning curve for me and let it go.

What is it about this program that has me sounding like an infomercial? The controls are easy to use-you can see them without searching for them. You can line up the shot you are editing with the original one so you can see what you are doing.
Not only do I need an editor for photographing my jewelry, but I also take a lot of outdoor shots in the woods around our house. I like being able to edit with the two shots side by side, so I can get a closer take on what my eye saw instead of how the camera thinks it should be. In this screen shot, you can see how the tools show up. No matter which function you choose, all of them have the slider controls. To sum up-I love Sagelight because it's easy to use, very little learning curve, user friendly controls, and good response time with customer service. It was also created by one guy and if you follow this blog, you know I am all about supporting small business.

This program is truly worth checking out. If nothing else, download the 30 day free trial and play with it. I doubt if you regret it and I would bet that you will seriously consider buying it. You won't go wrong if you do.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This program may not be free but it was the best $39.95 I have spent in a very long time.

I own a few other image editing programs, including Adobe Elements and PhotoPlus X4 and Sagelight has become the one I use 95% of the time now. Sagelight allows me to to get dramatic results easily and quickly. It makes complicated simple and I like that.

This software is constantly evolving and some of the features, like LightBlender, could easily stand on there own as a separate program.

As it is now, this software is worth far more than the $80.00 it will be when this deal is over and it's a steal at $39.95.