Okay, I see now where I went wrong in describing my software problems. First, Windows Photo Editor 10 was a real joy to work with initially. Now with so many goofy automatic functions, it has become not much more than a constant irritant. While working on editing images, the software arbitrarily decides to stop everything and save all of my work. While saving all of my work, there is no
way to stop it other than to X out and other than that it will continue through infinity, never finishing the save process. What work I had accomplished up to that point, is lost and I must start all over again. When I am finished editing in FastStones, I have to return to the image in Photo Editor 10, and then cause the image to rotate in order for the changes to take effect. The problem here is that FastStones does not always come forward and change the image that I was working on. When it does come forward to the image in Photo Editor 10, the software continues to rotate without any input from me. Once it is done rotating, I have to make a change in Photo Editor 10 and then save it. Here is where the real problem is and that is that the only way I can upload
photos into this forum is by Photo Editor 10. That is why I am thinking of going around Photo Editor 10 by using another computer, tablet, laptop or whatever else works. I have contacted Microsoft numerous times and they seem to pretend to not understand my problem. I have seen many complaints from numerous customers regarding the same issues that I have brought forward here, and nothing is ever done about it. Microsoft doesn't even acknowledge the thousands of complaints that are lodged on a daily basis. I agree, that it is a software issue as far as I am concerned, but I have no way of getting around Windows Photo Editor 10.
Thanks for reading,
Tony
---------- Post added 03-03-20 at 04:35 PM ----------
Originally posted by RGlasel There is a mighty big river to cross going from Photo Editor 10 and/or FastStone Image Viewer to Photoshop (or any other bitmap editor with layers). Unless someone is serious about doing things like removing ex-husbands from family photos or commercial graphic design, the time investment required to learn how to use the program isn't worth it. I tried some "consumer-grade" programs like PaintShop Pro, Aftershot and Photoshop Elements for processing my digital photos, but I don't want to spend that much time on individual photos, I want to scan a bunch of photos, make some tweaks to a few of them, export the results to email or Flickr or here and carry on without making permanent changes. I also want to be able to download only new photos and have them saved to folders with meaningful names without have to open up a bunch of dialog boxes or babysit my computer while this is going on. That's why I settled on Lightroom, back when you could buy a permanent license for $150 CDN and upgrades for $70.
I'm stuck on version 5.7, so I've started to look for Lightroom alternatives, but I haven't found anything worth switching to yet. In my opinion, Microsoft Photo Editor is a terrible piece of software, whether you want to process 1 photo or 100, so it wouldn't take much for another program to be an upgrade. You could look at relatively inexpensive options like ACDSee, Corel AfterShot, PaintShop Pro or Photoshop Elements, but they don't stack up to Lightroom for cataloguing and ease of use. On the other hand if what you want most is to adjust contrast, remove dust spots and so on, you can get pretty close to Lightroom's toolset (and a couple of things that Lightroom can't do) with these programs. There are also a couple of free programs with just as big of toolsets as Lightroom, Darktable and RawTherapee, but from what I can tell, using those tools (and getting the program to run on Windows) is more work than the paid programs.
RGlasel, I totally agree with your perspective. I also do not wish to spend an inordinate amount of time by using Layering, Stitching, cross processing and whatever other happy stuff they load into the programs. I simply just do not have any interest in those areas. Now I have also purchased (on sale at half price) Affinity Photo which is supposed to be a clone of Photoshop. I have had the program for over a year and still cannot get it to work. I contacted their tech support and all I get are smart ass remarks and derogatory comments. So there was money gone down the drain. Even if Affinity Photo were the answer to all my prayers, I would still have to contend with Windows Photo Editor 10. Now, someone on this forum has advised me that it is possible to remove Windows Photo Editor 10, however I will be darned if I can figure out how. Windows has issues with folks trying to delete their software. I have also downloaded Gimp, which is so huge, it would take more time than I have left in this life to learn all of its complexities. Back to Affinity Photo. This is a software program that does not offer a feature that will allow the owner to delete an image. I could not believe it. How can you edit an image and not at some time need to delete it? Before I do any editing I always without fail, make a copy to work with. There are times when I have had to delete an image because it was ruined while using Noise Reduction and there was no way to resurrect it. Thanks for reading.
Tony