Open Source software that helps photographer

Getting started in photography is not simply just buy a camera and click away. Of course if you just want to do it for archiving fond memories will be just fine. When we buy a new digital camera, it is normal that the company brand give a free software that will help you in basic editing like framing, crop, resizing and simple tweaks of the images. But if you are really passionate in photography and are very progressive then the only thing that will hinder your progress is having very good advance software that can produce high quality post editing such as from leveling to cloning. This will set you back from a couple of hundreds to thousand of dollars. Softwares like Nik Sharpener, Noise Ninja, Aperture, Adobe Creative Suite, CaptureNX and other licensed plugins. Though this software are very very good, they can actually durnt your pockets. Myself too needed something cheap or free to enjoy this benefits to upgrade your photography skills. For me open sourced software is the way to go. I enjoy using most of this 'free' software as even to got all these professional benefit can really cos a 'bomb'. Though they are not as very good as the licensed software, they can still provide excellent result

Currently, most of my work is done by using this few inages.

• Gimp http://www.gimp.org (close to a photoshop)
• Resizer http://snapfiles.com (watermarks)
• Qtpsfigui http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/ (HDR)
• Nikon Transfer http://nikon.com.sg (image uploading)
• NikonView http://nikon.com.sg (image browser)
• Photo Filtre http://photofiltre.free.fr/ (another version similar to photoshop)

Check my images at sofimages blog at http://sofimages.blogspot.com or go to my stock portfolio at Istockphoto.com/rumblefis All my images here are using open sourced software. Of course once I have enough of capital, I will definitely upgrade.