Photo manipulation: color balance, brightness, noise?

[Sylvander]

Anyone know how its done?

Any good free programs out there?

[FTT]

What buttons and functions affect what varies between each one so it depends what you use. And if you are trying to reverse a past adjustment, you'd probably get it back best with the original program that altered it in the first place.

IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/) is free and popular. VuePrint is similar but not free but if you want better (also much more complicated), you'd be wise to use something along the lines of one of the variants of Photoshop.

One word to the wise: Never make alterations to a photo and save it as such. ALWAYS make a copy and work with that.

[Sylvander]

I've just begun working with GIMP PORTABLE because GIMP was mentioned HERE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curve_(tonality)), and I already have the portable version.
Had to separately download and install the help files, which took me to the online info. :confused:

So I picked one of my worst photos from years back.
Read the help files HERE (file:///E:/Run%20External%20Programs/Image%20Editing/GIMPPortable/v2,2,17,0/App/gimp/share/gimp/2.0/help/en/gimp-imaging-photos.html#gimp-using-photography-colors) about color adjustments.
Discovered that Layer->Colors->Auto->White Balance corrected a distinct reddish bias in one swift move. NICE! :D :cool:

Tried to use Filters->Enhance->Unsharp Mask to sharpen up the image [eliminate blur], but with no success so far.

[Paul Komski]

IrfanView is brilliant at what it does but it is very limited as a graphic design program. The Gimp for Windows (http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/) is indeed a very elaborate and versatile graphic program; considerable leaning curve involved to get all its benefits. Another useful Freebie is PhotoFiltre (http://www.snapfiles.com/get/photofiltre.html).