Image editing software

Two photo imaging software packages are supported to some extent within the University: Serif PhotoPlus and Adobe Photoshop.

Serif PhotoPlus

Serif PhotoPlus (currently version X3) is an image editing software for Windows-based PCs, aimed at amateur and semi-professional users. As such it is ideal for occasional, beginner and intermediate users alike. It is relatively easy to use and has excellent built in help and support options. What's more the University has a site licence for it and therefore it is freely available to University users (just ask your IT support to install it on your PC).

See the Serif PhotoPlus support pages for further information, tutorials and manuals.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop (currently CS5 Extended) is the most powerful image editing tool available and has become the industry-leading program for manipulating and enhancing images. As such, it is aimed at high-level and frequent users and is suitable for people who need to process high quantities of images (e.g. image library administrators) for high quality results.

There is no site license for Photoshop, so you need to purchase individual licenses under the Adobe Contractual License Program (CLP) Level 3 from Pugh Computers.

• Non concurrent* educational pricing: £104 + VAT
• Concurrent* educational pricing: £180 + VAT

* concurrent licensing means that you can install the software on several machines so long as the number of users at any one time does not exceed the number of licenses. For example you have 50 computers on which you want to make Photoshop available, but you feel that no more than 20 people will use it at any one time. In this case purchasing 20 concurrent licenses would be more cost effective than purchasing 50 non-concurrent licenses. See the Adobe Volume Licensing policies> for more information on Adobe's concurrency policy. Note that the policy requires that there must be technology in place to control access to the software and prevent more concurrent licenses than owned from being used. Also, concurrent licenses are not suitable for "home use".

For individual use within the University, you should therefore purchase a non-concurrent license which entitles you (as the primary user of the computer on which the software is installed) to install a second copy for your exclusive use on another computer (i.e. laptop or home computer), provided that you don't use both at the same time.

For personal purchases, students and staff can buy Photoshop from Pugh Computers students shop for about £186 including VAT.

Online image editors

There are a number of online image editors that are free to use. One of the best is Web Photo Resizer which is ideal for optimising images for the web.