Editing Digital Images

Digital Editing Tools

Many tools exist for editing digital images. Here are a few examples (link for a complete list of rastor editors and vector editors):

Photoshop - Industry standard editor - look here for the expanding Photoshop Guide
Photoshop Express - low budget version
Illustrator - leading vector graphics editor
Corel Draw - integrated raster and vector tool
Gimp - free open source image editor
Paint.net - free but not open source
PaintShop Pro - a low budget tool for Windows

Layers - separating parts of the image into different layers allows you to change the orientation or apply changes to part of the image only. Any changes that you make are non-destructive of the original images.
Flatten - to combine all layers into a single layer. Saving a photoshop file as a jpeg will flatten it
Color Mode - how are colors defined for the image. Usually either Pallet (set of 256 colors), RGB (red, green, blue), CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black), Grayscale or Black and White
Adjustments - changes to the colors of an image or selection. Typically you can change things like Brightness, Contrast, Hue
Filter - applies predefined changes to the image or selection. Intest of colors, the filter will do things like outline edges, blur, make the image appear to be hand drawn or painted and many others.
Effects - effects are similar to filters but must be applied on text or other
Selection - the part of the picture that is selected, often an irregular shape. There are many features for selecting different parts of your image. Once selected you can remove, color, apply effects or filters to only the selected part.