I started out with a quick look at SuperEasy's Photo Booster, but after reading the comments on the download page thought maybe it would be more useful to spend some time talking about the digital pictures you take... There wasn't much if anything I could add to the discussion of this particular software anyway, & judging by the comments, it seemed what would be more helpful is just basic information on pictures themselves, and a very little bit about editing.
On SuperEasy Photo Booster...
Ashampoo lists SuperEasy as a partner on the Ashampoo site, & as the name suggests, it's even simpler & easier to use than Ashampoo's software. Their software & registration are similar, though Photo Booster departs a bit from previous SuperEasy apps I've looked at. Englemann's name shows up here & there, & like most Englemann software I've tried it uses licensed code from HDX4, meaning more registry entries than otherwise [in this case it's not bad really, with a couple hundred changes]. What I found annoying was waiting for the GOTD version of the app to launch the web page where you register, rather than just listing the url in the readme.txt file -- what I found Really annoying was that I couldn't register or activate the GOTD version having installed the **One Day** (!?) trial first.
Normally I install the trial if available, see if it activates, & then install the GOTD, activating that if needed. It only takes maybe a couple of minutes extra [if that], & I do it both for info in case someone asks for help with errors etc. [not everyone has always admitted to running the trial rather than the GOTD version], & in case the trial is newer/better or adware, which has happened once or twice.
You can see their focus on being Super Easy from the comments pointing out almost no manual controls & incomplete EXIF data, &/or from the app's only outputting jpg & bmp formats [it'll import or accept jpg, bmp, tif, & RAW]. If you take your pictures with an Android cell you can do much more with your camera apps [I assume it's the same for iOS & Windows Phones], & that's likely the same with the on-line tools if you upload the pictures, but if you've got folders full of images you just want to get in the ballpark the easiest way possible, you might find SuperEasy Photo Booster just the sort of app you're looking for. Having to use a 2nd app for batch re-sizing &/or watermarking however means lots of those folks doing stuff like taking product images for their sites &/or Ebay will look elsewhere. Needing to have .NET 3.5 will turn off some others.
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The 1st step with your image(s) in an editing app...
While you can find all sorts of tricks & tips on-line, and image editors like P/Shop, the GIMP, & PaintShop Pro have all sorts of tools, you can use the levels adjustment [something most editing software has I think] to do most, & sometimes all the image adjustments necessary. You'll look at a Histogram, seeing that the light <-> dark range of colors do not fully stretch from left to right, & you'll fix that. http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/histograms1.htm If/when you use the auto adjustment in P/Shop or SuperEasy Photo Booster or most editors, that's what it does, but using your eyes rather than an algorithm you can do better -- whether or not it's worth it is up to you. Another trick or effect is to increase the overall contrast by shifting darker colors towards black & lighter colors towards white -- it's often buried in the menus of more full featured editors, though as a gimmick it can play a bigger part in many of these automatic photo fixing apps. Whether you like the results or not is more personal preference than anything else, though more than a hint of enhancing highlights &/or shadows IMHO can get too close to garish. [Hint: when in doubt go subtle, which will more often leave you still in love with the shot after months of looking at it.]
On Sharpening &/or Removing Noise...
The important thing to know, IMHO, is that depending on the camera, & its settings when the picture was taken, removing noise &/or sharpening the image in software may help, may hurt, or may have no noticeable effect. I think that's at least one reason why SuperEasy Photo Booster [which adds some sharpening] lets you set the level of adjustment, & why some people will rave about the results, & others will hate them.
The pictures you get from most cameras will show noise if you zoom in far enough -- the way the sensors & electronics work means you'll see what looks like a mess of somewhat jumbled colors, rather than clear cut pixels & sharply defined edges. This isn't as big a problem if you spent thousands on high end gear [why you won't see much noise in pro photos on-line]. And some cameras are worse than others [a good reason BTW to search out pro reviews before you buy a camera, or before you buy a cell if the camera's important to you]. All that noise doesn't really matter if you're not doing much editing, & you can usually work around it if you are -- the images as a whole normally look & print fine.
Sharpening a noisy image can make it look worse, if for example the actual effect of running that filter is to enhance separate pixels that only looked OK Because they were blended together. If your picture has a enough noise, what are you going to remove when you run a noise filter? And/or how much blending can a noise filter apply before everything starts looking like your picture was taken through frosted glass?
Now I said the camera settings effects the amount of noise -- here's how...
Digital cameras are remarkably like film cameras, requiring a certain amount of total light hitting the sensor [or film]. If the light levels are low when you take a picture, having the shutter open longer, taking the picture for a longer period of time, lets the total amount of light reaching the sensor accumulate so you'll have enough. BUT, if the shutter is open long enough you'll also capture any movement as blur. A larger lens opening of course lets in more light, but it also decreases what's called the depth of field, i.e. at a wide lens opening what you focus on will be in focus, but little else. To help balance that out a little you could use film with a higher ISO rating -- it's more sensitive to light, but at the price of increased grain. ISO carries over to digital cameras, where a higher ISO setting means less light is needed, but at the cost of increased noise rather than grain.
Some cameras let you set the aperture, shutter speed, & ISO manually -- most can try to balance those three for you automatically. When you use a camera's typical program setting you're telling it what's most important, e.g. with a Landscape setting depth of field is more important than shutter speed, so it measures the amount of light, reducing the shutter speed if or as needed rather than opening the lens wider. If that means that the shutter speed would drop low enough to risk blur from holding the camera, then the ISO will be raised, and you'll get more noise.
On White Balance...
SuperEasy Photo Booster tries to correct it, but in my experience it's not always correctable, so that's an area where the software may make your pictures look better, or worse. I'm not sure it'll matter at all though to most people with most of their shots.
The average digital cameras aren't very good indoors because they don't use a wide enough lens opening to let in enough light -- the average camera couldn't fit such a lens if you didn't mind the much higher price. They may have a flash to make up for that, & if so, typically it's small with a very limited range. Long story short, because they so rarely turn out as well, most people just don't take a lot of indoor pictures, if they take them at all, & indoors is where setting the white balance is more important.
All cameras I think have auto white balance, many have pre-programed white balance settings you can use, and some let you set it manually focusing on something white like a special card or just a sheet of blank paper. Programed settings effect how it manages calibration & can often help. A manual setting, while a bit of bother, flat out tells the camera what white looks like in the lighting where you're taking pictures. Cells, Tablets, & Android cameras can be better at setting white balance when you take your shot because you're using a more capable CPU & software.
Inside a camera the electronics work sort of like your PC monitor or laptop screen. The screen's electronics figure out how to display a huge range of colors when the hardware can actually only display a few -- your standard RGB + white when all 3 are on, & black when they're all off. Your camera uses the limited number of colors its sensor can see, & then stores millions of colors in a file. The White Balance effects how it manages that process because it doesn't really see anything as white at all. When the camera sets white balance automatically it tries to pick out what parts of the image are brightest &/or lightest & calls that white, calibrating every other color based on that. Outdoors, during the day, there's really only one [Really Big] light source, so that usually works out pretty well -- indoors OTOH the spectrum of light can vary by an enormous amount.
Once the shot is taken, processed, & written to file that 1st time, millions of pixels representing possibly millions of colors either look reasonably like what you see in real life, or not. If the white balance was far enough off, all those pixels can be far enough off that there's no good way to make your picture match real life. You may get it closer, but most of the adjustments you can make will just distort the colors in other directions -- it's not a matter of a color tint as much as it is all the pixels are based on the wrong colors to start with. When that white balance calibration is off far enough, some of the colors you need aren't in the picture at all, so rather than shifting colors you've got to replace them, which would be a near impossible amount of work to accomplish manually, and can't be done in software unless you can give it some sort of model to base changes on. And since any such model would need to include the mix of lighting sources [including reflected] at the time the picture was taken, that's pretty much impossible too.
NOT being a smart a**, the best way to fix problem images is to avoid them when you take the picture. With a film camera you at best were able to see through the lens, but you could never more than guess what the result would be once the film was processed. That's why so many went through enough film to make bulk loading worth it. :) With a digital camera you've got a pretty good idea of what the picture's going to look like before you take it, so stop for a couple of seconds & look at the picture rather than just concentrating on what you're taking a picture of. No software is a cure-all.
If lighting looks like it might be a problem, maybe take a bracketed set of pictures -- AFAIK most cameras have this built in, &/or it's available in Android [& I assume iOS & Windows Phone] camera apps... bracketing lets you take 3 versions of the same shot at different settings, so you can either pick one or combine them in software afterwards. Otherwise change your position, change the lighting, take the shot at another time of day, or on another day, or maybe skip the shot entirely. If you have an image that does need the lighting corrected, Google -- it's just about 100% guaranteed that you'll find solutions to your exact problem posted, often hundreds if not thousands of times. There is no universal answer to every lighting problem, nor can a simple adjustment cure every ill. If something like SuperEasy Photo Booster fixes an image with problem lighting, cool -- if it doesn't & you want to grumble, maybe look in the mirror because you're probably the one who took the shot in the 1st place. ;)
If/when you're using a flash you've already accepted that lighting will be a problem. The best solution is to fix the lighting overall so you don't need the flash -- 2nd best is to use an automatic bounce flash that works with your camera [bounce usually meaning it's aimed at the ceiling], so the amount of light hitting the sensor is metered & the flash & shutter are adjusted accordingly. If you use a smaller or a built-in flash, read the docs &/or experiment to determine the range & fall-off of the light. Know before you take the picture that that flash isn't going to light a whole room, but will usually concentrate where you point the camera, & anything not in that circle of light will get progressively darker the further it is from center. Fixing that sort of image is easy BTW, using a circular gradient mask in an image editor that supports layers -- you lighten the picture while the mask controls what gets lightened the most.
And finally, while I'm talking about taking pictures rather than fixing images later, if/when you're taking a picture at less than the lens infinity setting, try to take more than one shot. Autofocus can get pretty complicated nowadays, sometimes with loads of options, & usually it works pretty well -- *Usually*. There is no cure for an out of focus picture. Treatment yes -- Cure no. Make the camera focus on your subject each time, taking more than one shot, & chances are one [or more] may be out of focus, but at least one will hit it perfectly.
On image editing software...
You're dealing with, manipulating data. You can add, subtract, or alter it -- in that respect it's not unlike dealing with any sort of numbers. If the data's not there, you can add it yourself, by painting for example, or you can try a sort of roulette to see what software can add. Unlike on TV & in the movies, you can't pull data out of an image file somehow, when that data isn't there when you're looking at the image. The closest you can come to that I think is to manipulate image data based on statistics, e.g. this person's face was probably this shape so we can try darkening here, lightening there etc., in the end coming up with something we see more clearly as an individual's face. The real power of apps like P/Shop & the GIMP IMHO come from how the developers & users come up with new & original ways of manipulating data -- not so much from plug-ins or tools.
Doing something like trying to remove "fog and other weather influences" from a picture, as the SuperEasy folks claim, is kind of senseless... You presumably took the picture in the rain or snow or fog, so had to know it was there -- if you didn't want a picture with fog, why take it? :) Ah, but you're a detective trying to get a clear picture of what the suspect was doing... in that case you use what's basically noise &/or dirt & scratch software, which looks for blocks of pixels that look the same, then replaces them, interpolating from surrounding data, e.g. the background here is blue so we'll cover this area in the same shade of blue. Obviously the less data you have to replace the better, since it all relies on guessing what fills in the blank spaces. I took artistic offense at the test image Karl came up with in the comments because I think it's a bit of a travesty to remove the soul of that image, but regardless it provides a great example of when fog can't be accurately removed -- there's simply too much fog leaving too little image data to fill in the blanks. If software were to manage the task, you'd get something artificial & a much poorer picture for it -- certainly nothing worth the effort. Put another way, software may or may not be able to remove this fog, but why do you care? Why do you need or want this capability? Your imagination can likely do a better job of filling in the blanks anyway, which was the whole point of the foggy image Karl found -- your imagination not only inserts what you can't see, but conjures up a mood the same picture minus the fog could not.
FWIW... When you take a picture you're either pursuing art as a photographer or documenting something to provide accurate proof. If/when you're documenting something, take the clearest picture you can & then leave it alone -- unless you're REALLY good, someone can tell you edited the image & will question why. If you're sending a picture to your insurance company showing your damaged fender, wash or hose it off as needed, & take the picture under good conditions rather than in a rain storm. If you want to show the conditions when you damaged the fender, then take the picture when it happened & leave that picture alone. Of course if you're going the artist route edit at will, but remember that for pros, very often more work goes into setting up the shot or shots than into taking the picture(s) or editing them afterwards. Setting up the shot is everything -- taking the shot, though it may require physical hardship &/or gymnastics to get into position, is simply pressing a button -- editing should ideally only provide a bit of polish. Photoshop artists are common -- Photographers are sought out because they're not.
