#56 Robert
Thanks for your feedbacks!
In current version of PT Photo Editor, you need turn into B&W mode and adjust curve for each R/G/B channel to get a sepia look.
And we'll add split toning and presets to it in the future.

Update: I was able to get sepia settings to work but it's not the normal way I would go about doing it. I had to push Temp to 100%, saturation at -77, the completely reduce all colors and finally add a little red and more orange. It's not perfect sepia but pretty close.

I, normally, like to start with a color photo and make it black and white, then add in sepia colors. This program doesn't allow that. Once black and white is set, it stays that way. Hopefully they can make this change so that you can manipulate working color sliders over a black and white photo.

Installed and activated with no problems on Windows XP Pro x86

I launched the program and was looking at all the settings in the dark-colored user interface and was pleased with how well the everything is laid out. At first glance, this is a program that most people can use easily without much of a learning curve. Just play with the sliders to make adjustments. I was able to manipulate the picture in many ways such as flip, rotate, crop, adjust many settings such as red eye, straighten, remove blemishes, sharpness, noise reduction, color, hue, temperature, contrast and vibrance, to name a few. You also have the undo and redo options, if you mess up and the all-important reset button so you can start all over. I found that it's really hard to screw up the original clarity of the snapshot I was working on. There are so many things you can do for simple-to-use photo manipulation and enhancement tool.

The only drawback is that I could not get the color picture to take on the sepia look. Maybe it's me. I went to their website for information on how to do this but got nothing which is another drawback. All-in-all, I'm quite happy with this program. I need to play around a little more to challenge its features. Hope this feedback helps others.

Hello,
PT Photo Editor application does not run. Initialize properly (0xc000001d) failed. Click OK to terminate the application.
What can I do please?
Sincerely,
Jaroslav

Installed on windows 8.1- very primitive compare to any decent photo editing soft-ware. This is at a similar stage when Photoshop was developed(long time ago).

Con: it only works when you are logged in as a administrator. it doesn't work under any other log in profile. Even after registration and restarting of the computer, if you log in other than administrator profile, it will keep asking you "registration key"; very annoying and don't like it (my preferences).

Uninstalled.

Oh & if you want an absolutely epic photo-editing software that is COMPLETELY free & has everything you could need (is like photoshop) just take a look at Gimp. Why even buy photo editing software for most reasons when you could use Gimp? There's really no reason to spend a dime on software like this when there's software like Gimp, which is not just free, but I believe is also open-source! (& of course supports png!) :D

@ David Roper
You are kind of an idiot. Irfanview is great, but if you knew anything about anything, you'd know this isn't about OPENING files with it, it's about SAVING them in this format & then a small part maybe about it sucking to not be able to open png, but the main point is that saving pictures as PNG format means (if you choose) no quality loss, whereas .jpeg files are ALWAYS lower quality than the original.
For a photo editing program, ESPECIALLY one that not only costs anything, but costs THIS MUCH, this is a huge no-no & likely why they will barely ever make any sales of it. PNG support is extremely important if you edit photos a lot, and even for some who don't, because they know png is best.

As for the comment from @MikeR, (comment #9) I couldn't agree with you more. Especially about companies lying about who and where they are. This is basically common practice these days for a ridiculous amount of software & internet companies. It's as popular as selling knock-off crap items on Amazon & using the pictures from the real, original creators/sellers (stolen and highly violating copyright) under names either with one letter at the end (see "Allegra K.) or something french-sounding (see "Doublijou") & Amazon not giving a crap about all the people who get ripped off on a daily basis by them.

It would certainly be nice if this kind of crap could be regulated somehow, instead of a-holes wasting countless amounts of taxpayer money & a ton of time, resources & effort on censoring the web, trying to enforce ridiculous "copyright" rules (even though copyright would be either selling something that you don't own/didn't create & taking the credit for it, or just displaying it etc. & claiming you created it, & that's very different from people who just share things with each other) because of multi-million/billion dollar companies whining about a few bucks, or instead of trying to ruin net neutrality. It would be time MUCH better spent & maybe would mean a lot less people would get ripped off for their hard earned money when they purchase something from one of these shady companies due to ignorance of the different kinds internet scams that lurk about & ho to spot most of them.

#28 RE: Martin
I DID activate it, about 5 times now. I extracted the files, ran setup, activated it, got confirmation window AND the ...Now what window open up online, and STILL have the Trial version with the watermark! When I click on the extracted files to Open the file, it takes me to the setup and activate files again; there is no 'Program' file that I can just click on it and open PT Photo Editor. My friend in the same room as me has exactly the same issue on his computer, so I know it's not just me doing something wrong. What is there to do wrong anyway - it's not like I'm transferring an activation code or name wrong or something, you just are clicking on 2 files! I don't know what else to try. Someone please help, and if there's anyone else please having the same problems, please let me know. Thanks! :)

In response to #27, free, but not exactly legal as the following disclaimer states. You must agree to the disclaimer before accessing the download page:
Adobe has disabled the activation server for CS2 products, including Acrobat 7, because of a technical issue. These products were released more than seven years ago, do not run on many modern operating systems, and are no longer supported.

Adobe strongly advises against running unsupported and outdated software. The serial numbers provided as a part of the download may only be used by customers who legitimately purchased CS2 or Acrobat 7 and need to maintain their current use of these products.

Although PT Editor is far from alone in this, it greatly annoys me when programs fail to provide some sort of offline help file or manual, such as a PDF or .chm file.

Why does everyone assume that you can be or want to be internet-connected the whole time?

Gordon, have you tried downloading CS2 lately? ...released more than seven years ago, do not run on many modern operating systems, and are no longer supported.

#29: PHOTO-TOOLBOX.COM
Thank you very much. I really appreciate your interest and help.
Thanks to you, now I can use the "Regional Edit" module effectivly.
A wonderful program.
Thanks again both to you and to my precious GAOTD.

Hi, All in All - quite a decent Photo Editor, small in size, and imho worth keeping!

Does enough to nicely enhance photo, and seems - with decent care of not spoiling it, something 'dogging' so many Editors. Gives ever so useful before/after feature which in many regular, 'bulkier' Editors is missing and one has to rely on un-ticking preview box to see differences.

One thing concerning me here is this Program's 'saving' options.. - limited to JPG and TIFF only, and initially not knowing where picture is going to be saved (that option appears however after 'save' is made, no 'save as' present)

Secondly - original size of jpg File in 'Edited' version (also jpg) over-doubles in size, in my case and using default JPG settings when saving - tested jpg photo of 560 KB ended up as 1.363 MB. I went for few basic enhancements and don't know yet if that size 'grows' accordingly with how many effects one applies? Perhaps.

Each Photo Editor is slightly different and this one has few 'unorthodox' features which become more clear with frequent use I suppose. Taking to account minor limitations - so far it impressed me enough to keep it and discover (yet) what else can be achieved.

Today's Giveaway states this is v.1.0.1 'Standard Edition', is there any different one? I didn't find it anywhere on their Homepage.
Thanks GOTD and Photo-toolbox.com for this interesting Offer.

The program installed, registered and worked without any problem on XP.

But every time I open it, it wants to call home. I don't know if this is just to check for updates or something more sinister. I can't find any preferences for stopping this, but blocking its communication once with my firewall did not stop the program from working, so the matter is not important.

As stated previously, there's no support for PNG, only for JPEG and TIFF.

It's not a simple one-step image correction tool, but a sophisticated image editor with many controls and adjustments. Consequently, its use requires some understanding of what the various (many) parameters are, what they do and in what combinations to change them. Fortunately, you can see the result of adjustments as they are made, but if you don't know what you're doing, it can take a lot of fiddling.

The program in highly useful and usable, and thus strongly recommended, for someone familiar with or willing to learn the controls for:
White Balance, Temp, Tint, Exposure, Contrast, Saturation, Vibrance, Midtone, Highlight, Shadow, White, Black, Channel RGB Curves, Colors, Hue, Saturation, Luminance, Sharpening Radius and Threshold, Noise Reduction Luminance, Radius, Color.

Finally, considering its functionality and direct usability, I consider its normal price reasonable.

The setup step completed successfully. But, during the activation process of connecting to giveawayoftheday.com, I get an error 'failure to connect'. What am I doing wrong?

Edit to my #31 comment. Thanks to #29 comment I now understand how the Regional Edit Brush works. The "Overlay: Show Hide" adds or removes the red painted selections or just type O to toggle between Show or Hide. So the "red paint" is just to show you where the Brush effects will take place. It worked very nicely for me once I understood how to use it. I would have called it "Selection Marker" or "Region Marker" instead of Overlay but it doesn't matter once the function is understood. I recommend that a detail of the use to the Brush function be added to their website since I wasn't the only one confused.

#40 papin
This product was designed as a PHOTO editor, but not an IMAGE/GRAPHIC editor. So we didn't put any transparency manipulating feature in it.
As we know, no digital camera can directly output PNG format files. So this format is not supported yet.

The reason why PNG is not supported is, perhaps, that the developers don't know how to handle the alpha channel (transparency). So, beware of this if you modify a TIFF (I think TIFFs can have transparency. I might be wrong though).

Besides the lack of support for PNG files (what is the benefit of optimizing an image if you cannot retain all that optimization?), I find also unacceptable the inability to save to the original format (other than JPG and TIFF), leading to the necessity to run conversions at least once, if not twice.

As others indicated, a nice interface with most of the items most users will appreciate. True, it only saves in two flavors (As FUBAR states), but I especially the idea that everything is right there in front of you. Yes, it isn’t Photoshop, but when you need to make quick photo changes side by side with the original it is really neat to see your results immediately. Thumbs up from me!

add - please use or allow an english(any language) menu bar across top of program - very important for exploring program features - the pull-down menus help because the "greyed-out" options are very difficult to distinguish. The option for the menus could be put in, as part of the GUI making itself adjustable to each users' need. Thank you for the offering today - I look forward to trying it on some other photographs taken by my grandchildren (& maybe their children - not sure). Have a great day GOTD & Photo Editor ! ;)

Now that I've actually downloaded and installed it (Win XP) Pros & Cons: I agree with the comments about the 'muddy' interface, though I can get used to it. I thought that nowadays it is supposed to be relatively simple to provide alternative layout schemes? Provide an option to swap dark grey for pale blue, for example?

Pros:
* The programme snaps open nice and quick, that is a major bonus when wanting to make one small adjustment to an image.
* The layout is easy to organise using the little arrows to reveal or hide the various panes.
* I am a big fan of keystroke shortcuts, these are clearly indicated.
* RAW file support, for me, this is a major plus, PT Photo Editor's nifty image ribbon allows me to pick out the best of a set, crop, straighten, adjust and save the result as a JPG or a TIFF (seldom have I used PNGs).
For quality prints the RAW image is best output as a TIF and from there it can be resized and converted into whatever format is required using any one of a dozen programmes.

PT Photo Editor is not pretending to compete against the mighty Photoshop but why buy a combine harvester when you only want to mow the lawn?

I've discovered I already have GOTD's free offering of PT Portrait, I'd forgotten it was there(!).

Many thanks, today's is a rare treat and I've told others about it.

Not only is the interface mud-colored, the program itself is "as clear as mud." I opened a picture and was totally at a loss to know where to start or what to do. Totally unhelpful. Uninstalled.

PNG problems? Just use Irfanview to open it and then SAVE AS JPG and you have a JPG file.

Everybody in the current world has Itfanview. I use IV to make SAVE AS ICO files this way too.

Good freeware alternative: Picasa

Have been unable to complete a photographic record of a building project because of the low sun at this time of the year and with me being so far north the camera is facing directly into it.
I have been trying to bring out the detail in the shadow areas of the photographs, not too much luck with my normal editors so I decided to give today's download a try.
It was very easy to make quite dramatic improvements to the photographs with this program. A very good program for photographers as cameras tend to use JPG and RAW formats in my experience, to be honest I don't find the limitations of formats to be a major concern as its usefulness far outweighs this limitation.
My complaint about mud coloured interfaces is because it is so difficult to see clearly as the eyes age; with cataracts there's a loss of contrast, changes to the colour of lens of the eye further degrade the quality of vision. For many older people photographs are the best means of keeping up-to-date with family and friends, there are a lot of us so maybe it is worthwhile making an interface that we can use.

#3 Martin's research is very good, the address he found is more useful than the PO Box registered for the website.

Here's what shows up:
Registrar URL: http://www.name.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: email@name.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.17202492374
Registrant Street: PO Box 639
Registrant City: Kirkland
Registrant State/Province: WA
Registrant Postal Code: 98083
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.4252740657
Registrant Fax: +1.4259744730
Registrant Email: email@protecteddomainservices.com

Try giving them a call:
+1 - (425) 274-0657

In a crowded marketplace, a programme such as this - likely to be forgotten even by those who install it (!) - needs an edge.

One of the most useful yet at the same time rare features of any photo enhancement programme is the ability to enlarge an image (especially JPEGs) without ugly distortions appearing.

The question is, what one major feature does PT Photo Editor offer that others lack? Small footprint appears to be the most significant factor so far but that is not really enough to set the heather on fire.

#1 boozehelps: You've been reading the advert for their sister programme, PT Portrait. It may be worth a look.

Works ok with a WindowsXP PC. I've been using Zoner 15, Adobe Elements and Hornil StylePic for photo editing. PT Photo is a similar program.

I found two negatives. In the Global Edit mode Pt Photo seems slower than the other programs. Also I had problems with the Brush in the Regional Edit mode. When Brush is selected a long list of options are listed but the only one I could get to work was painting a color. If anyone knows how to stop the color painting and enable one of the other Brush functions let us know.

In the Global Edit mode the Clone function and especially the sharpen function worked very well. PT Photo is useful and worth keeping.

@10 Susan Installed and registered on my old good XP Pro SP3 without problems. Work good.

#18 Nikolai Stepan
The red mask represents the region you selected. You can press hot-key [O] to show or hide it. Alternatively, you can click the buttons "Overlay: Show | Hide" on the right panel of "Regional Edit" module.

#16 martin
After running "Activate.exe" successfully. The watermark in the GOTD version of PT Photo Editor will be removed.

Adobe Photoshop is the best image editor.
Expensive?
Not if you download CS2 (Creative Suite) version, Which is free from Adobe.
Step 1 - Go to https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=cs2_downloads
Step 2 - Create an Account - it is Free
Step 3 - Download
Yes, it is not the latest CS6 but most users will not need CS6 which is for Professionals.
Old version but still far better than any image editor out there .Plus, after creating the Adobe free account you may download thousands upon thousands of Free Brushes, Actions, Styles, Templates etc.
As This is a full Suite, you get (for Free) also the best Vector Image Editor (Illustrator), Premiere Pro2.0 and the rest of the bundle.

This is a sweet sweet deal. Thanks a ton for this. Never learnt photoshop, so this will come in handy. Ok, I'm blonde and no, blonde jokes don't interest me!

The first thing I tried was to edit a PNG on my desktop. Surprise, it's not supported!! Is it me or PNG isn't used anymore?

Also the school address thing is... interesting...

I keep getting asked for my activation code. I've tried it with setup first and activation first. Same result.

#12 Martin
You are looking at the map, Google shows only an approximation of location.

What you say is incorrect.

The IP address comes back as 66.175.219.204

The IP address is not registered to a school at all

http://whois.domaintools.com/66.175.219.204

That gives you an address of

329 East Jimmie Leeds Road, Galloway, NJ 08205

Which if you look that up on Google maps, comes out as

Geigerich Thomas DDS/Linode

Looking up Linode, you get

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linode

In other words, a virtual hosting site.

Downloaded and installed. Lightroom style interface - you either love it or hate it. Could not find a batch function for 1 click enhance. (The button marked F2 global seemed to do nothing). Otherwise it had all basic editing functions and output was good.. One BIG note - it had most editing functions in a single scrolling window on the right side panel. This is a GREAT approach if you use a mouse with a scroll wheel but it is a BAD approach for a laptop with a touchpad - way too much work and scrolling to perform basic editing on a laptop.
The real test is to download and try for yourself. Would love to know how batch works for global brightening or auto enhancement - it was not obvious to me. This program has great potential but needs some work with layout functions. Recommend that the user have 1 interface for a laptop and another for use with a mouse.

I have experienced many photo manipulation programs and still use ULeads PhotoImpact10 simply because I always have (10Yrs plus). I would always recommend Photoscape too but todays offering is definitely up there among the keepers. There are no 'Quick Fix' options which is good but there are very good features such as undo & redo every stage, compare before and after views. Lots of fine controls over virtually every aspect of photograph qualities, depth of colour, saturation, Etc.

I always like right click menus which this doesn't have any but dont let that put you off.

Good offering and thanks to Karl & GOTD.

Reboots my computer each time I try to launch the program. Does this happen to anyone else?

Hi GAOTD
Thank you very much for this program:a very beautiful skin, a nice interface and wonderful results.
But I have a proplem with the program that I wish that somebody can help me solving it.
Whenever I use the "Regional Edit" module and I select a region of the photo, say by using the brush tool, the slected region becomes red and although the degree of opacity of the color matches that I choosed, the selected region remains red whatever changes I make in other parameters such as saturation, brightness, contrast, hue,etc.
This does not happen with global edit.
I tried to solve this problem by:
1.setthng the parameters before selecting the region I want to edit (although this makes me unable to know what the result will be)
2.running the program from its executable i.e. by double clicking "PTPhotoEditor.exe".
Both failed and the problem is still there.
So, what can I do about that?
Thanks GAOTD.

This one could be a keeper. Surprisingly competent editing (not DRM) tool. A mini-Lightroom: very similar interface, and more importantly, similar controls. For instance, check out the "Color" palette and its interactive eye-dropper. Also, notice that the history list is "live", just as in LR (no saving it, though).

Love the "mud-colored" interface (see negative comment above): it is nicely balanced between dark and light components, best for photo-editing (light-colored UIs tend to cause one to over-saturate/over-contrast). Very clean design, no chrome.

Adjustments preview very quickly, this is no slug of a program! Pseudo-layers are supported a la LR via the named regions list. Cloning tool works well.

Not so good:

No geometry adjustments (perspective, barrel, etc), though straightening works well (draw line to indicate horizon).

No precision control over zoom (need %). Font-size in adjustment palettes is too small for large monitors as are some of the "buttons". No viewing of EXIF, IPTC, etc.

Mostly, though: very well designed and useful tool.

However. BIG HOWEVER: no PNG. Only beginners edit in JPG (because they don't understand lossy vs. lossless). TIF is perfectly fine, but some of us primarily use PNG. Since the edits are NOT lossless (this is not a virtual editor like Lightroom and Picasa are, you have to explicitly save the image), I would have to convert to TIF before using this.

What are they thinking? In the long run, I would pay for this program, it is fairly priced and has captured the essence of Lightroom that I miss in other tools. But no PNG?

Sorry, ain't gonna happen.

Please add PNG support (including metadata persistence in the PNG!) and notify us!

For the author...

According to the TRIAL version, offered at CNET (http://download.cnet.com/PT-Photo-Editor/3000-2192_4-76091375.html) and uploaded to CNET on 2014-02-23, the TRIAL version has a non-removable WATERMARK until the user PAYS for the software.

Does the GOTD version, as offered today at GOTD, come with a non-removalbe WATERMARK until the GOTD user PAYS for the software?

Thanks.

Martin

^Considering the job teachers do and what they make, either way I hope it's a teacher doing that. When I was in school at least they didn't have to deal with kids acting up, bullying etc. so much, let alone mass shootings.

Can this and other giveaways be moved from 32 bit Vista to 64 bit Win 7? I'm putting many on Vista and want to move them to a new computer with Win 7 later.

Surprised by this application. There are a lot of controls and they are pretty responsive. You have quite a lot of power to improve your photo. The main photo responds directly to moving the sliders -- no dialog box required for each adjustment type. It keeps a history that you can unravel. And the sliders work surprisingly well. On my system (i7), moving the sliders is essentially real-time; not sure how it would be on a slower system.

Since it's a pretty small, fast program, it will become my first choice for things like adjusting highlights, shadows, etc., and most other non-paint-like photo editing operations. A clear keeper for me.

Not a bad lil' photo editor...if you prefer manual adjustments.

PT Photo Editor offers enough manual tweaks to please even a Photoshop freak. And users can achieve very nice results...if they are willing to play around with the various manual controls. I was satisfied with my results.

Is there any advantage to this program...as opposed to using some other editor?

It is fast to open and fast to do its job (after you spend 10 minutes or so fiddling with the manual settings). If you are using a Netbook or weak laptop, this program avoids opening Photoshop for quick, down & dirty editing.

Will I keep PT Photo Editor? Probably.
Would I pay $30 for it? Nope! Not when so many good photo editing programs are free.

Thank you Photo-Toolbox for today's software.

I've done a quick comparison of automatic one-click color/brightness/contrast correction of this tool with SimplyGoodPictures2, a popular past GAoD offer. For this, I used the same examples given on the developer's page.

As regards the automatic corrections, I find SGP2 more to my liking in the sense that they look more natural, though this is largely a matter of personal judgment and also depends on the individual image. See example below.

However to be fair, the present tool, unlike SGP2, does many more corrections than just the automatic one I tried.

Neither of the tools supports PNG, a weakness in both.

Example:

This is the original on left and as corrected by the present tool on the right:
http://i.imgur.com/ckkxUyN.jpg

This is as corrected by SGP2:
http://i.imgur.com/F3tsacs.jpg

#3 Karl

According to my research...

www.photo-toolbox.com

Location of the Host IP address
66.175.219.204: Absecon in United States

Smithville Elementary School
37 Old Port Republic Road
Galloway, NJ 08205
(609) 748-1250

...is most likely someone using the server at this elementary school with or without the school district's permission.

Martin

I thought this program was worth keeping, until I found that it does not support PNG files. Makes no sense, Too bad.

The program fails to initialize properly. Application error. Running XP-PRO w/SP3 - AMD Processor.

Looks like a great program, if it would work!

Uninstalling.

@ Karl, post #3: "in European country an “anonymous” company would pay a high penalty, if somebody would sue them for hiding their identity." If a company is anonymous, one can't very well sue it for hiding its identity. . .

Just so you know: here in the UK it has been "illegal" since early 2007 for any business website to appear without the name, address and registered office of that business. Brilliant, right? Er, no. There is no website regulator. No monitoring. You might be able to complain to HM Revenue & Customs about a missing VAT registration number (if you think there should be one on view) but that'll take you months to sort out and will very likely achieve. . . Nothing.

A software developer or publisher who lists a name and address and photograph of their headquarters building on their website is no more to be relied upon than one which says nothing at all; using TinEye reverse image search, a colleague and I ran a test last year and discovered twelve "American" software publishers to be using stock pictures of buildings and of "our team" as well as addresses which when checked by Google Streetview were manifestly false.

I'd suggest you cease to worry about provenance and European law. GAOTD has always been ultra careful about the software developers it deals with and the integrity of the download. If the software suits your needs, then fine. If it doesn't, then uninstall. But don't spend time agonising over what's anonymous and what isn't.

I'm positively surprised with today's giveaway.
The program reminds me on first start on Adobe Lightroom with its similar layout. Lightweight and great performance, and most common photo editing tools available. Very user friendly, indeed.

Many Thanks
much appreciated