photoeasery? lightroom is the simple do all editing software... it costs like 100 dollars, but is awesome.
If you know how to do heavy editing, you most probably will already know which software will do what you want.
Here is what I would get if:
a) editing RAW files:
Lightroom... hands down, best software available.
b) editing jpeg:
i) individual files doing minor color, cropping, rotating, resizing, pretty much apply auto color and recover in shadows and highlights:
gimp, photoshop elements, cameras bundled sofware (free software for point i)).
ii) individual file doing stuff a bit heavier like cloning, levels, layers, stiching, and stuff from i):
Photoshop or Gimp (I'm guessing from this thread
Paint.net and
photofiltre too), I have had a better experience with Photoshop than GIMP, but again I do a lot more than just doing fast virts for bonsais).
iii) same as i) but you want to keep albums and stuff, you can use adobe bridge (paid), picasa (free), I use Picasa to sort my jpegs and create albums with selected files from a folder but it does the minor stuff, maybe a combo Gimp or Photoshop+picasa.
My workflow for 4-5 thousands of RAW files, three cameras, for a days work:
Photomechanic for rendering the jpeg in the RAW file and selecting files to edit (if I press 1, the tag goes purple (edit), 2 goes red (panoramas), 3 goes orange (maybe edit), rest trash). 4 hours.
Select colored filtered and drag to lightroom and apply preseted editing to all pics.
Edit each individual pic or by groups for similar lighting and moments in
Lightroom 5. 10 hours.
Review all edits and go through tweaking, once again done it lightroom. 1 hour.
Do panoramas in
Autopano Giga. 1 hour.
Open
Picasa and let it read files.
Select photos to deliver 800, photos for slideshow 100, photos for blog 30. This part takes me like 1-2 hours.
Then slideshows in s
oundslides. 30 minutes.
Then upload backups to zenfolio, external hard drive at home, external hard drive in storage in the basement of my appartment.
Create photo album in
Adobe InDesign. 1 hours.
So I use 6 different softwares.
But would go Picasa+GIMP for free.
