Photography has become very much a computer-based activity.  And that requires us to use computer software to help us achieve our aims in photography.

Over the years I've accumulated quite a few pieces of software to help me in my photographic pursuits.  Some of the software utilities I bought have fallen into disuse, having proven to be less effective or less useful than I had hoped.  But others have remained as very useful and effective utilities.  Here's the list of useful software (based on my personal experience):

1.  Adobe Photoshop

This is a mainstay programme for all professional photographers who need to do professional retouching on the photos.  Tools such as the Clone Stamp Tool and the Spot Healing Brush are invaluable. I've been using Photoshop since the year 2000, when it was up to version 6. I stopped buying upgrades when I reached version CS4 because I found out the hard way that Adobe would force me to pay for upgrades that I didn't really need by not supporting the RAW conversion for new cameras in the earlier versions of Photoshop. In other words: just because I bought a new camera, I also has to buy an upgrade to Photoshop, even though the new version offered nothing else of value to me besides the RAW conversion of my new camera's files.  We photographers are regularly upgrading our cameras to later models, and that in itself is expensive enough, without also having to pay Adobe an additional fee just for the RAW file support for the new camera. The bottom line is this: I don't use Photoshop for converting my camera's RAW files. I do use it for retouching the images that have been output from my preferred RAW conversion software.

2.  DXO PhotoLab

This software is very effective at correcting an image to remove lens distortions and aberrations during the processing of RAW files. To get the maximum image quality from my camera, I use this software for processing the brightness, contrast, colour and making corrections for lens distortion and other optical abberations.

3.  PTLens

Cheap and very useful for fixing perspective distortion in a photo if you don't have DXO PhotoLab software.

4.  ImageVerifier

This helps me to find which image files on my hard disks are corrupted.  JPEG and other image files will become corrupted when a hard disk develops a problem called "bit rot".  All hard disks eventually develop bit rot as they get older.  For more information about corrupted image files, click on the "Corrupted JPEGs" tab at the top of this web site.