There are two sides to digital photo editing as far as I'm concerned. On the one hand I have much more control over the way my images look because I do the edit myself on the computer. Which is much easier than trying to explain what I want from a negative to my lab printer.

The downside is having to do my own photo editing because it takes ages. And for me being behind the computer isn't my idea of fun. Ho-hum the large print giveth and the small print taketh away again!!

There's a world of difference between digital photo editing and photo manipulation. Photo editing is all about getting the most out of the image file by tweaking colours, brightness and contrast as in the case of this image.

Photo manipulation could be anything from making a model slimmer with longer legs, combining several images to make one final photo - to full on digital art.

There is loads of photo editing software out there including some very specialist stuff for Black and White, HDR and other effects. There's free stuff like Picassa and Gimp too. Most of the photo editing I do is with Adobe lightroom to process my RAW files followed by final tweaks in Photoshop if needed.

• I Mess Up Salsibury Catherdral Photo Shoot - EP31
• Photographing A Landscape Landmark PT2 - EP30
• Photographing A Landscape Landmark PT1 - EP29
• Exposure Bracketing Explained - EP28
• Woodland Photography with Gary Gough - EP27