Need help choosing photo editing software - is Aperture too much for what I am doing?

[Sir Loin Steak]

And following on from my comprehensive title...

I need to crop photos, and edit them in such ways as:

Adding lines/arrows
Blur out certain features (car number plates, for example)
Add text in boxes
Straighten pics out.

I'm not into making photos look sepia or negative or the like.

I'm looking for a Mac application that can let me do the above things, but also one that might wow me and let me do things that I think are really cool and useful. Like perhaps stitch photos together?

I have tried shift/cmd/4 to get a snapshot then open the result in Preview, but I don't think much of the interface or what it appears to offer.

Any ideas out there, please?

 

[SilentPanda]

You can try GIMP. It's free.

 

[arjen92]

I would go for gimp. It's something like photoshop but then free. (so I don't think it's as great photoshop). Aperture is to edit a lot of photos, in a short time. It will only adjust color and such. A bit like iPhoto but then more advanced. Adobe lightroom is it's equivalent. But you want to add titles, cut and such, so I would go with Gimp. You can probably adjust colours and such there as well. Or just get Adobe Photoshop. only a few 100 bucks

 

[miles01110]

Try Paintbrush and avoid X11!!

 

[adder7712]

Paintbrush is too simple. But a it's still a good app to have a Mac-equivalent of MS Paint.

I would recommend GIMP if you don't want to spend money.

 

[EmperorDarius]

...or Pixelmator.

 

[capps]

Aperture is not what you're looking for. Aperture is for changing lighting, shadowing, etc.

GIMP will fit most of your needs and it has a really nice blurring tool. I'd say give that a try.