Picasa 2.8.6

Although most people and cameras can produce a sufficiently adequate photo straight from the camera often there is the need to do some processing.

The type of thing that would usually be done in the darkroom. Your requirements might be basic, cropping, straightening, adjusting the white balance and sharpening or you may want to do a bit more including working from RAW, working with layers and using fancy filters. Not everyone has access to Photoshop which has sort of become standard programme for most people but it is expensive. So here is a list of free photo editing software programmes you can download from the internet.

1.   GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) first appeared way back in 1996, and has been regularly updated ever since, it is the most powerful free photo editor that you’ll find anywhere. There are tools to correct colours, enhance contrast, brightness and more; sharpen or blur an image, fix perspective problems, remove red-eye; add special lighting effects, turn a photo into an oil painting, and create an animation. GIMP is quite comprehensive and can take a while to learn but there are plenty of YouTube videos that can give you help.

2. Paint.NET isn’t as powerful as GIMP but there is still plenty there to play with. It has all the editing basics with options to resize and rotate your photos, a good range of selection and paint tools, and some excellent special effects.It also supports layers and can be extended with plugins. Best of all, its clear and straightforward interface means it’s very easy to use, even if you’re a complete novice.

3. Photoscape doesn’t look like much but has all the basic editing tools you need. It can also convert RAW to Jpeg, batch process and join multiple images together although not quite as well as other more powerful programmes.

4.  Picasa from Google is a great tool for organising your images and sharing with others on line as well as offering a basic editing suite. You can view images in any format including RAW. One of its best photo organising features is face recognition. I would recommend this as a great organising tool and picture viewer even if you use a different editor. read more and instruction links