There are a lot of free image editors out there if you know which virtual rock to look under.
1. Irfanview has actually been around so long now that it’s a staple in a lot of digital photographers arsenal. It can create html pages of thumbnails on the fly – great for proofs, or quickly delivering the family pictures to impatient relatives & friends. One benefit to Irfanviews longevity is that there a lot of plug-ins for it, and most of them are actually useful.
2. Photobie is one that I recently started using myself… mostly to see if all the plug-ins were as awesome as they seem (so far they are). For a professional, the provided templates may seem ‘beneath them’, but for the other 99% – these templates appear to be useful – at least to inspire creativity if nothing else.
3. Get Paint is one of those editors that you want when you do not want to spend 3 hours getting intimate with the tool set or the logic of how the program works…. it’s simple, direct and does a limited amount of tasks “very well”. A good tool to have on hand for quick photo/pic adjustments.
4. Yes, GIMP has to be on the list. If you haven’t heard of GIMP – I’m speechless. It’s intimidating interface rivals photoshop (yes, it really rivals photoshop for $1200-$1800 less [it's free]). The support, community, and innovative plug-in support is unmatched. If you want to invest time in a tool that will have infinite payoff’s – GIMP is it.
5. Picasa would have to be on the list too. I resisted the google app for many years, but finally caved in once I saw a friend importing over 50 pictures from her digital camera, tagging photos, and choosing/uploading pictures to her online album. It’s not the wicked graphic editor GIMP is, but it’s not meant to be. It’s a good solid vehicle for organizing your photos locally & on the web on a free website. There are permission levels that can be set on web albums, so only authorized people can view the specified albums.
6. VicMan’s Photo Editor is a straight forward editor, I wasn’t able to tell how extensive the support was, but the product worked well – and the twain (scanner/image device) worked much better than my purchased HyperSnap.
7. Photoscape is a great attempt at combining photoshop’ish editor with an old product I used to use by MGI that was basically a bin of effects – which were all good, but way overused by the ‘webmaster’ generation. Yes, there can be tasteful embossing, riveting reversed polarity, and bedazzling beveling without anything blinking…
8. i.Mage is a great paint replacement… it’ll never be a high speed editor, but it’s a good choice if you ever find your resourced peaked, and need to edit something to make a quick change (rotate/touch up a basic shape),
9. Online Image Editor messed with my sense of reality some, but this is a solid little tool if you are trapped like a rat at a remote location, and need to make a change or develop a quick graphic. Defiantly worth bookmarking/xmarking so you can get to the link when you’re on a jobsite.
10. The best for last… Splash Up is when you’re back is against the wall, you need photoshop, but you’re on your friends computer and they don’t have $1200-$1800 dollars to spend on the CS*<--(insert latest version number) master suite either. It's an online app which is key portability, but it also does many of the layering properties that only a high speed locally-installed application like GIMP or PS will handle. I found this application while writing How To Fix Your Sucky Website, and it has stayed bookmarked on my laptop sense.