photo editing programs to download?

anyone know of any good, FREE, photo editting programs i can download. it doesn't have to be fancy, just basic and not full of bugs or viruses?

thanks for any help...

 

Check this list http://digitalmeltd0wn.org/freeware.html

 

gimp is a pretty good free photoshop alternative...if you are familiar with photoshop allready you can look around for a hacked version some people made called gimpshop...it basically gives gimp a more photoshop feel to it.

 

hmmm...i have to confess that the whole "digital meltdown" title is VERY unnerving.

 

It's the name of my forum. If you don't want to check out the list that's up to you, but there are a lot of really great freeware programs on the list. Many of them are much better than their commercial counterparts.

What exactly are you wanting to do anyways? Give us a little bit of info about what you need the program for, and I can recommend something that would fit your needs.

 

My favourite image editor is Jasc's Paintshop Pro - ok, it is not free, but I got V.5 free from a computer mag cover CD some time ago, and V.7 and V8 later.

However, there are a few big new totally free programs I've heard good things about.
Google's own "Piscassa" http://picasa.google.com/index.html
and Microsoft's "Photostory" v3 for XP (go to Microsoft's website, downloads, "Media' category) - the latter requires Windows validation.

the aforementioned "Gimp" is a very powerful program, free and cross-platform, with perhaps a steep learning curve. http://www.gimp.org/windows/

 

SmartMorph: http://meesoft.logicnet.dk/SmartMorph/
and ArtRage http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html might be fun to do weird things with photos, and I know this one is on the Meltdown compilation, but Irfanview is ok too http://www.irfanview.com/ as a basic viewer/optimiser of images.

They are all free, it is just a matter of finding one you like, with the features you want, and becoming familiar with it.

It is a good point made by Zer0_II though, what do you want to do? Crop photos for printing, prepare images for a website? Create photo-art? There's a free program for every specialised image-manipulation - warping-morphing, batch conversion, art-effects, photo improvement retouching etc. I guess Adobe Photoshop has been the expensive "professional" top-end choice for years, but there are plently of great alternatives.

 

this is a nice site zero II, thank you for sharing with everyone.

 

Nothing beats Photoshop.!
It's the industry standard software.
If you get Photoshop, ''Image Ready'' comes bundled with it
that helps you create animated Gifs, like my sig below.
You have to be very patient and dedicated to learn Photoshop,
but it's worth it.

 

how do you know ?.. someday we're going to have much better programs than photoshop so.. it never ends

 

it IS a handy site, i was teasing you about the title of it.

well, i'm your standard "don't know shit about computers" sorta person, i just need a program for editing, cropping, color correction ... i like to tinker till i get the picture perfect, then print it, matte it and frame it. so what do you recommend most?

 

Oops.. Some people tend to be overly paranoid about those type of things.

For you I would recommend Irfanview. It's primary use is for viewing images, but it has some nice photo editing features as well. It can crop, color correct, make slideshows, etc. There's also some nice plugins for it that will let you view movies and other types of files. You can gt it here. http://www.irfanview.com

If you need something a little more powerful I would suggest Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. Both of them cost, but if you need a free version just let me know.

 

don't forget Paint.Net it's so cool !!! I prepare turkish translation also if you intrested hehe

 

thanks, zero. looks like that is JUST what i needed.

 

There's a lot of excellent software on that site. I use many of those programs.

.

 

i couldn't get on the forum for a couple days. it was very frustrating. now i'm on. yay!