These outstanding downloads will help you
improve, manipulate, and organize your photos, and
you won't have to spend hundreds of dollars on them.
Heck, some of the best ones are free!
Preston Gralla, PC WorldAre you a digital
photographer? These days, aren't we all? In any
case, downloads can make digital photography a lot
more fun--and a lot more productive.
Plenty of downloads can help manage your photo
collection, perform editing magic, share your images
with others in photo albums and slide shows, resize
your photos, and much more. Whether you're a
hobbyist looking to take red-eye out of your kids'
photos or to preserve memories in albums, or a pro
in need of powerful image-enhancement and editing
tools, we have something here for you.
Photo Editing Tools
Need to clean up your photos, remove red-eye from
portraits, perform gamma correction, or add special
effects? Lots of software offerings can help. Our
list includes tools for amateurs and pros alike.
The Gimp
When you think of open-source software, you might
think of half-baked programs that lack power and are
too hard for normal folks to use. Well, think again.
This open-source image editor packs a surprising
amount of power and is well designed, if a bit
eccentric in layout. Even though it's free, it
compares favorably to the power of
Photoshop, and it includes many of the kinds of
editing features you can find in Adobe's program,
including filters, effects, masks, and layers.
Of course, it has the basic tools you'd expect in
a photo editor, such as red-eye removal, but it
offers plenty more beyond those. If you're looking
for professional-level photo editing but you don't
want to spend a bundle--or even a penny--this
is the program for you.
Download
The Gimp | Price: Free
Photo Pos Pro
With photo editors, usually you can have one of
two choices--either simple or powerful. As a
general rule, the more simple the interface, the
more basic the program, and the more powerful the
program, the more complicated the interface. Photo
Pos Pro does a great job of balancing power and
usability. The interface is clean and simple, with
all of the editing tools laid out neatly along the
sides and the top of the main screen, which shows
your photo. Hover your mouse over an icon, and a
balloon tip will tell you exactly what it does,
although in many instances the icon is
self-explanatory.
The array of editing tools in Photo Pos Pro is
mind-boggling. Every automatic-editing tool you
could want is right there, from the basics (such as
red-eye reduction) to advanced functions that
automatically sharpen or blur images, make them
warmer or cooler, add frames and special effects,
and do many other tricks. You get drawing tools as
well, plus the ability to work in layers. If you
want powerful editing tools within easy reach, this
application is a great choice.
Download
Photo Pos Pro | Price: $50 (shareware)
XnView
When it comes to affordable photo editing
programs, nothing is better than free, particularly
if the program has a reasonable amount of editing
tools. And that's what XnView has. You'll be able to
resize, crop, correct red-eye, flip, rotate, and
perform a wide variety of image adjustments,
including brightness, contrast, and gamma. The
app can also convert your pictures to different
image formats. XnView is not a powerful tool like
The Gimp, but for most work it'll do just fine. And
you can't argue with the cost.
Download
XnView | Price: Free
Saint Paint Studio
Looking for a simple photo editor that isn't
bloated, but loads fast and doesn't require you to
be a photo maven to use it? If so, you need Saint
Paint Studio. It handles not just photos but also
animations, and it has a surprising number of
capabilities despite its compact size. You can crop,
resize, correct colors, draw, add special effects,
remove red-eye, and adjust color and brightness
balance, for starters. Saint Paint Studio supports
layers for more-advanced photo editing, too, though
it doesn't have all the capabilities of Photoshop or
The Gimp. People who don't demand particularly
powerful features will find that this download has
all that they need in a photo editing program.
Download
Saint Paint Studio | Price: $40 (Trial)
Image Resizer
Need a quick-and-dirty way to resize a group of
photographs? Get this free, exceptionally
easy-to-use
PowerToy from Microsoft. Right-click a single
photograph or a group of photographs, select
Resize Pictures, and a dialog box appears for
you to resize the images to one of four sizes: Small
(640 by 480 pixels), Medium (800 by 600 pixels),
Large (1024 by 768 pixels), or Handheld PC (240 by
320 pixels). When you make your selection and click
OK, it will make copies of your pictures in
the new size while leaving the originals intact. If
you click the Advanced button before you
click OK, you can choose to resize the
original pictures instead of making a copy. Warning:
You can make pictures only smaller, not larger--if
you choose a size bigger than the original, the
program simply won't obey.
Download
Image Resizer | Price: Free
FxFoto 2.0
Here's another freebie that's remarkable for the
number of surprisingly powerful editing tools it
puts at your fingertips. Think of a photo-editing
feature, and FXFoto probably has it. Automatic
red-eye removal? Yep. Brightness, contrast, and
gamma correction? It has those as well. Color
balance, filter effects, automated blemish removal,
color brush, cloning, adding frames and
borders...the list goes on.
What's also nice about FXFoto 2.0 is its
interface, which creates a gallery of photos down
the left side of your screen so you can easily
scroll through them and find the exact one you
want. Once you've tweaked your photos to your
heart's content, you can create captions and then
create a slide show of them, complete with
transitions. (If you want to add music or narration,
you'll have to upgrade to the paid version.) In
addition, the program lets you create photo
collages, and includes tools for sharing that
collage via e-mail, uploading it to a photo-sharing
site, or burning it to a CD.
Download
FxFoto 2.0 | Price: Free
Cleanerzoomer
Have photos that need to be fixed? I don't mean
something simple such as red-eye removal, but more
complex problems, such as moire patterns and other
artifacts, overall noise, and other frustrating
imperfections that afflict digital photos. If you're
facing such challenges, give Cleanerzoomer a try. It
can also sharpen edges, automatically adjust color
balances, remove white spots and other artifacts,
and a lot more. You also get a remarkable amount of
control over photo fixing--in fact, for some people,
maybe too much. For removing artifacts, for example,
you'll find a wide variety of options such as
setting filtration levels and weight measurements.
Still, with a little experimentation, you'll be able
to clean up even the dirtiest-looking photos.
Download
Cleanerzoomer | Price: $35 (shareware)
