Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man. ~ Edward Steichen

Photographs are memories captured forever, an attempt to capture the special moments in your life with the camera. Technology has brought in new advances in the world photography, and although many staunch photography professionals do not believe in using editing software to re-touch, or enhance their SLR photographs, many of us often believe in enhancing our digital pictures and editing them to make them look a bit different or better. It can be re-sizing, or adjusting the color balance or adding a special effect, there are a number of free software applications available for free on the net that help you edit, enhance and share your photographs. Here is my pick for the top ten best free photo editing software.

1. Picasa
No surprises here - Google’s Picasa tops the list. Picasa only works with the Windows operating systems. This software, just like all the Google applications, is extremely easy and convenient for the users. Picasa allows the users to edit and manage all your photos with effective tools that include cropping, special effects, brightness adjustments and many more interesting features. The best part about using Picasa is that after editing your photographs you can instantly create and online album and share your photographs with a family or any individual you wish.

2. GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)
GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation program. It is a popular open-source image editor that is often dubbed as the ‘free Photoshop’. It helps the user with image authoring, retouching, and composition. It works on many operating systems and is available in many languages as well. It is designed to amplify with plug-ins and extensions and the advanced scripting interface allows the simplest and the most complex procedures to be easily scripted.

4. PhotoPlus 6
Although the software was a paid one earlier, now you can download a completely free and fully functional version of PhotoPlus 6. This software provides a wide variety of features ranging from an export optimizer, image slicing and image maps, selection tools, smart shapes, editable text, third-party plug-in support, red-eye removal tool, and photo enhancement tools.

5. Paint.NET
Paint.NET is another free software. This software is funded by the donations on their website. Paint.NET works with Windows operating systems only. Unlimited undo is one very pertinent feature of this software. Although meant for the first timers, this software can be utilized to its full capacity by the more experienced ones. Also if you plan to print your photographs on matte or waterproof paper, then this is the software for you!

6.Pixia
Pixia is an English version of a popular Japanese photo editing software, which is also available in many other languages. Pixia works with Windows operating system just well. This painting and retouching software, provides the users with custom brush tips, multiple layers, masking, vector- and bitmap-based drawing tools, color, tone, and lighting adjustments, and multiple undo as well as redo. This software however does not provide support while saving files in the GIF format.

7. Adobe PhotoShop Album Starter
Yes, Adobe offers this free software for image editing. It helps you to fix the common photography errors like the red eye effect, poor lighting or improper color balance. You can find any of the saved photographs within no time thanks to the automatic organization feature that lets you view all photos in one place in a calendar view. Adobe Photoshop is decent software for personal use that helps the users view fix and share their digital photographs.

8. PhotoFiltre
PhotoFiltre is a free image editing software that provides the users with a rather minimalist but a rather elegant interface. This software offers many easy and convenient one-click adjustments that are very useful for the beginners. PhotoFiltre offers an in-built image explorer panel that ensures easy navigation, basic drawing, painting, retouching and the selection tools.

9. Ultimate Paint
Ultimate Paint is a useful image editor that is available in both shareware and freeware formats. It offers convenient image creation, manipulation and display. Ultimate paint is one of those software categories that have been designed to make the photo editing process quick and easy.

 

Blender

Blender is a free, open-source 3D rendering program with loads of animation essentials, including modeling, rigging, rendering, shading, physics, imaging and a full set of 2D and 3D tools.
License: Free
OS: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista