Top 6 Free Photo Editing Software

Last Updated on 2022-06-24 Diane
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Depending on the purpose of work, photographers and graphic designers may want to edit photos with software for either purpose of digital art or as part of a photo manipulation process. Each program is classified by its OS platform, supported formats and features so users could find out which program is the best fit for a computer and needs as best photo editing software for PC.
Basic image editing utilities, such as cropping, rotation or straightening are described, even if not included in each software package. These basic tools should be available in all mainstream programs but some of these simple features were left out from certain applications.
Top 10 free image editing software programs are mentioned below to help new users looking for quality but easy-to-use solutions:

GIMP

free photo editing software: GIMP

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program, a free software application released under the GNU General Public License. It is one of the best photos editing software free that has all the basic features expected in an image manipulation program. GIMP has all the basic features expected in a free software image editing program. It is free photo editing software like Photoshop, but it only has fewer features which make it faster and easier to use. The interface is not well-designed as the best photo editing software for beginners but once familiar with the curves, layers, etc., users will find GIMP very easy to use.
GIMP Key Features

  • A broad range of more than 120 filters available, tons of advanced features, physics-based tools, and support through different languages within the Gimp User Interface (GUI).
  • Supports unlimited undo, full alpha channel transparency and file format flexibility, making it very reliable when handling many projects simultaneously.
  • Capable of performing complex tasks that would require multiple tools on other graphic editing programs.

Paint.NET

photo editing software

The feature-rich but easy-to-use Paint.NET combines image editing and painting tools with photo organization capabilities in a single interface well suited to the beginning and intermediate users as well as graphic designers with larger budgets. Paint.NET is a free image and photo manipulation program for Microsoft Windows, developed by dotPDN LLC. The most recent version of Paint.NET was announced on 4th October 2016 and released on 11th November 2016. It has been downloaded over 250 million times from the official website and is regarded as the best photo editing software for pc free download. Paint.NET is a bitmap graphics editor that supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and plugins.

Paint.Net Key Features

  • Includes a wide range of tools (crop, rotate or resize an image), filters (sharpen or colour adjustments), effects (drop shadow or bevel edge), support for macros and plug-ins.
  • Includes support for layers, unlimited undo/redo, pencil tool (for freehand drawing), advanced printing options.
  • Capture 3D data from the screen in real-time (keyboard shortcuts are supported).
  • A wide array of additional functionality from within external DLL's may be added to Paint.NET via the External Editor Dialog. For instance, one could write an external editor for Photoshop .8BF files and load them in Paint.NET via the External Editor Dialog.
  • Allows for multiple 'overlays' of an image so that different elements may be easily isolated and edited separately; layers can also be masked to apply changes only within certain areas.

Picasa

best photo editing software

Google acquired Picasa from its original developer, Lifescape Inc., in 2002 for around $23 million, then used it as the base of Google Photos on 12 March 2015. However, there are still many people who love using this simple image editor.
Picasa is free photo editing software and organizer for Windows, which edits, organizes, and shares photos conveniently. It also has some limited support for video files. While it is not the most full-featured program of its kind, Picasa makes it easy to access images across multiple computers running different operating systems (including Linux). It is known as the best free photo editing software for windows 10 as well.

Picasa Key Features

  • Users can edit images by cropping or rotating, changing brightness, adjusting contrast or saturation, correcting red-eye, and removing blemishes or other undesirable elements.
  • Allows special effects to images and publish photos online and share them with others via e-mail or social media websites, such as Facebook or MySpace.
  • Automatically organizes photos and groups them into folders based on when they were taken and where they were taken.
  • Extended through third-party plug-ins which allows access to other features offered by Google or other software companies, such as Picnik, a tool that allows users to perform more advanced photo editing software tasks than the ones available on Picasa. Other extensions include FlickerExport for exporting images to Flickr and HotPotato for creating food recipes from user's photos.

Photo POS Pro

best free photo editing software

Photo POS Pro is the perfect professional photo editing software for Mac and Windows to help manage digital photography workflow, from importing and organizing images to editing and watermarking them. It provides a variety of tools that allow enhancing photos and printing them conveniently. Photos POS Pro extends the dynamic range of images using HDR technology which significantly enhances image quality since the resulting image's colour palette is much broader than that of a normal JPEG file.

Photo POS Pro Key Features

  • Support most popular brands like Epson, Canon, HP and Xerox photo printers.
  • Print receipts in a selected language using predefined templates or create custom receipts with text, numbers and barcodes.
  • Process payments by credit cards (Visa, MasterCard) and POS.
  • Collect cash from customer's wallet, process all transactions manually as well as through cash drawer (connect to receipt printer).
  • Manage sales by categories or add new ones on the fly.
  • Increase productivity by creating templates of frequently used templates for future use by saving them under the My Templates category.

Shotwell

best photo editing software free

Shotwell is an award-winning open-source photo manager designed for the GNOME 3 desktop environment (it works well in other environments as well). The program features creative photo editing capabilities, geotagging support, import/export filters for additional formats, basic video support, metadata tagging abilities and more.
At a first glance, there are three main components: a toolbar with icons that perform actions (e.g., rate, tag, etc.), a view pane showing thumbnails of all the photos in the directory being viewed, and an information pane on the right which shows the filename, file path (if relevant), dimensions, tags, rating (in 1-5 stars and half stars), the date took/modified, etc.

Shotwell Key Features

  • Allows importing photos from disk or connecting directly with the camera, memory cards, and portable storage devices, and organizing them in various ways, including via geotagging.
  • Additionally, basic image correction tools are included, such as colour adjustment, red-eye reduction, auto enhancement etc.
  • Primarily intended to work with JPEG images shot from digital cameras, video files containing H.264 or WebM video encoded at either 4:2:0 or 4:2:2, as well as native GIF format animations are also supported.
  • Drag & drop support along with the ability to remove files from disk without deleting them from Shotwell's library.

Ashampoo Photo Optimizer

best free photo editing software for windows 10

Ashampoo Photo Optimizer is an application that's available for Windows platforms. It aims to reduce the size of digital photos (JPEGs) while keeping their quality, so they take up less space on a hard drive or another storage medium. The program can open a wide range of image formats, and has some tools for altering the output of images that are significantly dark or light. It also has a red-eye removal tool which works quite well. Ashampoo Photo Optimizer can also handle RAW files from cameras, as long as they're in Adobe's CR2 format.
Ashampoo Photo Optimizer Key Features

  • Analyses images and determines which compression options will produce the smallest files without compromising quality.
  • Optimizes photos in just a few clicks and corrects faces and backgrounds automatically.
  • Extends dynamic range of images using HDR technology and supports RAW formats for complete flexibility.
  • Interactive preview mode allows monitoring every change in images and aborting optimization if necessary.
  • Supports creation of animated GIF images.

Conclusion

Online photography is one of the fastest-growing internet occupations, with sites like Flickr rocketing in popularity alongside social networking websites, such as Facebook, which make pictures easily accessible to millions of users. The creation of websites dedicated entirely to photo sharing, such as Shutterfly, have also contributed greatly to the ongoing popularity of digital photography and online image collections. Many best photo editing software for Mac and Windows are available with various extensions and plugins.
Photo manipulation software has come a long way since the days when all it did was allow users to adorn photographs with some form of "artistic" filter, and today any amateur can install a simple best free photo editing software for Mac and Windows and carry out any number of advanced manipulations not possible in those early days. Even professional photographers often use various photo editing tools before uploading their final photos – although they will undoubtedly have access to advanced hardware which makes this process much easier for them than it ever could be for someone using just a simple PC.

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