Okay, so you have a great digital camera, and you have thousands of photos on your computer. Now what?

If you want to do something about that mass of images, you’ll need some help in the form of software. But if you think it’s necessary to pay hundreds of dollars for sophisticated programs to manage and edit your photos, you’ll be happy to know you were wrong.

Did you know that there are many photo editors and managers available for free to download and use? And by free, we mean free; that means no charge at all. Here are a few of the best free photo editors.

Picasa 3

Picasa is a Google program, and it could be the best free photo management program out there. But beyond its ability to manage and help share photos, it performs quite sophisticated editing tasks as well.

At its most basic level, the program will index all of your photos. You can sort photos by date, and even ask it to only show photos within a certain date range. Of you only want to see photos of faces, choose the “faces” filter at the top of the screen, and Picasa will attempt to find only those types of photos. It doesn’t usually work 100%, but it’s a great start.

But there are also excellent editing tools for cropping, red-eye reduction, color and contrast adjustment and retouching, among other things. Everything is every easy to use; in fact, there is even an “I’m feeling lucky” button that cleans up photos automatically, for those of you who, well, feel lucky.

Picasa also includes tools to create photo CDs collages, screensavers, and posters. You can upload your files to Google’s online Picasa site, or even publish them to a blog using Blogger.

“http://picasa.google.com/” Download Picasa Here…

Gimp

If you’d like professional-level photo editing features, but don’t want to shell out hundreds of dollars for Photoshop, GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) might be exactly what you need. This is a very powerful photo editor, with many features that mimic Photoshop, including effects, layers and masks. It’s not just for tweaking photos; it’s possible to create illustrations and graphics from scratch, as well. But not to worry; though many features are designed for advanced users, there are also a lot of basic features, such as redeye reduction tools and color and contrast adjustments. Be warned, however; if you intend to learn the more advanced features, it might take a while. Also, the layout of the program is actually not as intuitive as it could be.

“http://www.gimp.org/” Download GIMP here.

Photo Pos Pro

If you’d like all of the most basic photo editing tools, but don’t need the advanced features of a program like GIMP, try Photo Pos Pro. This used to be a for-pay product and, unlike GIMP, it’s easy to use, with a very simple interface that needs no major instruction. Your photo is in the center of the main screen, with the editing tool icons arrayed around it. You can hover over each icon to tell what it does, and they’re largely self-explanatory.

Photo Pos Pro has pretty much every basic editing tool you can think of, including red-eye reduction, and automated tools for sharpening, blurring or changing image colors. You can also add frames and special effects, and there are drawing tools and layers available, as well.

Be careful when you install this one, however. The installation takes some time, and the installation attempts to set your home page to something called mystart.com, so uncheck the box next to that item.

“http://www.photopos.com/” Download Photo Pos Pro Here

Okay, so you have tons of photos on your hard drive (and hopefully you’ve backed them up somewhere). Now, what? Do you have a really foolproof filing method for storing them in a way that allows you to easily find them later? Or would you rather have a program that’s a little more automatic and keeps you organized, even if you’re not, yet gives you ultimate control?

Well, help is available and, like the photo editors, they’re free, which is the best price there is.

We talked about Picasa last time, and in addition to some excellent basic photo editing functions, that program is a great photo manager. But there are others, just in case you’d like to try something different.

FastStone Image Viewer

FastStone is a major step up from the photo tools that come with Windows, in that it’s extremely fast. It does, however, allow you to browse photos in a Windows Explorer-type window. You run the program and go to the folders you’d like to browse and it displays them immediately, with both a thumbnail and a preview of each one. To see a photo full screen, just double-click.

But there’s more. FastStone also has tools to resize, crop and rotate photos, create slideshows, send them via email, and even convert photos to almost any graphic or photo file format; it even previews videos, and works well as a full-fledged multimedia viewer as well.
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“http://www.faststone.org” Download FastStone Image Viewer

Pictomio

Once you install Pictomio, it immediately displays all of your photos as thumbnails in their folders, and that means immediately; no wait at all. What you have is a great tool for managing photos and creating unusual slideshows, including carousel-style shows similar to those Mac users like so much. In fact, the slideshow creation feature is so rich, it’s almost worth the download for that alone.

But this program has a lot more. You can zoom in and out of photos and add all sorts of tags. The amount of information Pictomio provides for each photo is remarkable. Of course it includes file size and date, but it also includes shutter speed and aperture used, which should make hard core photogs giddy.

Pictomio is missing editing functions, so while it’s a great organizational program, don’t expect to be able to make changes in the photos themselves. Also, before installing the program, make sure your computer can handle it; it requires more than a basic graphics card.

“http://www.pictomio.com/Default.aspx” Download Pictomio

PhotoScape

The more photos you take, the more useful you will find Photoscape. It’s an excellent program for viewing all of your photos; you know the drill by now; it allows you to browse them as usual.

But PhotoScape also has a photo editor, with tools for red-eye removal, brightness and color adjustment, backlighting correction, and more.It also has a tool that allows you to combine multiple photos, and you can even create animated .gif files from photos. Thankfully, this program also allows you to batch-rename files. Some folks will also like Photoscape’s ability to convert photos from the RAW format that some digital cameras use to a more standard .jpg format.

“http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/download.php” Download PhotoScape