An amateur photographer need not spend hundreds of dollars on expensive photo editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop. A great deal of functionality is built into many different free photo editing programs that are available for download via the Internet. Simply download one of these free photo editing tools and give them a try before investing in a commercial product.
The GNU Image Manipulation Program ( The GIMP)
Perhaps the most full featured and widely accepted of the free photo editing programs is the GIMP. Written by volunteers over many years of effort the GIMP is now on par with the image editing tools such as Adobe Photoshop and Corel's Paint Shop Pro. The program has dozens of built in effects and editing functions, and for most people carries far more options than they will ever have use for. On the down side the GIMP is a photo editing program that has a fairly steep learning curve. For those familiar with Photoshop learning GIMP is a fairly easy transition. For those new to photo editing however, selecting a more intuitive software program such as Google's Picasa might be more productive.
Google's Picasa Free Photo Editing Program
Picasa provides users with a clean, easy to understand and navigate interface for editing photos. Clearly labeled buttons and instructional menus guide a user through the most commonly used editing tasks such as resizing, cropping, fixing color levels, and adding special effects. For most beginners Picasa is more than just a free photo editing program. It also serves as a very capable image orgnization and cataloging tool. It provides the user with easy access to all of their images while also allowing them to be labeled and stored in ways that make it easy to find images that were taken months or years before.
