A RAW image is not ready to be used as an image; it’s more like a digital negative you can process to obtain the final picture. And Raw Therapee makes the whole process very easy and enjoyable.

Raw Therapee supports lots of different RAW formats and features a ton of adjustments to process the images and obtain the final result you’re looking for. You’ll be able to tweak brightness, colors, shadows, contrast, color balance… and also transform the picture by cropping or rotating the image, among other possibilities. A feature we especially liked was the ability to create snapshots. This lets you save all the changes you've done so far in case you need to revert to them at any point.

Some of the adjustments have automated settings, but not all of them. Also, Raw Therapee doesn’t have any documentation, so it’s more a question of trying out all the possibilities to see which one looks best.

With Raw Therapee you can process your RAW images in a friendly, easy-to-use interface.

Download Raw Therapee 2.4.1 in Softonic

Don’t take us wrong here: PhoXo is not a free version of Photoshop, and is nowhere near as powerful as Adobe's editor. But if all you need is an efficient tool that doesn't hog system resources and includes all the basic photo editing tools, PhoXo is the perfect choice. The only drawback to PhoXo, if any, is that the program doesn't include any documentation – only an online tutortial. Fortunately all of its tools are pretty self-explanatory.

With PhoXo you'll be able to rotate, resize, trim, flip and mirror your images, and also customize them with more than 50 different effects – including shadow, frames and edges, black and white, sepia tone, oil painting, pencil sketch, mosaic, blur and many more. Plus PhoXo lets you apply these effects in no time, with instant preview. If you don’t like the result, just press Ctrl+Z and move on to something else.

Besides editing tools and image effects, PhoXo also features a great collection of clipart ready to be inserted in your images. Emoticons, cars, animals, flags, cartoon characters and icons are neatly organized in tabs and can be easily repositioned and resized.

Phoxo is a surprisingly powerful little app which will cover most of your needs in photo editing.

Download PhoXo 7.1 in Softonic

Don't be mistaken here: Photivo is no free Photoshop, and doesn't let you view and manage photos like a traditional photo viewer. It's not aimed at beginners either, but rather at users who take photography as a serious hobby and are used to dealing with RAW files.

That said, the truth is that Photivo is a great tool for digital photo developing. It includes a plethora of options, filters and special effects that help you make each shot unique, without losing the quality of the original picture. The program may have a steep learning curve, but it’s totally worth it.

On the downside, Photivo didn't seem the quickest editor in the world at all. Any small change took a few seconds to show up in the preview image – especially if you’re not using a high-spec system.

Photivo is an open-source powerful photo editor that works both with standard bitmap images and RAW photos.

Download Photivo 2011-03-01 in Softonic