Adobe Photoshop is any serious photographer or graphic designer’s application of choice but you’ll have to cough up quite a lot of bills to get it. Another solution is to use Photofiltre, a lesser known and more basic yet free and solid image editing application.

Photofiltre is a relatively small application and, unlike Photoshop, will install and launch very quickly. The interface, loaded with all the features and options, can be confusing at first glance, but after a short time,, you should be comfortable with it. The right side is composed of the shape and drawing tools and an optimizable color palette. The top bar has all the essential image editing and modification options. Photofiltre sadly doesn’t let you customize the interface and choose your favorite tools however.

Among all the image modification tools, we particularly liked the quick contrast/hue and saturation buttons because you can check out the effects and immediately and easily correct the image if you’re not satisfied with its quality. If you trust Photofiltre, you can also let it adjust these parameters automatically.

Like any self-respecting image editing application, Photofiltre includes the most widely used filters to transform your image, but if you need to make really significant changes, you’ll find yourself limited. Furthermore, unlike Photoshop, Photofiltre doesn’t include layers, making it more challenging to work on different elements of the image separately.

Like the excellent free image viewer Irfanview, Photofiltre covers the majority of image formats and can batch process and convert images rapidly. Photofiltre has five different zoom options yet we found them to be more or less similar. The magnifier is probably less precise than the drop down percentage pane, and the auto zoom adjusts the image’s size according to Photofiltre’s window size.

The image explorer is located at the bottom of the screen, and if you set it according to your image file you’ll be able to quickly preview all your pictures. However, if you work with multiple image files, it can quickly become confusing, as you’ll have to open up an explorer tree pane every time to look for your pictures.

While Photofiltre is miles away from the professional oriented Adobe Photoshop it’s an excellent free alternative. The program contains all the essential tools and options to edit and optimize pictures. It loads up very quickly and changes can be instantly previewed. Novice photographers or graphic designers can use it to cut their teeth on image editing before going on to more complex applications.

Download PhotoFiltre 6.3.1 in Softonic

PIXresizer is a free image resizer PIXresizer to easily create web and e-mail friendly versions of your images with reduced file sizes. The reduced files are saved in a different folder, so your original images are not altered at all.

PIXresizer offers several different resizing methods to choose from and can automatically recognize image sizes to calculate the best fit. In addition, it can convert between image formats (JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG and TIFF), rotate images, convert to grayscale and resize multiple images in batch mode.

A great companion for webmasters and digital photographers.

Download PIXresizer 2.0.2 in Softonic

Photo! Editor, previously known as Photo Toolkit, is a basic retouching tool with which you can fix and optimize your digital images in a couple of clicks.

The most outstanding feature of this photo editing tool is its seamless integration with Windows Explorer, which means it adds a whole new command group to the image file context menus. These commands enable you to launch the program's main tools straight away, without having to open the program itself before.

As for the tools included in Photo! Editor, like I said it's a pretty basic program, that is, this is no free Photoshop. That said, the truth is that Photo! Editor works perfectly fine for small retouching tasks such as optimizing colors, removing red eye effect or even cleaning someone's skin from spots, smooth wrinkles and other slight imperfections. Other tools included are a resampling/cropping utility, some really cool light effects and a caricature tool to apply a hilarious morphing effect to your photos.

The only drawback I found in Photo! Editor is that there's no way to browse the folder's contents using thumbnails. This means that if your photo file names are not descriptive enough, you'll have to click on them one by one just to find out which picture they correspond to.

Photo! Editor is the perfect choice for those who are looking for a simple, lightweight and easy-to-use photo editing tool to fix their digital images.

Download Photo! Editor 1.0 Beta in Softonic

DeformerPro is probably one of the easiest ways to have some fun with your photos and your PC on one of those boring Sunday afternoons.

First of all, bear in mind that this program is mainly intended for people who have little or no knowledge of photo editing at all. Power users may find it then a bit too simple but in any case it works really well for a quick morphing effect.

Simply run it (no installation required) and load a photo. Then start deforming the image with the mouse's right button and see how it's coming out in real time. At the beginning it'll all look weird but soon you'll get the knack of it. The overlaid grid also helps to achieve better results. Just one thing: you really need to be careful because DeformerPro only supports a one-level undo.

Once you like the final image (you can get a better look by temporarily disabling the grid) you'll be able to save it as JPG, BMP or PNG, ready to be published online or shared by email. Just be careful not to hurt other people's feelings!

Though probably too simple for expert image editors, DeformerPro is a great tool to apply warping effects to your photos in no time.

Download DeformerPro 1.0 in Softonic

If you've ever needed to resize an image quickly, then you need a tool that makes it as easy and as straight forward as possible.

VSO Image resizer organizes your photos by shrinking their resolution or reducing them on your hard drive. It's a one stop easy to use solution for all those that need to resize, compress, convert, create copies, import or organize photos. The main benefit of this is that the photos take up less storage space and are much easier to e-mail. You can also use them in third party applications much easier too such as design applications and other image editors. In addition, it's a good idea for webmasters to use this because reducing the resolution alone can mean that your webpages load much more quickly. You can change their format and also edit large numbers of image files at once as it supports batch editing. While the program doesn't have a particularly great interface, it is integrated very well into Windows shell so it's easy to access simply by right clicking.

If you're looking for a super quick and easy images resizing solution, then VSO will more than cater for your needs.

Download VSO Image Resizer 2.0.1.3 in Softonic

I often get intimidated by image editing programs because they're usually so rich in features that it just becomes overwhelming.

PhotoFiltre Studio was a pleasant surprise however making basic retouching and editing of images easy and accessible. It allows you to perform simple or advanced editing of an image and apply a vast range of filters. Everything is managed through the toolbar with which you access the standard filters. It also has a "layer manager" which controls all the advanced brushes, nozzles, red eye remover plus other useful tools.

The filters are easy to use and for anyone not very familiar with using them, PhotoFiltre Studio provides an excellent introduction into what they can do for you. Many provide simple functions such as changing the brightness, contrast, dye, saturation and gamma levels etc. However, there are also some much more impressive filters such as those that create watercolour, pastel, indian ink or mosaic effects.

It also features tools for more adventurous users such as vector filters that allow you to manipulate images into rectangular, ellipse, triangle, rhombus and rounded rectangle designs. If you're new to image manipulation or editing, or are just lost when it comes to using filters, PhotoFiltre Studio will make you feel much more at ease.

Download Photofiltre Portable 2.6.7 in Softonic

Digital cameras enable us to take better and better images but there are still some occasions when your shots need a bit retouching to reach perfection.

That's the case of noise or grain, a problem that can affect your photos when shooting them in poorly lighted environments. Luckily you can now remove those artifacts in a very easy way with Noiseware Community Edition, a photo retouching and editing tool that enables you to remove noise, grain and other imperfections from your pictures in just one click.

The program includes 10 noise filtering presets and allows you to tweak them but in a limited way, as some of the sliders are only available in a Pro version. After optimizing the image you can compare it to the original one by simply clicking on the photo. If you like it, go ahead and save it.

The program is a doddle to use, but the whole process gets a bit lengthy if you need to optimize many pictures, because you can't work in batches. Also, as another limitation of this version, you can't save pictures with a JPEG quality level higher than 90.

Noiseware Community Edition is a good tool to remove grain and noise from your pictures, as long as you don't have many of them to work on.

Download NoiseWare Community Edition 2.6 in Softonic

BD Sizer is a tool that enables you to easily resize your digital pictures, either one by one or in batch mode. You can set a custom maximum file size and choose between three resizing methods: Smart, Lanczos 3 and B-spline.

The program also allows you to add nice frames to the selected photo and add a copyright notice to any place in the image. You have a wide range of configuration options available for both.

BD Sizer keeps EXIF information when resizing photos and also enables you to view and edit XMP data.

Download BD Sizer 2.3.1 in Softonic

Wire Pilot is photo retouching software especially designed for the removal of annoying wires in photos. The software allows you to remove wires, posts, antennas and other unwanted linear objects from a photo. It enables you to do so with far more ease and accuracy than using Photoshop or other image manipulation software.

Wire Pilot is very simple to use. You simply place the cursor on the line you want to remove and using the mouse wheel or cursor keys, set the cursor size and position on the line you are about to remove. You so this until the background color within the cursor circle matches the one of the object as much as possible. Simply use the mouse button to remove the line and then repeat this procedure along the corrected object.

Note that if you prefer to use this software within your favourite graphics program such as Photoshop or Elements, you can do so as a plug-in. This is a handy piece of software that makes life a lot easier than using traditional photo apps although it can still end up removing things that you don't want it to.

Download Wire Pilot 3.0.4 in Softonic

Have you ever felt the desire to be like any of your idols or, even better, become one of them?

FotoMorph now gives you the opportunity to turn into any famous person by applying a morphing effect to your photos. As you may have already seen on movies, morphing gradually converts a source photo into the target photo by creating intermediate images (frames) based on highlighted transition points.

With FotoMorph the whole process is really easy. The program features a tabbed interface with different areas where you can select the photos you'll be working with (Images), mark the transition points (Control) and preview the final result (Play).

The most important step in the process is selecting transition points: the more you have, the more accurate your morphing will be. FotoMorph lets you add points to both the source and target photos simultaneously, and though it's a bit confusing at first, it ends up being a really good method.

FotoMorph also enables you to tweak other elements in the transition, such as the frame rate, the play time and whether you want to add a text overlay or not. Once you're done, FotoMorph can save your morphing effect in a variety of formats, including Flash movie (SWF), GIF animation, AVI movie, standalone EXE or even screensaver.

FotoMorph lets you create stunning photo morphing effects in just a few easy steps: no designing skills or technical knowledge required!

Download FotoMorph 4.5.4 in Softonic

Framefun is probably one of the easiest and quickest ways to spice up your photos, simply by adding some basic frames and borders.

You should be aware that this tool is not a full featured graphic editor, but just a simple app to add frames, borders, shadow effects and watermarks to your images. You can work both with single images one by one or in batches, and preview the final result at all times in the program's interface.

There isn't a wide selection of frames in Framefun. In fact, the only frame available is a plain line with customizable width and color. But the combination of this frame together with a border and a shadow effect can achieve really good results. The program can also add watermarks to your images, either in text format or as a small graphic.

I specially liked the possibility of using FrameFun in batch mode. It takes a while to understand the way it works because it's not very well implemented and poorly documented, but once you get the idea, it really saves you loads of time.

Though it doesn't include many frames to choose from and its batch mode could be improved, FrameFun is still a great tool to add frames, borders and shadow effects to your photos in a snap.

Download FrameFun 2.0.0.5 in Softonic

FotoSketcher is probably the fastest and easiest way to add a sketch effect to your pictures. Therefore it's perfect for those of you who don't dare use Photoshop yet and simply want to add some spice to your photos without much fuss.

FotoSketcher doesn't even require installation. Simply run the program and select the picture you want to sketch. The process will begin immediately, without having to press any button, and the result will be displayed side to side to the original picture, which is great for comparison. Also, the sketch effect can be done either in color or in black and white.

On the downside. FotoSketcher doesn't include any configuration features. It only allows you to tweak edge threshold and intensity by means of a couple of sliders, but I missed the possibility to adjust light, contrast and above all color, as the sketched pictures tended to be too lightly colored.

Apply a sketch effect to your photos in no time. No artistic skills required!

Download FotoSketcher 1.5 in Softonic

Glamour Filter is designed to improve your portraits by balancing colours, lights and contrast. You just have to load a picture, press the 'Add Glamour' button and see the preview next to your picture. At this point you can decide to add a soft-focus and a saturation effect which can make your photo a little bit fake or ‘dream-like’ if you want.

The application is basic and easy to use, and can be suitable for non-tech savvy users who would like to improve the appearance of a picture in a few clicks. Although you can set some values to the filters, the results are not exciting and basically any graphics editor can improve saturation, brightness and contrast in a very easy way.

Glamour Filter can help you improve the appearance of pictures with easy contrast and colour optimization. The soft-focus effect can also add some 'shine', which some may like but others not.

Download Glamour Filter 1.1.1 in Softonic

Mosaics are visually very appealing, but also very hard to create… unless you count on an application like Foto-Mosaik.

With Foto-Mosaik you can generate a virtual mosaic from any photo, using your own image collection as an enormous box of mosaic color tiles. The program takes care of everything and your intervention is limited to selecting the folder where the photo tiles should come from and the one image you want to convert into a mosaic.

The first time you run Foto-Mosaik, you need to create a tile database with your pictures. The larger it is, the better results you'll get in the long run, so be prepared to wait for quite a long time while the program creates the database.

There are several options to customize before creating the mosaic, such as the number of tiles to use or paper format (portrait or landscape). Bear in mind that you'll need a high number of tiles in order to obtain a fairy good result. Ideally these tiles should also be quite varied in color and light, otherwise the resulting mosaic will look plain and dark – or it won't even resemble the original picture at all.

With Foto-Mosaik - and as many photos as you can gather in a database - you'll be able to create a beautiful mosaic from any of your pictures.

Download Foto-Mosaik 4.1.0 in Softonic

Photomatix Pro allows you to gain the perfect exposure in a picture by blending two photos that are maybe each slightly out of focus. Given that most digital cameras can auto-bracket at different exposures, you do not need to acquire expensive lighting equipment - and carry it - when shooting high contrast scenes. Simply enable Auto Exposure Bracketing, and let Photomatix merge your photos into an image with extended dynamic range.

This program can save you hours of time in post-processing as Photomatix Pro is designed for productivity - i.e. automatic blending, unlimited stacking, easy comparison of results and batch processing. This can save you hours in adding masking and layers with image editing programs.

The developers claim it can even surpass Photoshop CS2 in HDR conversion. If you've ever created a 32-bit HDR image in Photoshop CS2 and could not get a good conversion Photomatix Tone Mapping tool may help.

This is a very powerful program although will only be appreciated by professional photographers that know how to auto-bracket photos at different exposures.

Download Photomatix Basic 1.2.1 in Softonic

If you're a novice to photography or need to do your editing in a simple package on the move, then MobaPhoto may well be for you.

MobaPhoto encompasses everything from simple size reductions and contrast adjustments to uploading them to a website. In addition, it's got a very useful batch photo editing mode which allows you to change and edit several photos at once in various ways. This includes resize, crop, correct red-eyes and upload them with no FTP knowledge required. While this makes it very limited, it's excellent for beginners because it's so easy to use and lacks all the intimidating functions of your average imaging application. What's even more useful, especially for those on the move, is that it fits on a USB stick and requires no prior installation - just click and go. One problem you might find however is that although it supports most of the major image formats, all your changes are saved in JPG format which can be a bit annoying unless you use an image converter in conjunction with MobaPhoto - hopefully that's something they will add to future versions.

Extremely lightweight, easy to use and feature rich, MobaPhoto is an excellent addition for photographers on the move.

Download MobaPhoto 1.42 in Softonic

Fotosizer is a freeware batch image resizer tool. It resizes your photos in just 3 easy steps - 1. Photo selection, 2. select resize settings, then 3. Start the resize!

Increasingly, sharing photos on the internet is becoming more and more popular. Photos, represented as JPEG files from digital cameras, taken at high resolutions are far too large to send over the Internet, with some photos ending up at 5 mega bytes. Uploading one photo to a photo sharing website is fine, but 10, 20, or even more, this can take forever, especially on a dial-up connection.

With Fotosizer, you can shrink JPEG image files, along with other supported formats, and dramatically reduce internet transfer times, enabling you to quickly and easily prepare your image collections to be published on the web

Download Fotosizer 1.170.269 in Softonic

Resizing photos for e-mail or uploading to servers is often far more difficult than it should be. High Quality Photo Resizer does the job with minimum fuss with a focus on high quality images. It also allows you to add up to 37 effects (Sharpen, Mosaic, Tweak RGB, Colorize, Spray, Emboss, Blur, Gray Scale, Negative, Soften, Swirl, Tile, Wind, Contrast, Noise, Anti Alias, Fish Eye, Flip Horizontal, Flip Vertical, High Pass, Neontrace, etc.) to your photos.

In the latest version you can now drag-and-drop images or add an entire folder meaning that it effectively supports batch conversion which is great for those with lots of images to deal with. You can scale images wither by simply selecting a certain percentage or pixel reduction or by manually resizing them with your mouse. Note that to install this program on Windows Vista, you need to logon with the "Administrator Account" before you install it. If you log on to the Windows Vista computer with a standard user account, the installation process will fail according to the developers.

Quick, simple and designed specifically for high res images, this is a tool that even photo professionals will appreciate.

Download High Quality Photo Resizer 4.2 in Softonic

Autostitch™ is the world's first fully automatic 2D image stitcher. Capable of stitching full view panoramas without any user input whatsoever, Autostitch is a breakthrough technology for panoramic photography, VR and visualisation applications.

This is the first solution to stitch any panorama completely automatically, whether 1D (horizontal) or 2D (horizontal and vertical).

Autostitch is built using cutting edge research from the AI lab at UBC, but it's incredibly simple to use! Just select a set of photos, and Autostitch does the rest: digital photos in, panoramas out.

Download Autostitch 2.187 in Softonic

Adding water effects or ripple effects to videos is one of the coolest ways to give your videos an extra touch of class.

Sqirlz Water Reflections allows you to add rippling pools of water, rain or snow effects, to images or AVI videos. The pools can be any shape and you can define several factors such as the wave size, perspective and water transperency. You can also change the ripple shapes and wave details plus even add snowflake effects and add depth to other ripple effects. Unfortunately, there are not a large amount of output format options to choose from. Animations can be saved as Adobe Flash files, animated GIFS, AVI video clips and for images, bitmap, JPEG, PNG and TIFF files. The latest release has added some extra effects which are quite interesting which include general rainfall and glossy reflecting areas of water in cincentric circles. Some of the effects you can create are truly stunning - check out the developer homepage for a few examples - although it can take some time to render photos correctly, it's certainly wrth the effort.

If you want to impress friends with your photos or just have a very unique photos collection, Squirlz Water Reflections produces stunning results.

Download Sqirlz Water Reflections 2.4 in Softonic