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

As for the tools included in Photo! Editor, it's a pretty basic program. That said, Photo! Editor works perfectly fine for small retouching tasks such as optimizing colors, removing red eye or even clearing someone's skin of spots, 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 to 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 editor to fix their digital images.

Download Photo! Editor 1.1 in Softonic

PhotoShine's biggest problem is its interface, which is hard to navigate, doesn't resize properly, and just looks a old-fashioned. Improvements here would make the app much, much better. If you can get past this, though, PhotoShine is packed with loads of features, frames and scenarios that will allow you to personalize your photos for almost any occasion you can imagine.

To use PhotoShine, just hit the green folder icon and you can open your photos. Once they're in, you can re-orient, resize and move them, as well as applying some color effects, like gray, old and sketch. Some of PhotoShine's effects are better than others, though, so check them all out before saving.

Where PhotoShine really stands out, however, is in its effects, frames and other features. There are bunches of them for you to play with, organized into strange-sounding categories called things like Baby, Simulation and Magazine. The great thing about PhotoShine, is that simply clicking on the effect is enough to insert your image very accurately - it detects people and faces very well, and even if it doesn't, you can change them by double-clicking again.

PhotoShine's effects are certainly not to everyone's taste, but if you're looking for some fun for your photos, it's worth checking out.

Download PhotoShine Mini 4.0 in Softonic

Introduction

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 you'll soon get used to 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.

Features

Among all the image modification tools, of particular usefulness is 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 they seem 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.

PhotoFiltre contains all the essential tools and options to edit and optimize pictures.

Download PhotoFiltre 7.1.1 in Softonic

Funny Photo Maker allows you to make amusing additions to your photos - or from one of two sexy ladies provided as an example. Simply click the + button and you'll be able add a number of image formats from your PC. You then need to select one of Funny Photo Maker's effects. These are divided into three categories - Frames, Face fun and Artistic.

In themselves, Funny Photo Maker's effects are pretty good. The frames are funny, there are a good selection of famous and amusing scenarios under Face fun, and the artistic effects - although basic - will keep you entertained. The problem, however, is that they are almost impossible to apply well.

Funny Photo Maker allows you to edit your images slightly so you can focus on the important parts of the photo, but it rarely maintains the edit when you add the effects. The same goes for when you don't edit the photo - there's no intelligent face ID here - it just plops the effect over your photo, changing the resolution however it sees fit. Although you can get lucky with a good match, most of the images are stretched and warped, and look terrible - even the ones included by the developer as an example!

If you want to have fun with your images, try Photo Frames & Effects, Pixlr-o-matic or Polarfox - they're all much better options.

Funny Photo Maker looks good in theory, but in practice, it is really badly finished and does nothing for your photos. Look elsewhere.

Download Funny Photo Maker 2.4.0 in Softonic

Overview

This is usually a trick for Photoshop experts, but now with FotoMix you can also create that illusion, even if you have no idea about how to use Adobe’s editor. The program has been especially designed to help you achieve this effect in the easiest way possible.

Interface

FotoMix features a simple interface divided into several tabs, each for a specific purpose: select background image, select foreground image, create a composition with them and add up some final touches.

Features

Using FotoMix is really simple: all you have to do is select the background image, the foreground person or object you want to use and apply one onto the other. Then simply erase the redundant background in the Composition tab, and polish the result in the Touch up tab. The resulting image can be embellished with a frame and saved in several different graphic formats.

FotoMix is a handy tool for photo composition that doesn't require any graphic editing skills. On the downside, more advanced users will find it annoyingly limited: the tools are too basic, and there’s no undo function when you’re mixing the foreground and background images.

FotoMix is an easy-to-use photo editor that lets you create image compositions without any editing skills.

Download FotoMix 9.0.6 in Softonic

Being an AIR application, Pixlr-o-matic is really nice to look at. Photo editing is divided into three steps. Firstly, choose a filter from the options in the red section, then a secondary effect from the blue area, and finally a frame in the yellow area. You can move back and forth through these stages as often as you want, using a photo stored on your computer, or one taken directly from your webcam.

Visually, Pixlr-o-matic really impresses. The interface includes the app's workbench. The filter area is really cool, with a developing tray with fluid that ripples as you move the cursor over. It's really eye-catching, and also happens to be very easy to use - the perfect combination!

Pixlr-o-matic has limited sharing options - you can save your masterpiece to .jpg or share them on imm.io, Pixlr's own image sharing service. We would have really liked to see a little more social media sharing, or better options for customizing and tweaking your own effects, inclusions that would make it close to perfect!

For quick, free effects for your photos, Pixlr-o-matic is a great-looking option.

Download Pixlr-o-matic 2.1 in Softonic

To begin with, Easy Photo Effects doesn’t even require installation. Also, it’s dead easy to use. Simply launch the EXE file, load up an image and select the effect you want to apply from the program’s menu: black and white, sepia, tilt-shift, movie, colored grid and many more.

Each filter included in Easy Photo Effects has its own customizable settings, which you can easily tweak to obtain different results. The final image is displayed on the program’s interface, and can be undone with the Reset button or saved as JPG or BMP.

Easy Photo Effects is very easy to use and can achieve quite attractive results, but needs to improve its interface and usability. We also missed having an undo option to remove effects individually, rather than restoring the whole image to its original state.

Despite a few minor flaws, Easy Photo Effects is a great alternative to apply nice-looking effects to your photos without extensive photo editing knowledge.

Download Easy Photo Effects 2.1 in Softonic

This application is super-easy to work with. In fact, using it feels more like playing around - you can drag and drop your images onto the interface, arrange them onto a page, drag over speech bubbles and enter your text.

Comic Life offers bunches of shapes, forms and lettering with styles reminiscent of the best cartoons and comics. All can be customized from the style attributes tab on the right. We also liked the filters, which lets you give a real atmosphere to your photos, like turning them into a scene from Sin City. Comic Life also features loads of templates and themes that you can start off with.

Importing pictures into Comic Life is easy, as you'll only need to drag and drop them from your desktop or pick straight from the preview pane in the application. Even more, you can use your webcam or DV camera to take snaps and post them immediately into your comic strip. This is a paid app, but you’ll be able to try Comic Life free for a while – and it’s well worth it!

Very intuitive and loaded with features, Comic Life is a great way to have fun with your pictures - highly recommended.

Download Comic Life 1.3.6 in Softonic

If you want to make your photos just that bit more fun or pretty, but don't want to be messing around with things like layers and saturation, you should check out Photo Frames & Effects without delay. This little app is lovely to use. It's easy to find your way around, looks good, works perfectly and has plenty of help.

Over 60 effects

In so far as effects and frames, Photo Frames & Effects can offer you over 60. You'll see them divided into Edit, Effects and Filters in the left-hand side of the window, and then sub-divided into further effects. You can preview every change, and either revert to your original, or keep the new one.

Easy to use

When a Photo Frames & Effects effect has different variations, you'll see them at the top of the interface. You can click through these easily, seeing which looks best with your photo, and at every step you have the option to revert back to your original image. You can then print or save your Photo Frames & Effects creation.

Make your photos stand out with minimal effort with Photo Frames & Effects.

Download Photo Frames & Effects Free 1.12 in Softonic

Photoshop is generally considered to be the standard for photo editing. While it's undoubtedly excellent and very powerful, it is also really expensive and is much more advanced than is necessary for most people.

Complete toolset

PhotoFiltre Studio offers many of the same functions as Photoshop, but it's a bit easier to use and a lot cheaper. This 30 day demo is fully functional, so you can see all it has to offer. The usual range of selection, cutting and drawing tools are in a panel on the right of the window, and in the tool bar there are options that will be familiar to any Photoshop user. These include layers and filters, as well as some other quick editing tools that are pretty cool.

Two nice tools in PhotoFiltre Studio are the horizon correct, which is useful for tweaking landscape photos, and the perspective correction, which is quite basic but can produce some interesting effects. PhotoFiltre Studio also has some easy-to-use brightness, color and hue alteration tools. You can learn pretty easily by just playing around with the various buttons, although there are comprehensive online instructions available in PhotoFiltre Studio's help menu as well.

Excellent Photoshop alternative

For the amateur photographer, PhotoFiltre Studio is an easy to pick up and effective photo editing application. It is nowhere near as intimidating as Photoshop, yet it can also produce some really great looking pictures.

PhotoFiltre Studio probably won't satisfy professional photographers or graphic designers, but if you're just looking for an easy-to-use photo editing tool, it's a great alternative to more expensive Photoshop.

Download PhotoFiltre Studio 10.4.1 in Softonic

FotoSketcher helps you add some spice to your photos without much fuss. The program includes dozens of drawing styles to apply, which are easily customizable by using sliders to configure color, contrast, stroke intensity and other parameters.

All you need to do is open the image you want to convert into a sketch and select the drawing effect you want to apply. The preview window, though a bit too small, lets you check the result before clicking the "Draw!" button. FotoSketcher will then apply the effect and display the final image beside the original one, so that you can compare both. The program also lets you add a frame to your image.

FotoSketcher also includes basic editing tools to modify the source image, supports skins to customize the program’s interface, and can work in batches with several photos at the same time.

FotoSketcher is the perfect tool for those who want to apply a nice sketch effect to their pictures but don’t dare use use Photoshop.

Download FotoSketcher 2.30 in Softonic

PhotoFiltre Studiois 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 6.5.2 in Softonic

If you're not familiar with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, it's a photo processing app that's designed to be used by professional photographers for the post-production of batches of photos, and it's often used in conjunction with Adobe's seminal app, Photoshop.

Download Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Beta 5.0 (32 bits) in Softonic

Based on a relatively new technology, fixing blur is an important task and one that's getting more and more focus from developers. This is why Dynamic Photo-HDR was created.

Dynamic Photo-HDR is an ideal tool for those who have taken a photos but the image that they get is not the one they envisioned. The software can adjust photos so that any imperfections, distortions and focus problems are smoothed out as easily possible. Unlike other image editing programs, this is Dynamic Photo-HDR's sole purpose.

Dynamic Photo-HDR's very powerful auto-aligning, manual, and auto-assist aligning of images functions with something called Pin Warping that can correct all types of misalignment, including camera roll and pitch.

If you've ever had ghost object appear in your photos, Dynamic Photo-HDR can completely eliminate them - they are usually caused by objects within your photo that were in motion when the photo was taken. In addition, it features a series of tone mapping procedures that can create a whole range of effects - from smooth photographic mapping to very dramatic images.

Dynamic Photo-HDR is still very much a developing technology but it has the potential to improve your photos in a dramatic new way.

Download Dynamic Photo-HDR 5.2.0 in Softonic

If you're looking for a way to spruce up your photos, Perfect Effects Free is a great program to do just that. Think of it as Instagram for your computer, but with a lot more features and control. Import your own photos into Perfect Effects Free and you can crop, trim, and put filters on them - all with layer support. In fact, it looks and feels like a simplified version of Adobe Photoshop.

The included filters are very good and Perfect Effects Free gives you the ability to adjust the intensity of each one. Filters are also stackable, which means you can select multiple filters and create your own custom versions. Perfect Effects Free then gives you the option to save your custom filter as a preset to apply to other photos.

Perfect Effects Free performs very well, with filters showing up instantaneously. Tools like cropping and trim work just as you would expect them to. The interesting thing about Perfect Effects Free is that it can run as a standalone application or as a plugin for Photoshop, Lightroom, or Aperture.

Overall, Perfect Effects Free is a great program with great default filters and controls to make your photos more interesting.

Download Perfect Effects Free 3.0.2 in Softonic

Aurora Photo Editor, however, is all about retouching, organizing and sharing photos. The program is mainly designed to bring the best out of dull or color imbalanced photos via an easy-to-use interface.

Aurora Photo Editor features a pop-up image selector that lets you preview and tinker with your photo until the desired results are achieved. Amongst the tasks you can perform are re-touch, straighten, adjust color strength, crispness and warmth, crop, zoom and adjust red-eye. The most useful feature is probably the relight tool which seems to magically add new life to photos and bring out colors and details that weren't as clearly visible before.

The user interface in Aurora Photo Editor is very elegant and easy to use.. All of your folders containing photos on your computer are listed down the left-hand side. Selecting any one of them will reveal the photos contained in them on the photo grid. I found that the photos took a while to load into the grid compared to iPhoto or Picasa but it's no big problem.

Once the photos are loaded, Aurora Photo Editor may prompt you to backup all of them to an Amazon database. I was offered the chance to do so for free since I had less than 2GB of photos, which is quite a generous offer. The four main options along the top of the photo grid are: 'Publish', 'Edit', 'Email' and 'Print.' The most important is 'Edit', because this brings up all the main editing options.

What I liked about Aurora Photo Editor is that applying effects is simple and you're given a preview of what your photos will look like across the top of the grid. You can select from different gradients of the effect without having to apply anything. You can, however, get a bit bogged down in the amount of adjustments possible. It's far easier to click 'Auto Relight' and Aurora Photo Editor will automatically detect what will make your photo look better. I also liked the 'Retouch' button, which allows you to doctor images incredibly easily. Want to erase someone from an image? Just click 'Retouch' and select which part of the image you'd like to replace with something generic from elsewhere in the picture.

Meanwhile, publishing in Aurora Photo Editor is integrated with both Flickr and Facebook and emailing is even integrated with online web accounts, such as Windows Live Mail and Gmail.

Overall, I was very impressed with Aurora Photo Editor. It can't make a silk purse out of a pigs ear but if your photo can be improved in any way, Aurora is sure to find it.

Download Aurora Photo Editor 1.1 in Softonic

Nikon CaptureNX 2 makes many improvements to Nikon's original photo editing software, which Nikon says has been designed for photographers by photographers. The application is notable for its 'Color Control Points', which allow you to select and adjust colors simply by pointing, clicking and moving a slider. There are 25 adjustments for users of JPEG & TIF images and additional RAW functions for those who shot Nikon Electronic File (NEF) RAW images with their cameras.

The Color Control Point feature of Nikon CaptureNX 2 has seen some of the biggest changes. You can target any area of the photo that you want to alter and then you have 26 different and precise tools to give you a very high degree of precision over changes. Finally, there's also an 'Auto Retouch Brush', which is designed to get rid of blemishes that mark your photos. You can even remove certain objects by sampling the background and then brushing over them.

Nikon Capture NX 2 is a highly professional, yet surprisingly easy-to-use tool, which makes a must-have for all Nikon camera owners.

Download Nikon Capture NX 2.2.4 in Softonic