DCE AutoEnhance approaches images from the perspective that each image is different and unique. While one may have been taken with a flash, another may have been taken outside with strong lights and another image may have been a long exposure taken in a night setting. While most processors apply a standard pre-canned adjustment on all your images, they often produce poor results.

DCE AutoEnhance uses the Exif Metadata information that your digital camera recorded into the image and processes the image accordingly to that. DCE knows if you used flash, if it was a long exposure during the night or a fast snapshot in full light. DCE is packed with some impressive features such as filter simulators for glass/gelatine filters, a lossless rotation tool and a powerful filter for portrait photography. There's also an excellent filter for portrait photography which "cleans" the subject's skin and enhances the tones.

The interface is clean and easy to use although this is clearly aimed at a pro-sumer market and beginners may find it overwhelming to navigate through the plethora of features to perform the simplest of tasks.

Download DCE AutoEnhance 3.3 in Softonic

Turbo Photo Album is the photo management and batch edit software of Turbo Photo. With Turbo Photo Album, you can easily manage, view, print and share your photos. Turbo Photo Editor is an "easy to use" but powerful image editing/processing software designed for digital camera owners.

Turbo Photo will help you make excellent photo artworks. All of its functions and features aim to solve the most frequent problems of digital photography caused by the digital camera itself. With Turbo Photo you can master and control what creates a great photo such as exposure, color, composition, sharpness, and contrast. The simple user interface is easy to use. At the same time, professional functions will attract the confirmed photographer.

Download Turbo Photo 6.8 in Softonic

To rotate the image, most image editors decode the photo, rotate it and then re-encode it back to it's original format which is why the decrease in quality takes place. JPEG Lossless Rotator on the other hand does not recode photo therefore meaning quality is not lost. Once installed, JPEG Lossless Rotator will create thumbnails of images in your designated folder including sub folders if need be.

To rotate, select a photo thumbnail and select the appropriate rotation angle you want to use, using the tools at the top of the interface. Apart from that, there are only a few other options such as "Recent Folder" which opens the folder that was opened before the program window was closed last time, "Favorites" which adds and keeps the 10 last chosen shortcuts to folders. There's also an "Automatic" feature which automatically rotates slanted images to make them straight.

It's hard to tell with the naked eye whether JPEG Lossless Rotator really rotates without a loss of quality but if you can't afford to take chances, it's better than using a standard image rotation tool.

Download JPEG Lossless Rotator 6.2 in Softonic

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

Until now, applying a filter to your images meant using a graphic editor, selecting the appropriate filter and clicking on the "OK" button so that the program does all the work by itself. With BenVista PhotoArtist, it's you who applies the effect directly, deciding in which areas you want to focus or how strong you want the effect to be.

BenVista PhotoArtist includes a impressive variety of filters and is extremely easy to use. All you have to do is select the filter you want to apply, customize the program's settings (brush size, opacity degree) and start painting over the blank area. The photo will reveal itself as you paint, with the effect already applied. Of course, you can use different filters and configurations on the same image, thus producing even more original results.

The only downside to BenVista PhotoArtist is that you'll probably need to test every filter to see their effect by yourself, as the thumbnails displayed on the program's interface don't really represent the final result.

With BenVista PhotoArtist you can apply eye-catching effects to your favorite photos in a very original way.

Download BenVista PhotoArtist 2.0.6 in Softonic

We were disappointed by the limited editing features. No contrast, sepia or greyscale features even those are often considered basic. You can send a jpeg via email but for that, you will have to make sure you have a MAPI email client. The application also crashed when we were browsing for pictures.

As the developer states in his description, JPEG is really only useful to quickly edit JPEG images. However, with most photo organisers, like Picasa, already offering more simple editing tools, Better JPEG turns out to be something of a lame duck.

Download Better JPEG 1.7.1.0 in Softonic

Layout

Zoner Photo Studio is divided into four sections, Manager, Viewer, Editor and RAW. They're pretty self-explanatory; the RAW editor allows you to edit photos in RAW format, a slightly more advanced way of processing photos. The great thing about Zoner Photo Studio is that it is perfectly balanced - it has just the right amount of viewing and editing power for intermediate users, and is neither too simple nor unnecessarily complicated.

Editing features

Among Zoner Photo Studio's editing features are all the standards - color tweaking, resizing, cropping, etc. - and some interesting additions including iron, morph mesh and Droste effects. Zoner Photo Studio also has a good selection of publication features, so once you've edited those photos to perfection you can print, burn to disc, create 3D images, design a calendar, or email.

All-round power

The controls are simple to master, the interface is fully customizable, and the configuration settings are some of the best we've seen. It's a very complete program, and it will take you a while to discover all its features. Make the effort through, because it's sure to allow you to get the absolute best out of your photos.

Zoner Photo Studio - updated and better than ever!

Download Zoner Photo Studio Professional 15 in Softonic

In Professor Franklin's Photo Effects you simply choose the picture you want to work on and select the filters you'd like to apply to it. The only big problem is the program's interface, which is designed to be different from the standard Windows app but makes it incredibly difficult to use. It seems they were paying more attention to esthetics rather than usability.

Despite this handicap, the program still has some interesting effects that will add a touch of elegance and originality: borders, frames, painting filters, folded corner effect or drawing filter are just some of the effects you'll find.

Add special effect to your photos in a couple of mouse clicks.

Download Professor Franklin's Instant Photo Effects 2.0 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