Photo editing

Massive photo editing tools like Photoshop are great, but some find them too heavy and complicated for everyday usage. PicPick is definitely a better choice if what you need is just a simple image editor. With PicPick you can easily perform simple photo editing tasks, including brightness, contrast and color adjustment, grayscale, blur, pixelate and other special effects.

Screen capture

But PicPick isn't just an image editor: it's also a full-featured screen capturing tool with which you can capture the image on your monitor in several ways: full screen, active window, user-defined area and more. Plus, PicPick can work with several documents simultaneously and captures can be triggered with customizable keyboard shortcuts, which makes it even handier.

Other tools

PicPick has a selection of othet tools that you're not going to need every day, but when you do find yourself with a need to, say, pick a specific color on your screen, magnify something, or use a virtual whiteboard to "draw" on your screen. There are 7 of these tools, and although quite niche, they're a nice touch.

PicPick is a lightweight yet full-featured image editor and capturer, perfect for simple daily image editing tasks.

Download PicPick 3.2.4 in Softonic

Viewing

While the viewing functionality is a no-brainer, FastStone Image Viewer comes with a range of methods with which to browse pics. First off, there is the standard file browser that displays thumbnails of your images with a preview window for the file that is currently selected. FastStone Image Viewer also offers an option to check out individual pictures in full-screen. When you're in fullscreen, remember, you'll also have access to the full range of FastStone Image Viewer tools.

Editing

However, FastStone Image Viewer goes beyond simply displaying images. You can perform quick edits to really bring out the best in your pics, such as adding a stylish frame that acts as a mask to reduce the sharp edges or, if you happen to be working with 3D, FastStone Image Viewer also offers a very effective bump map option that will serve you well for texturing. There are of course the standard tools of brightness/darkness adjustment, sharpness/blur, grayscale, red-eye removal and more.

Batch tools

Further great features come in the form of batch rename and convert options. These could prove invaluable to many web developers looking for a quick way to prepare their PSD files for the web. With the inclusion of these batch functions, it would have been good has FastStone Image Viewer pushed the boat out even further with an option to apply batch effects, for example to brighten up a group of photos that were taken in a dark space but alas, it's not there!

Looking for faults with FastStone Image Viewer is like looking for the corner of a circle, although if you insist on nitpicking, you can say that in the thumbnail browser view dragging and dropping should be possible for moving files. However when you realize that it is possible to drag and drop with the left nav bar that argument looses its legs.

There's healthy competition in the image viewer arena, but thanks to the innovative features of FastStone Image Viewer the bar has been raised to new heights.

Download FastStone Image Viewer 4.8 in Softonic

Professional and mid-range photo cameras offer support for RAW format, a kind of digital negative that lets you tweak the images with great control and flexibility in order to obtain the perfect result before saving it to JPG. And now with Adobe Camera Raw you can work on RAW images directly in Photoshop.

Adobe Camera Raw is a Photoshop plug-in that launches automatically every time you open a RAW file in Photoshop. It enables you to work on the original image with plenty of tools, all conveniently organized in several tabs: basic adjustments, tone curve, grayscales, split toning, lens corrections, camera calibration and more.

While using Adobe Camera Raw, you'll be able to see the results of your adjustments in real time in the preview pane, and also take several snapshots along the editing process, and save custom presets for later use.

Adobe Camera Raw is very easy to install. Simply unzip the archive and copy the 8bi file into the Program Files/Common Files/Adobe/Plug-Ins/CS4/File Formats folder. The only con is that it's only compatible with Photoshop CS4.

Adobe Camera Raw is a handy plug-in that lets you view and edit RAW images in Adobe Photoshop.

Download Adobe Camera Raw 7.4 in Softonic

What is Lightroom?

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.

The new interface

This latest version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom looks great. It's divided into seven sections - Library, Develop, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print and Web- which let you easily flit between different stages of management, processing and presentation. There's also some awesomely configurable options, running from how the app looks to how it acts, before and after processing. There's only one thing - the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom interface is vast, and to get the most from it, you'll need a large screen.

Photo management

The upside to using a dedicated photo processing app is the ease with which Adobe Photoshop Lightroom allows you to see, categorize and manage your photos. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is no exception, with a great import features and options, and, new to this version, location-based organization. You'll find the tools to manage this function under Map.

Photo processing

In version 4 of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe's self-stated aim has been to "extract more detail from highlights and shadows, make a wider range of targeted adjustments, and easily share your images and video clips on social media and photo sharing sites". It certainly provides some interesting options to do this, including highlight and shadow recovery, white balance features and local noise/moire tools. This is in addition to all the usual editing tools, which are present and easy to apply.

Presentation options

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom really excels when it comes to presenting your photos and passing them on. You can email directly from this new version, as well as sharing with a variety of social networks and photo sharing sites. The Book feature is also new, allowing you to create a variety of beautiful photo books from templates. This complements Adobe Photoshop Lightroom's Slideshow option, giving you even more scope for creating en eye-catching and imaginative end product.

Video management

In this version, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom really ramps up video support, further increasing its versatility. This means that you can make even more complex edits to video clips, as well as easier video publishing.

Conclusion

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 is an exceedingly promising piece of software. It can look complicated - and even overcrowded - on first glance, but once you become more familiar with app, you'll see everything adds up to offering you one of the most comprehensive photo processing apps around.

Download Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.4 in Softonic

Aviary Photo Editor is a straight forward and concise graphics editor for Windows 8. It doesn’t have the level of effects and customization as Photoshop or GIMP, but is intuitive enough for novice users. Aviary Photo Editor is powerful for a free app and will be a practical, no frills addition to your library.

Features

Aviary Photo Editor contains several staple features found in most image software. You can change a picture’s orientation, crop, or adjust contrast and brightness. Aviary Photo Editor has filters and effects to uniformly change hue or create lighting. These filters can be applied multiple times, further magnifying the intensity. Overuse of Aviary Photo Editor’s filters will quickly make pictures appear surreal or haunting.

There is a sticker option to add rasterized images such as hats, ties, and arrows. However, all of these stickers are so blatantly cartoonish that they contrast any photo, regardless of filtering. Aviary Photo Editor contains text and drawing tools, but the lack of feathering and limited color palate will generally result in unbelievable images.

Finally, Aviary Photo Editor has tools to remove red-eye, whiten teeth, and add blemishes. These tools have rather large diameters, making it difficult to precisely edit on smaller images. Aviary Photo Editor is better for fast and simple jobs rather than detailed projects.

Usability

Aviary Photo Editor’s layout is unusual for a photo editor. The image you’re editing in placed in the middle of the screen with the utility bar underneath. The most obvious omission is a lack of zoom or scrolling an image. This makes it very difficult to properly edit small images, or apply detailed editing to larger ones. Aviary Photo Editor's drawing tools only have six sizes, with the smallest size generally being too big for most jobs.

Aviary Photo Editor’s strong point comes from it other tools such as crop and sliders. The crop tool is separated into a three by three grid, making it easy to see just what will be included and cut. If you don’t wish to draw out an area you can also quickly select a preset dimension.

Brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness are all controlled by large sliders. Using these will offer a preview of the applicable adjustment. It’s very easy to back out and cancel any changes you’re not happy with. You don’t need to save or name any images as each job is saved automatically.

Quality

Aviary Photo Editor’s appearance matches other Windows 8 Modern UI apps. Large rectangular icons are presented against a dark gray background. As more edits are saved they will appear in a grid on the right. You can scroll through this to easily compare images or find what you’re looking for. The quality of finished images depends on the original image. Even without any save settings images are compressed into small size PNG files.

Conclusion

Aviary Photo Editor is a good editing tool for novice users that want to edit quickly. It lacks the detailed precision of other photo software, making it unsuitable for complex projects. If you want to simply crop, adjust levels, or change orientation and want good compression Aviary Photo Editor will prove to be a handy app.

Download Aviary Photo Editor 1.0 in Softonic

1. Key frame animation, easy to use 2. 3000+ Symbols and import SVG 3. 60+ Professional Project templates 4. 60+ Additional TrueType fonts 5. 80+ Object Style 6. One click to apply animated effects(10+) 7. One click to add 3D object(200+ templates) 8. Export Animation to HD or SD Movie, SWF(Windows), GIF animation or Image Sequence as you like

When video editing or designing web pages, do you need to transform your text to a cool 3D animation that highlights your content? Or do you need to create a logo or watermark in the movie?

Download Aurora 3D Animation Maker 13.04.18 in Softonic

GIMP has been around for over two decades and development has been stable over the years. The newest update for GIMP gives a slew of new features and a glimpse into the future for this incredible open source image editor.

Features

All the features of GIMP are still present. You can create your own images with tools for airbrushing, penciling, cloning, and creating gradients. Power users can create their own brushes and patterns to use later. GIMP also allows users to manipulate images imported into the program. You can crop, add text, resize, and create nested layers. There is even a way to animate your creations.

New additions

GIMP has now been updated with many user interface tweaks to make the application accessible to newbies. The biggest interface addition is the ability to edit in a single-window. GIMP versions of the past drew criticism for their confusing interfaces, but the developers are addressing many of these issues in this newest version. While single-window mode is great, it is also disappointing that there is no way to view multiple projects side by side.

Other updated features include easier text editing, nested layer groups, and a shift to using the Generic Graphics Library (GEGL), which is a more sophisticated image processing framework. GEGL was introduced a couple of years back in a developer version and has now made its way into the sable, consumer version. GIMP developers hope to move entirely to GEGL by version 2.10. One of the major advantages of GIMP using GEGL is the ability for non-destructive editing and high bit-depth images.

GIMP now only saves to its own XCF format to retain layers and other file manipulation information. Users can still choose to save in formats like JPEG and PNG but will have to "export" the project instead of saving. This follows in the footsteps of Adobe Photoshop.

The latest GIMP is better than ever. Its developers are taking the user experience into serious consideration and are speeding up development for this already great photo editor.

Download GIMP 2.8.4 in Softonic

A majority of people won't need the power of Photoshop to edit a few photos. Apps like Fotor give users a great way to perform simple edits to photos. Like most photo editing apps these days, Fotor includes a bunch of retro filters, a tilt-shift option, and the ability to add text.

Basic options like brightness, contrast, temperature, and sharpen are all there and controllable by touch-friendly sliders. Fotor adds a 1-Tap Enhance feature to make things even simpler. The entire interface is touch friendly but its home screen is unnecessarily complicated.

Filters look good and performing edits are a breeze. After you're done with your edits, you can save the photo to your drive but there's no ability to share to social networks, which is very disappointing.

Overall, Fotor is a solid photo editing application for basic filters and touch-ups.

Download Fotor 1.3.2.0 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

Adobe Creative Suite 2 is a suite of photo and web applications that originally debuted back in 2005.

The apps included in Adobe Creative Suite 2 are as follows:

• Adobe Creative Suite CS2 (Standard)
  
• Acrobat 3D 1.0 (Windows)
  
• Acrobat 7.0 Standard
  
• Acrobat Pro 8.0
  
• Audition 3.0
  
• GoLive CS2
  
• Illustrator CS2
  
• InCopy CS2
  
• InDesign CS2
  
• Photoshop CS2
  
• Photoshop Elements 4.0/5.0
  
• Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0

This is a lot of applications for a suite but is very useful for graphic and web designers. Adobe's most current version of its Creative Suite is currently on its 6th generation, offering tons of upgrades from Adobe Creative Suite 2. Still, legacy users will be glad to know that the software installs fine on modern operating systems like Windows 7 and 8 by installing the software in Compatibility mode.

Photoshop is still plenty useful for Adobe Creative Suite 2 users, offering tools for basic image editing. Users who are looking for a free, modern alternative to Photoshop will want to try out GIMP instead.

Adobe Acrobat Pro 8.0 is very outdated as well. The most current version is Adobe Acrobat Pro XI. Users who want a simple PDF viewer can download Adobe Reader XI or Foxit Reader.

It's nice to see that Adobe is allowing users to continue to use Adobe Creative Suite 2 but there are more modern and free applications that may serve you better.

Download Adobe Creative Suite 2 Standard (CS2) in Softonic

Full of features

Photoscape includes just about everything you need to view, optimize, edit, print and have fun with your photos. In fact, it's so complete that many would call it a free Photoshop alternative. Sure, it's not quite up to the level of Photoshop, but it's truly a great alternative to Adobe's big shot - and it makes photo editing a lot more fun!

Easy to use

From the program's main window you can choose what you want to do: view pictures, optimize those that didn't come out so well, print several photos on a single page collage-style or perhaps add any of the dozens of filters and special effects included in the program.

Smart interface

One of the first striking elements in Photoscape is its uncommon interface design. The application is very striking and in many ways it's easier on the eye than Photoshop.

Conclusion

There's really nothing negative to say about Photoscape. Just download it, test it, love it and keep it forever. It's free!

Download Photoscape 3.6.3 in Softonic

Software features include: • Complete Realtime 3D Editor • Light Angle and Direction Customization • Integrated controls for Scale, Position, Rotation, Brightness • Animated and Friendly User Interface • Ability to Add Objects of Different Types • Full Screen Support for Monitor Resolution Rendering [More than the Standard 1028x768 Pixels Resolution per Render] • High Quality Rendering – Mip-Mapping is Disabled inside Cover Motion™ to maintain the quality of the render with no artifacts and no blurriness. • Ability to Add Unlimited Objects • All Objects have Unique Properties

• High Resolution Texture Templates • Optimized textures inside the software for best performance • Masks Custom Masks Support / Filters Custom Filters Support • Completely Customizable Background Custom Background Image Support • Anti Alliasing / Multi-Sampling Support • Adaptive Object Focus – Position can be changed even with Focus Turned [ON] • Complete and free standard Photoshop Templates [Only for Complex Models]

Complete Beginners and even Professional Users. No matter the age or experience, Cover Motion™ is designed for efortless complex results.

Download Cover Motion™ 1 in Softonic

XnView Portable features the same design and tools as older brother XnView, which makes it a really convenient photo editor that can be carried with you anywhere. It has support for a few hundred graphic formats as well as other media files, such as AVI and MP3.

The interface in XnView Portable is divided into two sections: the left pane shows the folder structure, while the right one is where the contents of the selected folder are displayed. A double click on any image is enough to open it in full screen and work on it with the program's own tools. XnView Portable is obviously no Photoshop, but you'll be able to do some cropping and resizing, adjust brightness, correct red eyes and other basic editing and retouching tasks.

If XnView is your favorite image viewer, you can now take it anywhere with you thanks to XnView Portable.

Download XnView Portable 1.99.6 in Softonic