Free Photo Editors

These free photo editors are also simple to use plus they each have some distinguishing

features.

Why Use Free?

All are powerful image tools that provide a full range of editing features.

All are simple to learn and have good help. One has look and feel of basic Photoshop so if

you want to learn Photoshop this tool provides free and fast lessons.

Another combines an image browser with novel editing features.

A third provide speed and some simple macros.

Essential/Basic Photo Edits Image Transformations – Rotate, Crop,

Resize Image Color Adjustments:

Levels – for overall under/over exposure Curves – for adjusting brightness, contrastHue- for correcting color over tintsSaturation – for increasing color punchBlack+White – changing from color to BW

Sharpness for correcting photo jitter/blur Smoothing/blur for correcting noise Clone tool for image touch-ups

“Extra” Image Edit Features

Selections or masking to apply basic edits to select portions of an image.

Brushes to apply painterly touches to an image. Text to provide captions, on image comments Layering to provide two fundamental capabilities:

1)over-lapped single image blending ;2)multiple image compositing.

ALL 4 Free Photo Editors provide All Basic Features

4 Free Photo Editors

Fastone Image Viewer – an image browser with basic editing features

ArtWeaver – provides a Photoshop cloned interface with nearly identical look and feel for basic photo editing.

Paint.net – has fast editing + extra features. Photo Filtre - provides image browsing plus

novel extra editing commands.

ArtWeaver 1

Artweaver is a free Photoshop Clone

It has all the Essential Photo Edit functions Better: they follow the layout of Photoshop interface

closely -so you learn Photoshop as you learn Artweaver

Better: Artweaver has a powerful Brush creation tool which allows creating a wide range of drawing brushes. This is a real strength for artists committed to drawing.

Best: Artweaver provides selection/masking tools and powerful layer options

Masks and Layers in Artweaver

Masks and Layering II

Masks allow users to direct exactly where edits will be applied by drawing the mask or selected area region of the image

One downside is that its very tedious to Refine Edges like in full Photoshop

Layering allows wonderful photo ef fects to be applied to an image – Orton, Sabatier, Color touches, etc

Artweaver lacks the powerful blend effects available in Photoshop

PhotoScape

Photoscape Virtues/Foibles

Photoscape is the Swiss Army Knife of photo-editors● It has all basic edit features but no masks nor

layers● It has a handy Gif-animation editor ● It has a savvy Page layout tool for images● It has a second Page layout tool for images in

which the images are not cropped to fit● It has an image viewer, batch editing, a great color

picker, a versatile screen capture tool, etc, etc

Photoscape Page Layout Tool

Photo Filtre

PhotoFiltre has Artistic Flair

PhotoFiltre supports all the basic photo edits● It provides masking for selective edits to

images● It does not have layering● But the selection of drawing tools is rich● There is a wealth of artistic tools and filters● And PhotoFiltre has nifty tools like batch

processing, frame creation, Mosaic styling, etc

Summary of Free Photo Editors

● All of these photo editors are free downloads● Artweaver has a Pro edition that adds significant

control of the interface plus Adobe plugin support● Having used online photo editors like SumoPaint

and Splash, our free editors are typically faster – especially loading and saving large image files

● Having used mobile photo editors like Pixlr, Picsay, and Photo.lab, our free editors have better speed, image size, and broader features. But the mobiles have touch ease of use and specialize in nifty effects