Picasa

This free software from Google labs is one of the best free photo management and light photo editting software out there. I can genuinely say that this software is the lightest to run, by lightest I mean you don’t need a high end computer to run it.

Picasa is great for quick editting of a lot of images, especially with its ability to temporary collect images to be exported or printed. Even better, it handles RAW format from popular camera models.

The only drawback is that it doesn’t seem to be able to save a file in full quality, the only thing you can do is save the file as a high quality JPG; which should be enough for normal snapshots.

Get picasa from http://picasa.google.com/

GIMP

GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program is a truly free advanced image editting software. It supports various formats including Photoshop’s PSD to some degree. I said to some degree since some of the advanced layering and other Photoshop specific enhancement might not show up.

With this GIMP, almost every basic photo retouching that can be done with Photoshop can be done here; such as level, curve, color tone, etc. The other great thing about this software is its portability. Because this is an open source software, it is available in every popular computer platform: Windows, Mac and Linux.

There are also a whole bunch of free plugins available in the internet. With the correct plugin, even RAW formats can be opened and processed.

The only gripe that I have about this software is its illogical commands. Maybe its illogical for me since I have been using Photoshop for years. Nevertheless, if you want advanced functionalities at no cost, GIMP is your answer.

Get GIMP from: http://www.gimp.org/

Paint .NET

This little software is an interesting quality piece of work, which hasn’t been promoted much (I heard about this from a computer magazine long time ago, after that I have never seen it published). It runs very fast even in older machines and it renders well. What I like very much from this software is its clean interface and simple menu structure, making it easy to find the required commands.

The functionalities that it provides are just enough for photo post-processing. Namely, you have your level, brightness/contrast, saturation, etc. Paint .NET by no means is a replacement for Photoshop or GIMP. This tool should be used by occational shooter which does not require RAW processing capabilities or advanced functionalities.

We can think of this software as the free alternative to Photoshop Element.

Get Paint.NET from: http://www.getpaint.net/

iPhoto

Now, if you’re a Mac user, with Tiger or Leopard at least, you’ll get this great quality photo management and editting software called iPhoto. You’ll get this for free with a new Mac but you’ll need to pay if there’s another update in the future.

I always look at this software as the Mac Version of Picasa. They are very much alike except that iPhoto 08 has the nifty feature of grouping imported photo into events automatically.

The editting functionality of iPhoto is a little bit more advanced than Picasa with its ability to modify and fine tune levels, exposure and shadows.

The ones with some cost

Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI or X2

If you want some serious photo editting features at low-cost (about AUD$130.00), coupled with beginner friendly terminologies then this is your choice. Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI made it so easy for the user to apply different effects such as borders to a photo.

For example: emulating a worn-out sephia picture would have taken a few steps in Photoshop while in Paint Shop Pro it would have taken a maximum of 2 steps (click on the menu and effect settings).

This software also reads RAW format and processes it faithfully to the original. The drawback of the RAW processing is the lack of fine tuning.

Having said that, for advanced photo editting, I would recommend this. The only reason I haven’t use this much these days is because I’m now on a Mac and this Paint Shop Pro is only available in Windows.

Checkout Corel here.

Adobe Lightroom

Now we’re getting to a more expensive tool. This is however the lowest you can get for a decent batch RAW processing software. If you have a huge amount of RAW files to process, then this tool is for you. This software is amazingly efficient at cataloging large amount of files.

The workflow is easy to understand and the RAW processing and tuning is very well made.

There is another lowe-cost alternative software called Apple Aperture that does similar things. However its processing feels less efficient than that of Lightroom

Adobe Photoshop CS3 or CS4

Okay, some of you might think “…I thought we are talking about low-cost alternatives…Photoshop is…”

But if you have important projects needed to be done in a short time and in high quality manner, then investing in such program is a good idea; especially if your projects would pay off the cost. (…or if you can find a supplier that can give you a bargain price…)

Anyway, you just can’t skip Photoshop when recommending photo editting software because of its well known quality and industry standard.

One last alternative to consider is Photoshop Element, it is the cut-down version of the famous Photoshop. If you don’t need all of the advanced Photoshop functionalities, then you might consider trying Photoshop element.

Both products, Photoshop and Photoshop elements have trial versions in their website.