Free photo editors.

[Grounded]

Can anyone recommend a good one that is not to difficult to use, I have Paint shop pro7, which is very good, but unfortunatly it destroys the exif. At the moment I am toying with photoscape, but am not impressed with it, especially with the clone tool. I await your reply's with bated breath.

[wardy]

Picasa a good free one give a basic amount of editing. Also I have hear GIMP is supposed to be quite good but not as easy to use as picasa.

[VTphotog]

PSP is a pretty comprehensive photo editor and has a pretty good user interface. I have used an earlier version and liked it, as it did nearly everything Photoimpact does. If the only complaint you have with it is the loss of Exif data, you might want to try using Exifer, a free program which can copy and restore the Exif for just such cases.
Irfanview can become a pretty good image editor, using plugins which are compatible with photoshop, and it is kept fairly up to date for Raw files, though the newest cameras may not be supported yet.
You can try looking through the site at http://www.photo-freeware.net/category-downloads.php for many free editors and utilities. Keep in mind that a lot of freeware programs use adware and toolbars to support their development, so you have to watch the installation process and opt out of these if you don't want them cluttering up your computer.

brian

[wave01]

free editors GIMP very powerful and has photoshop feel but not as refined but lots of tutorials on youtube. picasa not as powerful but easy to use. for a small out lay photoshop elements gets my vote

[Mito]

Raw Thrapee and Free Photo Viewer are two I use. Both will open RAW and JPEG files. Raw Therapee is quite sophisticated and Free Photo is more basic. Try them, you can always delete them if they are not to your liking.

[donp]

I like Faststone Image Viewer for basic things.

[Hawgwild]

I'm with Wave01, on the Photoshop Elements recommendation. I have been using PSE4 since I bought it in 2006, and it is still a contender. It retains your exif also. I can only imagine the improvements in PSE10, over my version!

I think you can get the latest version for around $100 US, and the previous versions, like 9 and 10, for even less. Amazon is a good place to shop for earlier versions.

At Amazon

[wave01]

if you get elements then go for 9 or above as it includes the layer mask option

[pboerger]

PixBuilder Studio is amazing for a free program.

[SIMON40]

The "freebies" on my system are- Photoscape,Gimp 2 and Raw Therapee.
All very useful in their own right and all have their strengths,which is why I use all of them in tandem with my Photoshop CS.