How do I add text and shapes to a jpg picture?

Factual Questions
1

O.K., I know this sounds like a dumb question. But I have some jpgs that I want to add some text and shapes (lines, etc.) to.

My home PC system has following programs:

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer
Microsoft Office Picture Manager
Paint
Microsoft Word

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is just a viewer. Microsoft Office Picture Manager allows me to crop, change contrast, compress, etc., but it doesn’t allow me to add shapes or text. In Paint I can add text and shapes, but I don’t like it; once I add a line, for example, there’s no way to modify it (lengthen, change angle, etc.). At least there doesn’t appear to be.

Now I guess I can insert my pictures into Microsoft Word and add text and lines to a pic, and then group them together. But I want to save the pic as a jpg, not as a Word document. I even tried copying and pasting a pic from Microsoft Word into Paint, and then saving as a jpg. But it appeared to add a lot of white space and it screwed up the size.

Isn’t there a simple program wherein I can add text and shapes to a jpg??

2

There are many such packages. Paintshop Pro is the one I use to do it, but it is not free, and may be a bit overly complicated for simple editing.

Perhaps someone will come along with some alternatives.

3

I believe there’s a time-limited shareware version of PaintShop Pro out there.

Also, you could add the lines and letters in MS Word, then take a screenshot, paste it into MS Paint, and crop the image of the window down to the original size of the JPG.

4

Is this something you want to do on a regular basis, or just a “one off”? If you want to do this regularly, you need some sort of graphics editing software. There are hundreds out there, with prices from $10 to $1000, depending on the capability and currency of the release. I’ll second the recommendation of PaintShop Pro, and you may be able to find an older release for very little money.

If you only have a one-time need to do this, you can download “demo” versions of software that will do what you need, but that has a limited working time (say 10 to 30 days). You can even download evaluation copies of Adobe Photoshop, one of the most expensive and powerful packages on the market.

5

Or there’s always The GIMP, a free image manipulation program that actually has quite a powerful set of tools. Apparently the interface takes a bit of getting used to, but i know plenty of people use it instead of costly programs like PaintshopPro and Photoshop.

6

I used to use Paintshop Pro - it’s fairly powerful, yet basic enough to run on low-end machines and not require a 6 credit course to save your work. Dunno where to get it though.

If I need anything more, I go with the gimp (um… like mhendo on preview). It’s very full-featured, and free! Download Win32 version here.

7

Wow, thanks for the replies! I’ll check out Gimp.

8

You might also like Paint.NET . It’s a freeware app produced by Washington State University with Microsoft’s approval and assistance.

It’s designed to be a replacement for MSPaint (and thus, has a very similar interface), but it’s far more powerful. It does layers, has unlimited history (so you can can go back 1-1000 or more steps) and has support for plug-ins. One thing it does that Photoshop doesn’t even do - if you move a Paint.NET window over the image, it becomes transparent. I like that!

I like to recommend it over the Gimp, 'cos it’s a lot easier get started (trust me, the others aren’t kidding when they say the Gimp takes some getting used to).

9

PhotoFiltre is another good, free image editor.