Recommendations for free, decent image editing software?

Title pretty much says it all. I am looking for some free (legitimately and legally free) image editing software that is fairly decent. I do not need any super tools but frankly Windows Paint program is driving me nuts.

Thanks.

The GIMP is probably the most powerful freeware program, though last I heard the user interface wasn’t that great. It’s open-source though, so it may have changed a lot in the two years between then and now. That’s the Wikipedia article I linked to, it’s got a bunch of helpful stuff at the bottom.

The GIMP is kind of like the freeware answer to Photoshop. If you just want to do some basic photo editing there is Picasa, made by Google and some other company. I believe it also helps you sort your pictures.

Aside from an unusual arrangement for the menus, I haven’t found anything weird about GIMP’s interface. All in all, the GIMP is a lot like Photoshop 3.0, which means not half bad at all for photo editing, especially for free.

I have the GIMP program but I’m not able to do much with it. I don’t know anything about layers and the like, so I haven’t been able to use a lot of the features.

The GIMP takes some getting used to, but I used it with much success in the recent past (designing a lot of wedding invitation inserts myself). If you have any experience with photoshop, the GIMP only takes minor adjustments.

Paint.Net!

You’ll need the .Net framework for this to work, though.

I second the Paint.NET recommendation. Powerful and easier to use than the GIMP.