I use Microsoft Office Picture Manager. It is part of the Microsoft Office package.

You can resize and edit if you sign up for the free Photobucket, too.

Here is a link that might be useful: Photobucket

I really like Google's Picasa. It has most of the common photo editing options that are easy to use. It automatically saves a backup of your original and a list of all the changes you made so you can always undo changes step by step, or revert back to the original.

It also organizes all your photos and lets you e-mail them, send to a blog, etc. from within the program. It handles keywords, captions, and facial recognition for organizing photos.

Plus, you can upload to their free web albums from inside the program as well. I like the web albums better than Photobucket because it seems to load a lot faster and there is less junk on the screen.

For more advanced photo editing I use Corel Photo-paint (not free) which is like Adobe Photoshop. I find myself using it less and less though because Picasa can do so much and is just faster and easier.

Wow, Picasa sound great! Do you store your photos there? I was talking to someone much younger than me and they store all their photos on-line. I guess it's a function of my age but storing them on-line scares me.
-Elisabeth

Molanic, where are your photos stored when you are using Picasa? Have you read their privacy policy or their terms of use? I think that some photo-hosting websites reserve the right to use your photos. For example, the Terms of Use in Photobucket says "By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the Photobucket Services, you hereby grant to Photobucket and other users a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content".

I agree with Bananas - I want my photos on MY hard drive, with a 2nd copy backed up on the external hard drive, and am diligent about saving originals and backing up the photos (after a hard drive failure).

For picture editing, I use an older copy of a program called EZ-pix, by Xequete, which gives me basic editing - rotating, sizing, cropping, etc. And it has some simple color editing, as well a feature to sharpen the image.

You might try this:
http://photofiltre.free.fr/frames_en.htm

or this:

http://www.gimp.org/

Both get excellent reviews--I'm going to download the latter and see if it makes me happy!

Anna

I use MGI PhotoSuite III SE. Quick and simple enough for me.

hey kid

I use Microsoft Photo Editor from the office 2000 suite. If you have any MS Office product, check to see if it has a photo editing program, it may have not installed on your system automatically. It does exactly what you want, sizing and contrast/brightness/gamma tweaks.

MS Paint will resize but doesn't tweak colors.

With Picasa the photos are not online unless you put them online. The program you download scans your computer in folders you designate and it indexes them, it doesn't move the files.

You edit all the photos on your computer. You have the option to create an online web album account and send any photos you want to it. You can use the web albums without the program or the program without the web albums. It just is an easy option if you want to use both because they are designed to be easily integrated. They regularly update the program to integrate with new things. You can send them to a printing service, blogs, Facebook (I think)... even my Grandma's digital Ceiva picture frame.

I have all my pictures on my computer and backed up to an external hard drive (there is a backup option in Picasa also). Then I just pick which photos I want to put online within the program and click upload to web album. Each web album can have different privacy settings: private with login required to view, viewable only with a direct link you give to people, or viewable to anyone from your main gallery. I actually have two web album accounts. One for family photos and one for my garden pictures. I can login/out from the program before I upload to my web albums so they go to the right one.

Then there is also a setting if you want your public albums to show up in searches. You can set copyright info for the pictures and embed watermarks if you want to go that far too.

I guess it would be easier if I put a link to it :) I would recommend reading the faq before installing. I had a family member install it without doing so. When it started scanning for all the pictures on her computer to index them and add to the Picasa program database on her computer, she started freaking out and thought they were all "online!".

No I don't work for Google, I just really like it :) My only major gripe is that the web albums don't allow for sub-albums. If it did I might use private albums to backup all my photos and pay for extra storage space. You get 1GB free for web albums, but it is only $5 a year for another 20GB.

Here is a link that might be useful: Picasa

I'v e ran Paint Shop Pro since wwwaaayyy bbbaaaccckkk when Corel released it years ago, and never looked back. It will do anything, and way more than I'll ever need. I haven't even bothered to get the new versions of it for about 5 years because I don't need anymore bells and whistles for it.

I have several others loaded on my computer, but I never use them anymore.

Free? Isn't all software free? LOL

Larry

As a semi professional freelance photographer I have a couple dozen photo editing programs at my disposal ranging from some free downloads to pro programs that cost me well over $500 but I find the one that I use most often is a free download from Google called "Photoscape".

Photoscape offers all the basics, editing, cropping, red eye reduction, rotating, color balance, contrast and sharpness control, lightening, darkening and a long long list of other features yet it remains without question the easiest most user friendly program it has ever been my pleasure to operate.

If you like Picassa I promise you will fall in love with Photoscape.

So, Google offers two photo editing programs? That's kinda weird, isn't it?

This is turning out to be a very informative and interesting thread! Thanks ya'll for responding.

"Isn't all software free?" You are too funny, Larry! So far, I have downloaded Picasa 3 (Google) and am working with it. Will also take a look at Google's Photoscape.
Thanks for all the advice, and I'll keep checking back in case there are more suggestions.

Larry, finally got photos of my Erinnyis obscura larvae, and will post as soon as I can. They have all pupated, and will get a photo of those, too. They are very nice looking pupae - a rich brown, with orange striping. Wish I had furniture that looked like that, LOL!

Gotta go feed my Argiope aurantis. She loves grasshoppers!

Susan