Foo - Light Photo Editing Software needed ASAP (and free)

Here's the thing, I rescued hundreds of pics from my Mom's attic and I'm scanning/digitalizing now. But all I got is MS Paint. I'm scanning at max dpi and can't even cut/crop the pics.

Any recommendations?

Here's the thing, I rescued hundreds of pics from my Mom's attic and I'm scanning/digitalizing now. But all I got is MS Paint. I'm scanning at max dpi and can't even cut/crop the pics.

Any recommendations?

photoshop has a trial period...

Gimp is free. I'm sure there are other free/cheap scanning applications out there, as well. In fact, I bet your scanner came with some kind of software.

free photobucket account--you can edit your pix right in photobucket including
cropping, adjusting contrast, hue, other wacky stuff. Basically everything that
you might need unless you are into some serious photoshop shiz.

Downside of the online tools is that if you're scanning at Ultra-Mega Resolution, it's going to take a long-ol' time to upload them in the first place, and that's if the service even accepts files as large as you need. I think Photobucket limits to a few megs unless you pay.

+1 on The GIMP http://www.gimp.org/. It's powerful and free. Expandable with tons of scripts and brushes.

You might find this script package handy http://gimp-tutorials.net/FX-Foundry
Of course Gimp-Tutorials.Net is a good place to start along with deviant art.

ACDSee's free and lighter sister program

Faststone Image Viewer, it has batch convert, rename, resize, crop, etc.
http://www.faststone.org/
http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDownload.htm

seriously easy to use, even mac users won't get confused.

I had issues with Faststone hanging really badly whenever I tried to do batch operations.

Irfanview has been the best batch photo editor I've used so far. Lightweight and fast. The interface and menus can take a little getting used to, and it's not usually my first choice for editing photos one at a time, but for batches of photo's it's excellent.

http://www.irfanview.com/

+1 on The GIMP http://www.gimp.org/. It's powerful and free. Expandable with tons of scripts and brushes.

You might find this script package handy http://gimp-tutorials.net/FX-Foundry
Of course Gimp-Tutorials.Net is a good place to start along with deviant art.
Gimp will give you almost everything you would get in Photoshop free, but it has a learning curve. If you want something free on your desktop that can do all the basic edits but is relatively simple try Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/) or even MS's Paint.net (http://www.getpaint.net/). They are both pretty nice.

THX guys... I'm trying your suggestions to see which one me likes the most... I'm also gonna need to learn a lot about photo editing, retouching and stuff. Some old pics are really hard to scan, specially the ones with glossy finish.

Google Picasa... it can do lots of simple edits... it's easy to use and free...

photofiltre - free - easy - light - nice !

I had issues with Faststone hanging really badly whenever I tried to do batch operations.

Irfanview has been the best batch photo editor I've used so far. Lightweight and fast. The interface and menus can take a little getting used to, and it's not usually my first choice for editing photos one at a time, but for batches of photo's it's excellent.

http://www.irfanview.com/

+1 it can interface with a TWAIN acquistion device (scanner), do basic photo manipulation, crop, resize, convert formats, create panoramas, break apart animated GIFs, and batch processing is excellent.
And it's FREE.

You want Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/)from google. It's free. It'll manage your folders of photos, import photos, send email attachments, or upload to a web photo service.

You can do basic edits with a very short learning curve. It'll crop, fix color, brighten, straighten, etc. It won't do complex edits like Gimp, but that needs a lot of practice to use effectively.

Here's the thing, I rescued hundreds of pics from my Mom's attic and I'm scanning/digitalizing now. But all I got is MS Paint. I'm scanning at max dpi and can't even cut/crop the pics.

Any recommendations?

Free, Can do anything you need.

http://www.getpaint.net/

Another nod for the Gimp

I have actually had pretty good luck photographing old photos with a digital camera - a tripod helps. The clone tool is worth learning if you have a lot of scratches and dust marks to remove. You used to need Photoshop or Gimp to find a clone tool but they have one in Paint.net and may in some of the other free software.

Since others plugged the GIMP (which I highly recommend) I'll mention an alternative especially for slower PCS: irfanview is a very lightweight editor, which can do a lot of basic retouching.

Picasa


http://picasa.google.com/