Half of the fun of shooting digital pictures is to edit the photo using software to get the best result you want. There are many good software programs from simple to advanced that can help any amateur photographer for free. Here are my top choices for no cost software photo editors, based on the type of changes you might want to use.

Ifranview - Best known for viewing but also has editing capabilities.

Extremely easy to learn and use for basic editing like cropping, color adjustments, special effects, and file formats. It was first published in 1995 and if you just want to crop and rotate, change the file type, or adjust the color balance of a picture, this is a good tool. Extremely simple but and easy to learn than more complicated image editors. It is small, fast on any computer, and also has a great slide viewer too.

Photoscape - Extensive capabilities and small learning curve

If you need pixel editing features and other advanced editing tasks, Photoscape is a great choice. With tons of different features and also quick to learn. Photoscape has different modules for various editing tasks that include a viewer, editor, batch processor, converter, print layout tool, screen capture, combining photos and even a search function using face recognition. This is an excellent photo editor for children and beginners.

GIMP - Steep learning curve but very high-end features

For amateurs who need some serious editing photos power, GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a raster graphics editor, provides very sophisticated features. Like the commercial software Adobe Photoshop, you can perform many tasks with sophisticated editing in GIMP. In development since 1995, this software is available on virtually any platform, including Mac OS. The features are extensive which means that there is somewhat of a stiff learning curve too. But for dedicated amateurs, it is an excellent choice and can provide many of the same abilities of popular and expensive commercial software for photo editing. But there are a ton of tutorials and forums that can help get a new user up to speed quickly.

Picasa - Google's Photo Editor and Also A Online Sharing Version

If you want to both edit and share your photos online, Google has an online application called Picasa that can do both. One of Google's new applications created in recent years, Picasa has many features and is very easy to learn and use. You can edit your pictures, then organize them into web albums and share them with friends and family online with Picasa Web Albums application. It also gives you a great way to safeguard important photos just in case your home computer loses your original copies. You can also order prints and even elements with printed pictures for gifts.

All the above software has the basics and can provide the novice with a free solution for digital photo editing. You can find their website by searching by name in Google (too many links to put in the article). All the software has great support and it is fairly easy to find answers to questions online. Some offer tutorials, some did not even need tutorials since they are so easy to learn and use.

With the holiday season fast approaching, it is time to grab the digital camera and start taking photos. Even if you don't always get the perfect shot, you can go and make changes or improvements using one of these free photo software editors.