An obvious advantage to digital photos over their film counterparts is that they can be altered in a computer after you shoot them. To do that, you need a photo editing program. Commercial programs in that vein include Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and PhotoImpact. For photographers with a tight budget, though, there are free alternatives, as the editors at c|net point out today in the daily download newsletter.



The king of the freeware photo editors is the GIMP (screenshot above). It's an open source program. That means it's supported by a volunteer community—as are programs like Linux and Apache—and works across the major computing platforms—PC. Mac and Linux. I have to confess, I've tried this application and didn't find it very easy to use. The c|net editors seem to recognize that fact and recommend an alternative version of the software called GIMPshop.

Other recommendations from the c|net folks include Paint.NET, IrfanView and FastStone Image Viewer.