Photo Editing Free Tools

Many webmaster especially those newbies when come to web design, they need to find some tools to design a banner or enhance some graphic for their website, existing tool like photoshop or coreldraw are beyond their budget, here are some tools that come in free or lite version may help to solve the design problem.

1. GIMP for Windows
GIMP is a popular open-source image editor originally developed for Unix/Linux. Often lauded as the "free Photoshop," it does have an interface and features similar to Photoshop. Because it's volunteer-developed beta software, stability and frequency of updates could be an issue; however, many happy users report using GIMP for Windows without significant problems.
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2. Serif PhotoPlus
For a long time, Serif has given away previous versions of their software to entice users to purchase the current version. Currently you can download a completely free, fully-functional version of PhotoPlus 6. PhotoPlus 6 features an export optimizer, editable text, image slicing and image maps, selection tools, smart shapes, third-party plug-in support, red-eye removal tool, and photo enhancement tools. PhotoPlus 6 works on Windows 95, 98, 98 SE, 2000, NT4, and XP.
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3. Paint.NET
Paint.NET is a free image and photo manipulation software for Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Server 2003. Paint.NET started development at Washington State University with additional help from Microsoft, and continues to be updated and maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Paint.NET features layers, painting and drawing tools, special effects, unlimited undo history, and levels adjustments. Paint.NET is completely free, and the source code is also available for free.
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4. Pixia
Pixia is the English version of a popular free painting and retouching software that originated in Japan. It features custom brush tips, multiple layers, masking, vector- and bitmap-based drawing tools, color, tone, and lighting adjustments, and multiple undo/redo. Like many freeware editors, there is no support for saving GIF format. Pixia is also available for many other languages. Pixia works with Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, 2000, and XP.
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5. VCW VicMan's Photo Editor
This award-winning graphic editor offers a variety of painting and editing tools and features including a text tool, gradients, selections by color or region, color replacement, editing in any scale, special effects and so on. The free version used to be an enticement to upgrade to the Pro version, but as of December 2006, the Pro version is free.
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6. PhotoFiltre
Although it's fairly limited in features, PhotoFiltre offers a simple, but elegant user interface and a lot of one-click image adjustments, filters, and effects. There is a built in image explorer panel for visually navigating your file system, basic drawing, painting, retouching and selection tools, and batch processing capabilities. It does not offer layers or transparency support. PhotoFiltre is free for private, non commercial or educational use (including non-profit organizations).
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7. Ultimate Paint
Ultimate Paint is available in both shareware and freeware versions for image creation, viewing, and manipulation. It has been designed to be fast and compact, and if you're familiar with the old Deluxe Paint program from Electronic Arts, Ultimate Paint is said to be very similar. The freeware version is an older release of the full-featured shareware product.
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8. ImageForge
ImageForge is a freeware image editor with painting and editing tools. Allows you to import images from scanners and digital cameras, apply special effects filters, and create photo albums and slideshows. Although this is teaser program for the shareware ImageForge PRO, it's probably a few steps above Microsoft Paint.
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