PhotoScape

PhotoScape is a free image editor that is designed to be fun and easy to use. It not only resizes, edits, and tweaks your digital snapshots and other image files but also creates slideshows and animated GIFs, captures screenshots, combines and splits images, and more. PhotoScape can do lots of fun things to your pictures, and its modules, circular feature selector, and video tutorials take care of the "easy" part. We mentioned PhotoScape's unique, circular module selector, which duplicates and adds to the features on the program's toolbar, except the first tab, PhotoScape, which is the home screen (though all the tools are available on the toolbar via the toolbar menu). Another unique and interesting feature displays a photo grabbed from Flickr. You can click to change the image or turn the feature off. The Viewer tool's tree view and thumbnails helped us make quick work of finding and loading our images; the tree view persists in the upper left corner, too, when you move on to PhotoScape's various features, starting with the Editor. The Editor collects the most frequently needed editing tools in a console, but the compact view hides a plethora of options; for instance, the Filter menu has 25 items, and nine of those items have submenus. The Editor tools can do everything from adding objects to removing moles: we had quite a laugh when the random wallpaper image we opened turned out to be screen legend Anne Francis and her famous mole! But we could also paint, draw, stamp, and make mosaics out of our images. More fun: Animated GIFs are easy to make with PhotoScape, including resizing images, changing the timing and alignment, and automatically resizing all photos to the first image's size. The Page editor includes a huge range of templates for creating frames, borders, and collages, while the pop-up Raw Converter converts RAW images from DSLR cameras into JPEGs. A cool Paper Print tool prints letters, music sheets, calendars, planners, and more. Be sure to check out the online Face Search tool. PhotoScape promises and delivers a fun photo tool that's also easy to use