Modify Pictures for Free

Whether you've got a stack of vacation photos plagued by graininess and glowing red eyes, or you've just come from an entertaining image manipulation page and want to try it yourself, there are many free options available for modifying your pictures. Read the steps below to select and download the right program for your needs.

Steps

Simple Photo Modifications

  1. Use Microsoft Paint for basic adjustments. Paint is a feeble program in terms of photo editing and retouching, but it's not without its uses. Right-click and choose to open your photo in Paint, and you can easily rotate it, resize it, or crop parts of the image out. You can crop and zoom to “blow up” a specific part of the picture too, although image quality will suffer. Paint can save edited files in various popular formats, including PNG and JPEG.
    • Paint is also useful for adding text to an image. Be sure to select the transparent text box option so that the text box doesn't appear as an ugly white ribbon blocking out the image underneath.
    • Most of Paint's other options are fine for doodling, but useless for photo editing.
    • If you've lost your copy of Paint, download the superior Paint.NET program instead. It was started as a Microsoft project to replace Paint, and it has more features than the original. The link to download it is provided later in this article.
  2. Grab Serif Photo Plus. The free version of Serif's elegant photo editing software may not have the features of a program like Photoshop, but it's a dream for gently editing photos. Red-eye reduction, color correction, and several basic filters and effects make this an ideal program for the person who wants to make a family reunion photo look a bit better.
  3. Use PhotoFiltre to add filters and effects with ease. If your photos don't require extensive touch-ups, but you suspect they might look better with a bit of basic filter and layer manipulation, PhotoFiltre is the program for you. The program features a large number of professional, easy-to-use transparency and contour effects that can change the look and feel of nearly any photo. It's also very streamlined, and takes up hardly any space on your hard drive.
    • PhotoFiltre is free for private use, but if you plan to use it commercially (creating advertisements, for example), you'll need to pay for a license. The licensed version is somewhat more powerful than the free version.
    • You can safely download PhotoFiltre 7 from the PhotoFiltre website.

Advanced Image Manipulation

  1. Download GIMP. Despite the weird name, GIMP (which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a widely-used and popular alternative to Photoshop. Though it's not quite as slick as its retail counterpart, GIMP can produce most of the same effects, and has another significant advantage in that it's completely free.
    • GIMP isn't easy to learn. Aside from basic functions, expect to spend a significant chunk of time learning how to work with the program's tools. The upside is that the program is very powerful – no other free program comes close to the level of manipulation GIMP offers.
    • GIMP is the best free choice if you'd like to make significant alterations to images, such as adding or deleting objects, drastically altering the appearance of a person, or adding realistic special effects. It's also the best choice for fine detail work, such as altering the properties of individual flower petals in a garden scene.
    • GIMP offers a thriving library of plugins written specifically for the program, which add textures, effects, and just about anything else imaginable. Like GIMP itself, these plugins are typically free. In addition, GIMP even has a plugin, the PSPI plugin, that allows it to handle Photoshop plugins, effectively giving it an even larger plugin library than Photoshop itself.
    • GIMP can be downloaded safely from the official GIMP website.
  2. Try using Paint.NET. Paint.NET is an old program originally designed to rival Microsoft Paint. It's been kept alive and continuously developed by a devoted community of enthusiasts, and these days, the program has a surprising number of photo editing features. Paint.net is a more user-friendly (albeit less feature-rich) alternative to GIMP.
    • Paint.NET is a popular choice for many people over GIMP, because it provides most of the tools that non-professional image creators are likely to use, without any of the clutter or confusion of having extra options. It is able to apply filters, handle layers, and more, all with a fairly intuitive interface.
    • Paint.NET is moderately capable of handling advanced image manipulation (the type seen in many “Photoshop contests” around the web), but the results will generally look amateurish compared to GIMP's results.
    • Paint.NET can be downloaded safely from the official website.
  3. Give Photo Pos Pro a whirl. Somewhere between Paint.NET and GIMP in terms of functionality, Photo Pos Pro was once a pay-to-use program, and it shows. Since being released as freeware, it's become a popular choice for people who want a full suite of effects without the hassle of learning to use GIMP. The program features blurring, sharpening, noise control, red eye reduction, and all the other effects you need (even layers!) to give your images just the right look. It's also surprisingly easy to use.
    • Photo Pos Pro's installer is fairly innocuous, but it will try to set your homepage to a website called MyStart, which is known for an irritating (though not directly dangerous) add-on called the MyStart Incredibar that can be difficult to remove once installed. Be sure to disallow changing your homepage, as well as the installation of any software other than the program itself.
    • Photo Pos Pro can be downloaded safely from CNet's direct download link. Clicking this link will automatically start the download once the page has loaded, but it avoids CNet's pointless custom installation software.
  4. Pirate Photoshop. If you absolutely must have a copy of Adobe Photoshop and are unwilling to pay for the privilege, there are ways to acquire it without paying. You'll likely have to settle for an older iteration of the program than the current version, but even slightly dated copies of Photoshop are unbeatably powerful compared to other software.
    • The most reliable way to pirate Photoshop is by torrenting. To torrent Photoshop, you'll need to find a torrent of the copy you want (which should be as easy as a Google search), and then download the torrent file and open it with a special program that reads it, such as BitTorrent.
    • Downloading a copy of the software isn't enough to unlock it. You'll also need a license. The simplest way to get a license is to run a “crack” program that will generate a fake license code that fools the program into thinking you're a legitimate user. If you can, try to download the crack along with the program itself, as a single package; finding cracks separately is a dangerous and difficult procedure.
    • Although many people agree that Photoshop is overpriced, that doesn't justify stealing the software in and of itself. Be aware that you could get in trouble for pirating it.

Online Options

  1. Enjoy (some of) the gold standard at Photoshop.com. Photoshop.com's Express Editor is a streamlined, online version of Adobe's universally-known image manipulation software. It's got a paltry handful of options compared to the real thing, but that's still more options than most of its competitors can muster. Best of all, the site's interface is slick and practical at the same time. Photoshop.com has a range of sophisticated tools including dodge and burn tools, highlighting, and distortion and sketch effects, among many others.
    • The Express Editor's interface is somewhat different than that of Photoshop itself. Users familiar with one won't necessarily be able to jump right into the other.
    • Photoshop.com provides each user 2 gigabytes of cloud storage space for photos. As professionals know, this isn't enough to handle many serious, high-quality images, but it's great for ordinary, run-of-the-mill ones.
  2. Choose your weapon at Pixlr.com. Image editing site Pixlr offers three separate, interconnected tools for playing with images. The most powerful, Pixlr Editor, allows resizing, cropping, rotation, and a number of useful effects and filters. Pixlr Express, the next step up in terms of ease and efficiency, offers a range of premade effects that can be applied with the click of a button. The easiest of the three interfaces, Pixlr-o-Matic, simply applies filter and frame effects, in much the same vein as Instagram.
    • Switching from area to area is a bit awkward, so start with the most powerful tool you need first, and then mess with the less serious tools once you're done there.
  3. Get basic touch-ups done quickly at Fotor.com. Fotor is a very streamlined image editing tool that provides filters and other basic touch-ups in a set, ordered series of steps. It's useless for spot-editing, but if you just want to quickly sharpen a photo without having to practice anything, it's quite handy. Fotor also provides some fun effects and frames you can try once you've cleaned up your picture.
    • To finalize changes you've made, you'll need to click the “Apply” button at each step. Unfortunately, the button sometimes moves around, and can be a bit difficult to find. Be patient and look carefully to find where it's gone.

Tips

  • Look around the Internet for tutorials for your chosen software. Almost every program has them. Take time and be patient with yourself as you learn to use the tools at your disposal. You'll master them before you know it.

Warnings

  • There's always a bit of risk inherent in downloading new programs. The links in this article are tested and clean, but nevertheless, be sure your antivirus program is running before you download any of them.
  • Don't agree to install any extra programs alongside the one you want. Declining to install a toolbar or other adware program won't prevent you from installing the actual software, even if the dialog box makes it seem that way. Read every box carefully before clicking to the next one.

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Sources and Citations

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