If you are an image fanatic that needs the functionality to make volcanoes explode and other amazing actions that are available within Photoshop, then this post is not for you. But if your requirements are simple image editing and some intermediate layer type functions without the need to pay the high price tag of Photoshop, then this post is for you and I would recommend that you give Paint.net a try.
This free software was developed by a few former Microsoft employees and is very impressive software that handles most of the editing, special effects, and layers that are available with Photoshop and in many cases is not the system process hog that Photoshop can be. I have been using paint.net for a few years and there have been dozens of improvements over that period of time and continues to offer more than enough functionality for the basic image needs.
Paint.net also is significantly better than most of the image handling programs that come pre-installed on computers which typically just have the ability to resize, crop, brighten, and sharpen images. This software blows those programs away. There is not too much more that I can say about the software because of the price point of free should make it an easy decision to give it a try. This will not work for all people especially if you use a high percentage of the functionality of Photoshop. If you decide to give it a try, I would be interested to hear your feedback.
