Editing photos on the PC has become so easy that many non-professional users can fix their photos without having to go crazy among the options offered by Photoshop, the leading program in the category but very difficult to use for those who are not experts (not to mention the really high cost of the program, which abundantly exceeds € 1000). And if we wanted to correct our photos for free, what programs can we rely on without having to spend a single euro?> PC Image Editor is a free application for Windows that allows you to edit most of the image files and supports one of all formats used as PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, TGA, TIFF, EMF, RAS.
PC Image Editor has a well-defined interface that is easy to use even for beginners.
The image adjustment parameters are on the right side below the expandable boxes that group adjustments, filters, effects and resizing options. There is also a history pane that allows you to easily restore or cancel accidental changes. Some buttons at the bottom of the preview image are used to rotate the photo and zoom in and out. From the adjustment box it is possible to adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, RGB values. For the lazy ones there is the option that adjusts the contrast automatically and the options for automatic levels. Blurry images can be focused and different filters and special effects can be added to tilt photos and view them in perspective.
Overall, PC Image Editor is an excellent photo editor with an intuitive user interface, without too many options that, in most cases, nobody needs.
Ashampoo Photo Optimizer
Another free program that we can use to beautify and improve our bad photos is Ashampoo Photo Optimizer.
In a very simple interface we can add our photographs and apply the most varied changes: filters, corrections and gamma corrections, to which we can add the most basic changes on color, contrast, brightness and saturation.
The program allows both to automatically apply the necessary improvements and to manually act on the individual parameters. The program supports all the main image file formats PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, TGA, TIFF and also allows you to convert between various formats, so that you can switch the images to the desired format.
Adobe Photoshop Express (online)
If we really can't give up the power of Photoshop, we can use its "reduced" and free online version called Adobe Photoshop Express.
The site allows you to upload your own images in JPEG format (other formats are not currently supported) and offers a selection of useful tools to edit photos and beautify them, without having to become photo editing experts.
Once the desired effects have been applied, we can use the double screen control present at the bottom to show the difference between the original and the modified photo, so that we can evaluate the result in advance.
Pixlr X (online)
Pixlr X is a free online image editor for Windows with many functions, but which is still very easy to use even for beginners.
The website (made in HTML5) has many basic functions and advanced functions that allow you to completely modify, improve and adjust any type or format of images. You can apply 39 professional artistic filters on photos, resize, flip, crop, rotate images, use layers, shadows, frames and so on. You can add objects on top of photos such as lines of text, images, blurred shapes, ellipses, lines, arrows, speech bubbles, symbols and you can even draw. In addition to these changes, we can adjust the classic parameters of brightness, hue, saturation, color balance, curves and levels.
With the Beautify menu you can add fun elements above the images and create small photo montages using eyebrows, eye shadows, eyelashes, imperial crowns, wigs, hats, accessories, necklaces, glasses, masks, props and so on with many preloaded clip art.
Pixlr is appreciated for its simple interface and is recommended for both basic and advanced users who require additional functions close to programs such as Photoshop.
PiZap (online)
Another online program that we can use to edit our photos on a PC is PiZap.
From the website interface we can choose the most suitable editing tool, choosing whether to open the simple image editor (with all the most popular filters and effects), whether to make a photo collage, whether to creatively edit images with the app Design, whether to apply the instant enhancement effect and whether to create personalized emojis.
The site is very simple and suitable for use even by users who are unfamiliar with photo editing programs and images.
Conclusions
In this guide we have collected the main alternatives to quickly improve or edit photos for free on a Windows PC: some of these are simple programs to be installed on a PC, the others are instead comfortable Web programs that work without installation (everything is done online).In addition to these programs we can choose other valid photo editing programs from our guides: Programs to add effects to images and photographic filters on Windows, Best free photo editor programs, for photo editing and graphics and finally the Top 10 programs for editing and managing images and photo .
If you want to use your smartphone, you can fix bad photos with apps to:
- correct face and skin defects in photos (Android and iPhone)
- improve photos (Android and iPhone)
