Ever since I started messing with computers back around Win 98 and into XP, I have been using office xp as it has been just fine for things I needed it for.

It came with MS Photo editor, not a real fancy or special editor by any means but again it worked just fine for I needed it for.

Due to the need to work with newer office documents recently, I had to upgrade to office 2007 which has sadly removed photo editor and replaced it with a completely annoying and generally useless to me...photo manager.

I am now on the hunt for a suitable replacement for the old photo editor and I am hoping y'all may have some recommendations.

I don't need anything fancy, and preferably free. All I ever really used MS for was simple viewing, resizing and cropping and that is all I am really looking for again. Something that, when I double click on a photo, it will open their by default and I can do just whatever basic adjustment I need and not have to change file types or anything when I am done.

Given the large amount of options that seem to be available now, I kinda don't really want to have to go through all of them and hope I find something.

Adobe Photoshop Elements can be had for about $70. Not free but still one of the few Adobe products you can buy outright (I really dislike their monthly subscription plans). Photoshop Elements may be overkill for what you want but it does a nice job in a lot of areas and you’ll own the software.

Michael

Check out FastStone Image Viewer 7.1. Surprisingly featured and free. I use it for quick and dirty tweaks. https://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

True Full Screen viewer with image zoom support and unique fly-out menu panels
Crystal-clear and customizable one-click image magnifier
Powerful image editing tools: Resize/resample, rotate/flip, crop, sharpen/blur, adjust lighting/colors/curves/levels etc.
Eleven re-sampling algorithms to choose from when resizing images
Image color effects: gray scale, sepia, negative, Red/Green/Blue adjustment
Image special effects: annotation, drop shadow, framing, bump map, sketch, oil painting, lens
Draw texts, lines, highlights, rectangles, ovals and callout objects on images
Clone Stamp and Healing Brush
Superior Red-Eye effect removal/reduction with completely natural looking end result
Multi-level Undo/Redo capability
One-touch best fit/actual size image display support
Image management, including tagging capability, with drag-and-drop and Copy To/Move To Folder support
Histogram display with color counter feature
Compare images side-by-side (up to 4 at a time) to easily cull those forgettable shots
Image EXIF metadata support (plus comment editing for JPEGs)
Configurable batch processing to convert/rename large or small collections of images
Slideshow creation with 150+ transition effects and music support (MP3, WMA, WAV...)
Create efficient image attachment(s) for emailing to family and friends
Print images with full page-layout control
Create fully configurable Contact Sheets
Create memorable artistic image montages from your family photos for personalized desktop wallpapers (Wallpaper Anywhere)
Acquire images from scanner. Support batch scanning to PDF, TIFF, JPEG and PNG
Versatile screen capture capability
Powerful Save As interface to compare image quality and control generated file size
Run favorite programs with one keystroke from within Image Viewer
Offer portable version of the program which can be run from a removable storage device
Configurable mouse wheel support
Support program skins
Support dual-monitor configurations
Support touch interface (tap, swipe, pinch)
Support dual instances
Play video files (Third party codecs may be required for old versions of Windows)
And much more...


For more advanced stuff I run PaintShop Pro Ultimate 2019 which is NOT a subscription monstrosity. Takes PhotoShop plugins too. GIMP is the same class as Photoshop and PaintShop Pro but free. I couldn't abide its user interface and steep learning curve. YMMV

Two suggestions, both of which are free....

If you want to edit locally on your PC, download GIMP. There's a bit of a learning curve, but when you have it down, you have everything you'll ever need to edit image files.

As an alternative, you could upload your files to Google Photos and edit them there. Photos has a nice palette of simple to use tools. When you're done editing, simply save the file and then download it to your PC. Added benefit to this option, once uploaded, your image files are backed up.

Thanks.

Playing with Faststone right now. Seems like it might fit. After playing with some of the settings it actually even kinda "feels" like MS Photo editor.

For free, Fastone Image Viewer. Easy to use and you don't have to be a photo or image technican.

Windows Photos recently started crashing when you click on File Info.

quote:

Originally posted by PakRatJR:
Thanks.

Playing with FastStone right now. Seems like it might fit.

Glad to help!

GIMP is great. But my goto is paint.net.

Free and does all your basic photo editing. Lots of effects.

https://www.getpaint.net/

If you want something that is a strong contender to Photoshop, look at Affinity. Lots of video tutorials.

Mike