Paint.NET
About a week ago, I discovered an image editing program called Paint.NET. It was originally a college project meant to create a program to replace Microsoft Paint, but has grown into a full-fledged photo editor, supposedly rivaling Photoshop and PaintShop Pro.
While I haven’t had much time to test this claim, I like what I have seen so far. For my first experience with the program, I attempted to cut out a picture of a buffalo using the Magic Wand tool, and I actually got a better result than I did doing the same thing with the same picture in Photoshop. One thing I like about Photoshop is all the filters, but Paint.NET has plug-ins which can be downloaded which may do the same things. I haven’t had a chance to look through them yet.
While I love Photoshop, Paint.NET definitely has one advantage: the cost. It’s pretty hard to beat Free.