Need photo freeware

After looking through the Graphics downloads section here at MG, I'm now more lost than I was before. I'm in need of some quality photo freeware. Perhaps the most important feature is ease of use; my Mom is going to be using it more than anyone. I've looked at Photobie, PhotoFiltre, PhotoMeister, XnView, The GIMP, Paint.NET, mtPaint, and some others. It seems they all have more or less the same features and abilities, but which would be easiest for YOUR mom to use on her Windows XP Home PC?
Thanx alot for your advice and recommendations.

 

It doesn't get any easier than Picasa2

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Picasa2_d4476.html

Dan

 

Thanx. I'll give it a go.
Anyone else have a favorite free photo application they'd recommend?
I'm going home for Thanksgiving, and there's most likely going to be some frenetic picture taking, and I'd like to leave Mom with a way to deal with the resulting pics...

 

It's the day before a big holiday a lot of busy people out there give it some time and you will get other replies.:wave

P.S. Have a great Thanksgiving,:yum

Dan

 

Depending on what your Mom wants to do with the photos, she already has two of the easiest to use programs on her computer, that being Windows Picture and Fax viewer and Paint. Hope this helps and have a great Thanksgiving!

 

So much depends on what she will actually be doing with the pictures.

Will she be just organizing and making slide-shows?

Cropping and resizing, making little frames?

Major editing, to change colors, wipe out bad spots, fix red-eye, paste in pieces of other pictures?

 

I use PhotoFiltre and love it. It's fairly easy to use and does just about everything you could need done.
http://majorgeeks.com/PhotoFiltre_d4587.html

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
And thanks for all the input.

Yeah, she wants to do all this stuff, but mainly she'll be making slideshows, and printing out individual photos or photo collages; and she wants to be able to email photos also (she already knows about email attachments, so that's not an issue). I was looking at PhotoFiltre, Picasa, and Photobie, and of those, I think that PhotoFiltre is the way I'll go. I still have some time before I/we decide, so any other suggestions are welcome....
Thanks.

 

Does she have her own digital camera? Cameras usually come with software and some of it is worth looking at, IMO. I have FinePixViewer that came with my Fuji FinePix camera. It will do batch resizing, which could be used if emailing lots of photos. An Auto-Adjust feature adjusts photos and I've found that it does, in fact, render improved photos, and it's very easy to use.

 

Yes, she does have a digital camera.... I'm not sure of the brand but she said she tried the software and it "didn't make sense" to her (her exact words!). I kind of know what she means; I've had software that didn't make sense either. Like the translation from Chinese or Korean to English didn't go real smooth

 

I guess you've probably settled on something by now, but if not...

In addition to Picassa, IrfanView is an oldie but a goodie that's pretty easy to use I think and somewhat customizable (can choose the background color around the picture if you don't like the default black, for example). It includes an easy to use slideshow feature among other things.

 

I have been using PhotoFiltre for about 6 months now and I thinks its a great program and easy to use.