Photoshop Alternatives for Simple Photo Editing

        A lot of us here use Adobe Photoshop to edit photos, but not everyone is extremely well versed in the software. If you just need to make the photo a little brighter or change the contrast some, then sometimes Photoshop can make it a little bit too complicated. Is there an easy solution for those of us who want to edit their pictures but don't how to use Photoshop to do it?

       There is, it's called Google Picasa. It's easy to use software that has built in organizing and editing features. All of the editing features boil down to clicking and / or using a slider bar to adjust intensity levels. It even includes filters so you can make all those photos you took look like they should be on Instagram. Below are some examples of what the program looks like.

This is the basic layout where you can view and select photos for editing

This is the photo viewing and editing screen

        It has some really great features too, like setting a photo as your desktop background with one
click. I really like this feature because sometimes when programs do this they leave an annoying black ring around the edge to compensate for the photo not being a specific size. Picasa doesn't do that, it zooms in on the photo some so that the black border dissapears. It also has an autoscan feature, so it finds and organizes all your photos for you without you doing anything, or if you don't want that you can tell it to scan only specific folders. In addition to this you can back up all of your photos online using Google's photo storage service. Even more features are included, like screen savers, etc. But to find out about all of them you'll just have to download it.

        All of this is free by the way, and very easy to get. You only need to download it here and install it and then, you can go to town editing all your photos! Enjoy!