27
I really like GIMP. It's free and you can it supports plugins, so for example, you can use Resynthesizer & Heal Selection to fill missing areas. To open RAW files, you need to use the UFRaw plugin.
Here is a screenshot:
22
I've come to really enjoy using Paint .NET for this sort of thing. It's free, so I'm certain it'll fit within your budget.
RAW support is available through plugins (there are many others). JPG and PNG files aren't a problem. Note that while many of the plugins work well, RAW files take a second or two to load properly.
The interface is as minimal as you ...
14
pViewer:
A small and fast image viewer. Because less is more.
Features:
Lightweight: Small and fast
No installation required
Supports jpg, png, gif (animating)
Opens the most common formats, including .zip, .rar, .cbz, .cbr
No wasted space on screen
Extensive use of keyboard shortcuts
Intuitive controls
EXIF reader
Paste and edit screenshots
Manga Mode (...
14
GIMP is awesome
It's free. Yay!
It's 100% cross-platform - I've used it on OS X, Windows, and Ubuntu
It's not as powerful, expensive and complicated as Photoshop
Layers are in that screen shot
It has white balance
It has brightness and contrast
It has cropping functionality
Guassian blur kills noise
It has settings, but I'm not sure what you mean.
Overall, ...
13
I would recommend IrfanView.
It has extensive batch options (File > Batch Conversion). I've used IrfanView a lot in the past for batch resizing of images, for which it seemed pretty efficient and easy to use. You can select a few simple operations from a list for the batch/conversion process. Adding watermark-texts is one of them.
This tutorial explains ...
13
Photoshop Elements covers all the jobs you mentioned, but it's not as heavy as the full, gigantic Adobe Creative Suite, so it's well within your price range as well. I picked up version 9 a while ago for about $80, and the full retail price for version 12 (current as of this writing) seems to be about $100.
You mentioned removing spots and filling in ...
13
Darktable is a quite good alternative for Lightroom. It's constantly developed, open source and free, does not require sign up, and it have number of modules for development of photos, beside a very good cataloguing, mapping and tagging options.
Beside other features it support:
Tagging
Non-destructive development
Color manipulation
Tone mapping
Exposure ...
12
You'll never find a real clone of LightRoom, but LightZone is an excellent free alternative.
Among many other features, it also supports...
Nondestructive RAW Editing
Batch Editing
Channel Mixers
Filters
Etc...
12
I don't know what's "similar to Picasa", as I don't use Picasa. But for everything else, Monte Gallery should be a good match.
Monte Gallery: Folder, Calendar, and Map view (source: Google Play; click images for larger variants)
As above screenshots show, you can browse by folders or calendar (your "date" requirement). You even can browse by location (...
12
You can use IrfanView. This viewer is a mighty tool. I used it over the years and it is a great viewer, which also provided additional plugins.
The viewer is loaded very fast, without showing a loading window.
It supports your favourite grafik extensions and by installing plugins you can add several grafik formats.
Next and previous is done by the two blue ...
10
Wikimedia recommends using JpegSnoop.
Whether this works depends on your images, but Wikimedia claims it can uncorrupt Jpegs, so presumably it works for some people..
Yes, it's open source.
Batches, I didn't see support for this, though you could just write a batch file for your friend to drag to.
The UI isn't so-so. It does support drag and drop, among ...
9
The exiftool command line utility (from the package of the same name) reads and writes EXIF information. The “writing” can include renaming the file. There are examples in the manual under “Renaming examples”. You want something like (untested)
exiftool -d '%Y-%m-%d' -filename'<${model;}-${datetimeoriginal;}.%e' *.jpg
To process files in subdirectories ...
8
For one, you could simply use a file explorer. I use ES File Explorer, which includes a picture viewer (amongst others):
Free or cheap: Free
Mature: Definitly. It's around for a long time, runs stable, never ever crashed on me or caused any trouble.
Well finished graphic: Not sure how to define that, but pics look fine
Only show folders (not sub-folders): ...
8
I use JPEGView.
Free and Open source
Seems very resource-light
Every must have from the OP, except maybe the GUI
Shows EXIF data
Slide Show as asked
Screenshot (click it for a larger variant)
7
As a cross platform (Windows/Macintosh/Linux) solution, I would suggest Corel AfterShot Pro which is fast, compressive and responsive photo retouhing tool.
AfterShot Pro is not free but costs $99.99. Note that on time of writing this special offer with AfterShot Pro priced at $49.99 is available. Good thing is there is trial version available too so software ...
7
Pinta may do what you want. It was last released September 27, 2012, which is okay (but not great) for an open source project, and it isn't stale enough to suggest that it's completely abandoned. It is supposed to be a virtual clone of Paint.NET.
It seems to have a very good crop tool and layer support, saturation, brightness, etc. so it may be up your ...
7
UPDATE Sept 2017:
For anyone who finds this now, the facial recognition side of things can be handled in a number of ways. Personally, I back my photos up to a Synology NAS at home and then back that up to Amazon Drive. For the photos on the NAS, I actually sync. Although I sync one way, from NAS to Amazon, you could do it both ways which would give you a ...
7
Depending on which distorts &/or morphs you need:
GIMP excellent free photo manipulation program with a number of morphing & distort tools plus more to come - some under development features are already available if you are able to build it yourself from the git repository.
G'MIC Command line tool allows a larger number of distorts and can easily ...
7
Yes, there is: FastStone Image Viewer lets you drag and drop into desired order.
You may rename in sequence so Windows Explorer will show in the same order.
And it´s freeware for personal use.
6
Take a look at Daminion (I work at Daminion Software). This is a photo management software that you can use to watermark your images. Daminion Free version allows you to work with 15,000 images that can be imported per one local catalog.
How it works:
Import your photos to Daminion.
Select images that you want to stamp by your watermark.
Configure an ...
6
I would recommend Darktable which is photography workflow application and RAW developer.
Darktable basic features are:
Darktable runs on GNU/Linux / GNOME, Mac OS X / macports and Solaris
11 / GNOME.
Fully non-destructive editing.
All darktable core functions operate on 4x32-bit floating point pixel
buffers, enabling SSE instructions for speedups.
It ...
6
RawTherapee is a free and open source RAW editor, also quite feature loaded. As I rarely use RAW images, I cannot say how it compares to LightZone (which Olli recommended), but it's for sure worth a look. This software is available as free download (no registration required).
Requirements differ with the versions, so you might want to pick an "older version"...
6
I'm using ExpoBlending for this task:
ExpoBlending opening screen (ckick image for larger variant)
Easy to import photos (in different formats including nef): Very easy to handle. Works Wizard-style, guiding the user through all steps. Not sure about the .nef format however, as I rarely use RAW images.
Easy and compressive to use GUI: Definitly. As I wrote:...
6
Having an Explorer window which you switch to with alt-tab and drag&dropping Images to GIMP (which can even be combined with alt-tab) is what I would suggest.
5
Both shotwell and f-spot will basically do what you need here. Both have roughly equivalent feature sets, but I switch to shotwell after having too much trouble with f-spot crashing all the time.
Feature check:
Fast downloading from camera cards (both)
Renaming (important to read date info from exif) (both)
Tagging (writing to exif) (both)
Ability to ...
5
one possible solution. exiftool
exiftool -r "e:\New Folder" -Make -Model -focallength -shutterspeed -iso -aperture -flash -csv >pictures.csv
You can then import the data into excel or librecalc and generate graphs or sort the data.
5
You can use ImageMagick (Free, open source, cross-platform, CLI) to post-process all your scanned images at once:
Automatically crop a scan of multiple photos, aka. multicrop
red-eye removal
auto-orientation
Color Correction
answered Oct 13 '14 at 15:32
Franck Dernoncourt
26.7k21 gold badges90 silver badges190 bronze badges
5
The application that stands out for this is The Photographers Ephemeris.
Free/Web-based desktop application.
Available from the Play Store for Android for a reasonable price (UK £3.22).
Also available for iOS.
Does basically all you are asking for and more, (lifted from the App Store Blurb):
The Photographer's Ephemeris (TPE) helps you plan outdoor ...
5
Hugin is a tool-chain that allows you to stitch photographs together and despite it the use of the word Panorama in the title bar it does not just do panoramas.
To cover your points:
Its primary goal should be stitching, not creating panoramas. By stitching I mean determining correspondent points and laying out images over some coordinate system. Yes your ...
4
I recommend Lightzone. They require registration before downloads, which is absurd. If you want to, you can avoid this by cloning and compiling from github repository.
Use case: photo manipulation, including color channels, hue, saturation, brightness, white balance, contrast etc. It is not Photoshop replacement. On commercial (and non-linux) side, feature ...
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