LightBox Image Editor is an excellent little utility that I fell in love with after just a couple of minutes of using it.
Photo! Editor is a basic photo correction utility with a few professional quality tools.
Mid-Level Editors
PhotoFiltre is a nice basic to mid-level editor with a good feature set.
Paint.Net makes a very good mid-level photo retouching choice.
Artweaver - If you don't want the .NET Framework, or simply would like another option other than Paint.Net you should have a look at this.
Advanced Editors
GIMP is currently the only freeware package I am aware of that can be called an advanced image editor.
If a more Photoshop style environment is desired two choices are available; GimPhoto and GimpShop
In A Class By Itself
Photoscape -This is really a different class product than the editors above in that it does things that are beyond the focus of the average editor, and is more of an image suite.
clipped from: www.techsupportalert.com 
