Oriens Enhancer v1
= must have
Software Tool (Win)
FREE

If you need a functionality-rich image editor but cannot afford Adobe Photoshop or Jasc Paintshop pro, you should check out Orient Enhancer. Oriens Enhancer is an easy-to-use and powerful image editor and it is FREE. It loads quickly and shows a reliable performance.

Oriens Enhancer provides you with a vast array of filters (e.g. dilate, painting, relief) and special effects (e.g. haftone, pixelize, contrast) that you can apply to your images. It offers you the complete set of advanced tools to manipulate digital images including a selection tool (- freehand selection is possible! -), a stamp tool and a color picker.

Unlike many other free or low-cost graphical editors, Oriens Enhancer even allows you to work with layers. At the moment you can only apply text on layers but the developers announce that "IN THE NEXT VERSION OF ORIENS ENHANCER, layers will be fully implemented and u can apply all the filters, effects and colors (which u normally apply to image at whole) to individual layers".

You can open 40 different image formats. You can optimize the image you created for saving (e.g. compression rate) and save it in 20 different formats.

Oriens Enhancer offers also some nice extra-features like a utility to capture anything on your screen (as a whole or in parts) or an Icon Extractor to capture icons that appear in anyone of your windows.

The tool is simple, light and allows for a very intuitive use. Try it!

If Oriens Enhancer does not perfectly meet your needs, you should check the following other Robin Good reviews of low-cost or free image editors:

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