What (free) photo editing software?

[Rumble]

OK, I know hee haw about this kind of thing, so I'm looking for a fairly user friendly photo editing package that I can download, and as I'm tight it's going to have to be free. The wishlist I'd like to be able to do with it is: usual editing of holiday snaps etc, playing about with images to make them look either "vintage" or "cartoony", and would like to be able to stitch images together to make a panoramic shot, but that's not important.

One of the main things I'll be using it for is wedding invites/stationary so maybe I'll need another package to work on for the text stuff as well.

I've no idea where to start - I know that all sounds very vauge but any recommendations?

 

[legrandefromage]

irfanview has been my favourite

http://www.irfanview.com/

 

[Neil]

gimp. Open source, platform independent. A liitle bit obscure to use, but very feature rich, and plenty of guides.

 

[zigzag]

Picassa lets you do basic fixes, manipulate levels, cropping, rotation, etc. Mostly its just a nice way to manage all your photos.

Microsoft ICE to stitch photos together for panoramas.

Paint.NET for graphics editing.

 

[Midlife]

Paint Shop Pro is pretty friendly as is the free cut down photoshop (old version of elements), GIMP is also good as mentioned.

Irfanview is good at looking at mages and changing their size, resolution and format.........

Shaun