Hi there, I have a large collections of photos taken by different family members that I’m starting to sort through and arrange. I’ve been trying to do simple things like fixing red eyes and cropping the photos to highlight the subject, however the painting program that came with my computer, called Paint, is really hard to use. Can you recommend a better one?

As you can well imagine, there are a number of packages out there that can do a better job than Paint. I’m not knocking it, it performs a number of basic functions, and it does come free with Windows, but there are a number of easier ways you can work with your images. One free package you can use, for example, is called Paint.Net and is a step up from the version of Paint you are using.

If you really want to make things easier though, I can recommend a package called Adobe Photoshop Elements 9, a fully-fledged photo editing package that can make your photos look just awesome. It also comes with tools to make photo books, cards, calendars, and other creations that look just the way you want and even helps you organise all your photos from just one place. It’s currently on sale from Buy.com for around $80, which is not much considering how much time it could save you in the long run. I personally haven’t used this version, but I’ve used previous version of Photoshop and it’s really awesome what you can do with your photo. Check it out.