What is the best computer software to edit photos (except photoshop)?

If you’re looking for a free app, Picasso might work for you. It’s certainly nowhere near professional-grade for photo editing, but it does give you some decent options.

This question from last month might be useful.

Do you know if Picassa, Photo Studio or Paint.NET have the bubble like filters? Have you used them?

I use photobucket.

Gimp

You might also consider Photoshop Elements. It’s about 70 bucks and has many of the same features as Photoshop. It’s only 8 bit, though but fine for .jpg processing.

Picture it is what my mom uses.

If it MUST be free, get Gimp. If you can afford $40 get Paintshop Pro (X7 has just launched so the price of X6 has been slashed).

Some cameras come with photo editing software. It wouldn’t be as sophisticated as Gimp or even Elements, but may be worth taking a look. Did you check the DVD that came with your camera?

@2davidc8 I am not using a professional camera to take photos. I am usually taking photos using my phone because it has a 14MP camera. I am not looking for anything sophisticated. The only thing I want is to add the bokeh filter on my pictures.

If it’s just effects filters you’re after, you don’t even need to buy or download software at all. There are websites like instagram, picmonkey and pixlr that have a whole range of filters and special effects for photos. Of those, I personally like pixlr best because it has some basic editing tools included as well, like red-eye removal, airbrushing and text.

For photography, Adobe Lightroom is very good. They collected from photoshop most of the stuff you would ever use for photos and put a very useful interface on it. You can sometimes get that on specials for around 100$.
I use Lightroom more that anything else. (I also have photoshop and GIMP)

If I happen to be on my linux box I use GIMP (similar to photoshop) and that is surprisingly good and free. If you know how to use photoshop you will find most of what you are used to in GIMP.