XnView

XnView is freeware software that allows you to view and convert graphic files. It's very fast and easy to use. But more importantly it supports more than 400 graphics formats!
This is another handy image viewer, I use it to view raw images.

http://www.xnview.com/

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Official Launch Today, 12.04.2010

Those of you interested in Adobe products, like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Indesign etc. should take a look at this site. The new Creative Suite will be launched today, 12 April 2010, in a few hours from now (15:00:00 GMT). You should register and confirm your reservation if you want to see what are the improvements in the long awaited CS5.

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on it and trying it out let's hope the trial will be available for download soon!

Sneak peek of Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop

Bryan O'Neil Hughes shows off a very interesting synthesizing texture in the upcoming version of Photoshop.




Source: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/03/caf_in_ps.html

Photo Magician

Photo Magician is a small and easy to use program that allows you to quickly scale and convert your images. Download here

Watermark images Freeware

An easy to use watermarking program that not only does what it's suppose to but is also free!

waterMark V2
The name leads us right. waterMark V2 is a versatile and very easy to use application for adding "watermark" images to your photos. All you need is to define a source image as watermark and place it where ever you want on the specific original photo. The transparency of the whole watermark or even a single colour can easily be set up to the needs by a control panel working in percent. All these settings can be added as a batch operation to a complete picture folder. waterMark V2 supports Bitmap, GIF, JPEG, PNG und TIFF image formats.
http://www.photo-freeware.net/watermark-v2.php

John’s Background Switcher

I can’t stand plain, boring backgrounds. John’s Background Switcher (or JBS for short) periodically changes the background image on your computer (like every hour or every day) to something interesting. You can specify which pictures to choose from:

• Individual pictures on your computer.
• Folders containing pictures on your computer such as ‘My Pictures’.
• Flickr photo sharing – selecting pictures by person, tags, sets or just plain random. You never know what you’re going to get next!
• Phanfare web albums – keep up to date with your friends and family.
• smugmug photo galleries – yours, your friends, anybody’s!
• Picasa Web Albums – choose from specific albums or any search text.
• Facebook – your friends photos on your desktop!
• Yahoo! image search – the internet is your oyster!
• Any Media RSS feed – choose pictures from sites like DeviantArt, Photobucket, LOLCats and Zooomr amongst many others!

http://www.johnsadventures.com/software/backgroundswitcher/

Noiseware

This software from Imagenomic is used to for digital image noise reduction. Noiseware is fast and easy to use for restoring image fidelity by eliminating digital noise and unwanted artifacts introduced by high ISO photography and less than optimal environmental conditions

You can use the free Noiseware Community Edition Standalone for more information and to download go here http://www.imagenomic.com/nwsa.aspx

Polarizer

Polarizer's & Circular Polarizer deepen blue skies and help eliminate reflections Circular Polarizer are for auto-focus cameras. A few manual focus cameras will require the use of a C-PL in order to meter correctly.
There are also warm tone Polarizer Filters, which serve to warm a scene or skin tones.

What type of Circular Polarizer do you use?
I have been looking at a Hoya filter, for the difference between the pro and supper go to this site they have a good comparison.
http://www.photofilter.com/comparison_Hoya_Pro_camera_filters.htm

HDR Photography

In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of luminances between light and dark areas of a scene than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows

Qtpfsgui - Despite the horrendous name, this tool is completely open source and offers a free way to start a HDR workflow.
Qtpfsgui Website

hugin panoramic imaging tool

hugin is a open source easy to use cross-platform panoramic imaging tool. Using hugin you can assemble a mosaic of photographs into as complete immersive panorama, stitch any series of overlapping pictures and much more.


hugin

Mac image editing

A very good alternative to adobe cs especially if you don't have US$699 to spend.

Pixelmator, the beautifully designed, easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editor for Mac OS X has everything you need to create, edit and enhance your images
Once you have your image open you have access to the clone tool to find the dust spots, levels, saturation, curves, sharpening, contrast and brightness, etc. It’s all there. Maybe not as sophisiticated as Photoshop, but close and at $59 a good price.

Pixelmator


Pixelmator Tutorials video podcast

These are available on http://pixelmatorpodcast.com
and on iTunes here


Thanks Seraphiel for the extra helpful info.

Seashore

Seashore is an open source image editor for Mac OS X's Cocoa framework. It features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. It supports multiple layers and alpha channel editing. It is based around the GIMP's technology and uses the same native file format.

However, unlike the GIMP, Seashore only aims to serve the basic image editing needs of most computer users, not to provide a replacement for professional image editing products.

Seashore Website

Picture Namer

Picture Namer is an application for Mac OS X 10.2 or higher used to name a folder full of pictures. It is ideal for naming a folder of pictures freshly downloaded from a digital camera. Picture Namer gives you the option to preserve the picture order, add a group name to every picture and automatically number pictures with the same name.
Homepage

PhotoFiltre

PhotoFiltre is a complete image editing and effects package, that will not only amaze you with features but also the fact that it is free (for personal use). It comes with many features that rival some commercial packages, as well as additional add-on that can be downloaded from the web site.



PhotoFiltre offers all the standard editing features (selection, clone brush, paint brush etc.) as well as a large selection of image effects, photo masks, image adjustments, thumbnail browser and much more. The program also supports batch processing to apply filters, sizing, adjustments and transformations to a large number of images at once. PhotoFiltre comes with modern, well designed interface and is well suited for everything from simple resizing to advanced photo editing. Homepage

GIMP video tutorials- Photo Enhancement and Manipulation (Continued 5)

Quick Masking

How to use the Quick Mask tool to selectively colorize a flower.

How To Change Hair Color

Showcases the Path tool.

Recolor Hair and Eyes

This is another demonstration on how to change hair color as well as eye color.

RapidoResizer

An easy as a drag and drop, RapidoResizer has been made to quickly resize one or more pictures in 5 seconds. Drag your pictures, drop them on RapidoResizer, you get a range of options for you to apply to the image. This enables you to change the dimensions quickly an easily. It is also possible to apply one function to multiple images at a time with the batch function.


In addition to resizing the image (with or without keeping proportions), RapidoResizer allows you to rotate the image, and change the picture to a variety of popular file types.

Link

GIMP video tutorials- Photo Enhancement and Manipulation (Continued 4)

Create a 3D Pop-out Effect

Make subjects seem like they’re popping out of a polaroid picture using this tutorial.

Eraser to Transparent Background Removal

A basic demonstration on how to remove the background of an image.

Semi-Advanced Photo Manipulation

This tutorial shows a few intermediate to advanced GIMP techniques.

GIMP video tutorials- Photo Enhancement and Manipulation (Continued 3)

Turn a digital photo into Polaroid

Create a Polaroid border effect on images.

Full Flare Control with The Gimp

Shows you how to create and control flares using the FlareFx effect.

Transform a Photo into Pop Art

An interesting photo tutorial on converting existing photos to mimic pop art.

GIMP video tutorials- Photo Enhancement and Manipulation (Continued 2)

Create a Sketch Effect

This tutorial shows you a speedy way to create a sketch effect on digital photos.

Skin Airbrushing

An excellent introduction to Selective Gaussian blur and the Quick Mask tool.

Improve Night Shots Using Curves

Use the Curves tool to digitally enhance night shots.

Xee

Xee is a lightweight, fast and convenient image viewer and browser. It is designed to be a serious tool for image viewing and management, with a sleek and powerful interface.

Xee is useful as a more powerful replacement for Preview, or most any other image viewer available on Mac OS X. It is very fast, and uses less memory than most other image viewing tools. It also uses OpenGL to display and scroll images much more smoothly than other viewers. Its interface is highly streamlined and has easily configurable keyboard shortcuts.

Link