UKC

I've used Picasa for a very long time for quick and easy editing of photos - essentially straightening, cropping and a bit of very simple contrast / colour adjusting. With a new laptop now I can either download a legacy copy of Picasa from t'internet or find an alternative.

Any recommendations then for something as simple and easy to use as Picasa for really basic editing? Or would sticking with Picasa be better than investing time in learning a new program?

Thanks

There's always the GIMP. Powerful, but pretty steep learning curve.

I keep using my old copy of Picasa 3. Though I mostly used it for cropping, cleaning and balancing CD artwork. I now download that, as it's usually better than scans of printed artwork...

Stick to what you know. There are lots of options out there, but Picasa was great.

Windows Photo Gallery was simple and good. It used to come as standard with Windows and was much better than what you get now for what you describe. You can still download it. I tried Picasa but didn't like it as much. Only drawback is you can't drag and drop and then rename a set of photos into the order you want easily but you could still easily use Picasa for that.

I don't know Picassa but a free photo editor which I find easy to use is Photoscape.

It isn't as sophisticated as many of the well known ones - GIMP, Photoshop, etc, but it is VERY easy to use.

Its RAW converter is no good, IMO, but if you are working on .jpegs and you don't need anything too specialised then it is good.

I use GIMP and Photoshop Elements for most of my editiong but if I need to resize, crop or do a few simple things to a .jpeg file then Photoscape often does the job.

Dave

GIMP is a great tool, but it's far from the "easy photo editor" recommendation.

I've used it for years, but only tend to do so when I want to do something a bit more involved with a picture. 

For my basic photo editing I use LightZone (also open source) - it's also probably more powerful and steeper learning curve than OP is requesting but doesn't take that long to get to grips with and worth the time IMO.

I was recently looking for something more versatile than the rubbish default Windows 10 'Photo' app. After some browsing I came across FastStone Image Viewer and have been trying it out. It's free, and my initial experience is very positive: it's easy to use but quite powerful.

Oh, I agree; GIMP was suggested as a 'last resort'... Ah I said, I've stuck with Picasa.

Indeed. What were they thinking? Dumbed down to the point of uselessness but no doubt great for "sharing".

I use https://www.irfanview.com/ which does most of what I need (YMMV); it's advertised as a viewer but will do editing.  Not a huge learning curve IMO.  Not the latest and greatest and fanciest, but does what it says on the tin, and is still getting updates.

Darktable, is meant to be an open-source Lightroom clone. I've played with it and it seems ok, but I've yet to import all of my photos into it.