Some of the best things in life are free, including these nifty programs and utilities to help you in the digital darkroom. Programs include those to edit and enhance digital images,  to view and organize them, and even to help recover digital files you may have deleted. All programs were free and available at the time of posting.*

Free photo editing, organizing and viewing software

• ArcSoft RAW Thumbnail Viewer – plug-in for Windows that allows previewing of RAW photos when browsing through files.
• ePassportPhotos – create passport photos online
• Exposure Plot - analyzes usage of focal length, ISO, aperture and shutter speed.
• FastStone image viewer – image browser, viewer, converter and editor.
• FilterSIM – photo filter simulator.
• FrameFun – add mats, frames and drop shadows to digital images.
• FuturePaint (Mac) – full-featured image editing.
• Gimp – (Windows, Mac, Linux) – open source photo retouching software that has many robust features and supports layers. The learning curve may be higher for some than other editing programs listed here.
• Irfanview – image viewer and converter; reads exif data.
• iTag – utility that embeds title, description and keywords in photos and videos.
• Neat Image – digital image noise reduction.
• Paint.NET – image editing program that supports layers. [What are layers?]
• Photo Dater -  add date and other information to photo.
• PhotoFiltre – image editing and filter program (go to the downloads page).
• PhotoPlus – image editing software offering layers.
• Photoscape – photo editing software to fix and enhance photos.
• Photo Story – add motion, effects, music and more to digital photos. Windows XP only.
• Picturennaut HDR – combine multiple photos of a scene for High Dynamic Range. [What's HDR?]
• PIXresizer – image resizer.
• Picasa – photo organizing and editing. [Our review]
• TwistedBrush Open Studio – create original digital paintings and all forms of digital art. Photo editing too. Layers and Transparency; Masks; Tracing Paper.
• uMark Lite -  image watermarking software.
• VicMan’s Photo Editor – image editing.
• virtualPhotographer – apply photographic styles to images.

Free Photo Recovery software

• Recuva – friendly user-interface
• Zar – the free version recovers photos only

Free EXIF readers/viewers

• EXIF Image Viewer – view available EXIF information in photos posted online.
• Opanda IExif - browse available Exif / GPS / IPTC data in digital images posted online.

Free video editing software

• DVD Flick - simple but powerful DVD authoring tool.
• MP4Cam2AVI – quickly converts .mp4/.MOV files to .AVI files (lossless).
• Mpeg Streamclip – a powerful video converter, player, editor for Mac and Windows.
• SMPlayer – basic features for playing videos, DVDs, and VCDs; advanced features for MPlayer filters and more
• VirtualDub – video capture and processing utility.

*Important notice: Read disclaimers and operating system requirements posted at the developer’s site. You are solely responsible for software you download and install.