Microsoft Photo Editor
Quick and Fast: Basic program with some essential photo retouching tools. Very nice resizing tool! Windows Only!
Where you get it: Comes with Windows XP. On my laptop, it’s what opens when you double click a photo in Windows Explorer. It’s been discontinued by Microsoft in favor of Microsoft Office Picture Manager, which has no editing capabilities. I found a download which looks to be legal at Brothersoft.com.
This useful program has color balance tools among it’s small arsenal and I like the ease with which you can resize images. I use the resizing in web design a lot. There is no layers feature or compositing like Photoshop, but it can be really useful in a pinch.
Tutorials: There’s a good introductory one here.
License and Use: Brothersoft.com says the license is “Free”.
Demo: I use this awesome little program in web design a lot. It has a very nice resize tool that I personally, like even better than Photoshop’s! Go to my latest web site and most of the graphics on the homepage went through Microsoft Photo Editor to be resized at some point.
