Paint.NET is a nice program if you’d like to use something relatively simple to edit your digital photos.

The interface is very appealing and the creators are improving the program with fairly regular updates.

If you are inexperienced with image editing software and just want to take the images from your camera and make them smaller and make any improvements so that you can attach them to an email message or upload them to a photo album site, here are some quick tips.

• Use the Open icon or go to File - Open (both near the upper left-hand corner) and find the image on your camera which is usually labeled as a separate drive as in Removeable Drive [X]:.
• If the image was shot vertically and it appears horizontal, go to Image - Rotate…
• Since the photo will most likely be huge, go to Image - Resize and choose a width of somewhere between 600-800 pixels.
• If the image is too light or too dark go to Adjustments - Brightness/Contrast to change to these levels.
• When reducing an image, it will look a little softer. Go to Effects - Photo - Sharpen to bring it back to the sharpness that it should be. The default level of 2 is usually good.
• Then you can choose File - Save As, choose JPEG under “Save as type” and after that a quality of about 70-75 should be adequate. The lower the quality the smaller the file size. Anything less that 65-70 will noticeably degrade the image quality.

Of course, the program has many other features you can explore.

Paint.NET Web Site