Paint.com

Paint.com provides an excellent set of tools for perfecting digital photographs. While it doesn't do much of anything to separate itself from the competition, its performance and attention to detail prove it belongs at the top of the heap.

The program's interface is impressive for two reasons. First, it offers a large selection of command and design icons, and, secondly, it lays them out in a very intuitive and uncluttered manner. We felt right at home from the start, even though we have little graphic design experience. The program's main function allowed us to apply some fairly standard elements to our photographs. From using color filters to drawing shapes and changing color and shading, Paint.com was able to handle every function smoothly. The controls were incredibly easy to operate but nothing we hadn't seen in a dozen other photo editing programs. The same went for the special features, which allowed us to manipulate the photo with a variety of distorting and bending masks. These, too, felt familiar and are functions frequently found elsewhere. Overall, Paint.com falls somewhere between Adobe's Photoshop, the top graphics package, and Microsoft Paint, which is bundled with Windows. Regardless, the program's presentation and interface were of such high quality that Paint.com deserves to be placed among the top photo editors available at any price.

Paint.com is freeware. It installs desktop icons without permission. While it doesn't revolutionize the field, this program is one of the finest editors we've tested, and we recommend it.