There are a zillion programs out there to edit images.
There are an incredible, uncountable array of editing features that are available if you are willing to learn about them and try them.
I haven't run into any editors (in a while) that don't support both GIF and JPEG formats. Most support many many more formats that have long since been forgotten.
Anyway, of the zillions, here are three popular ones.
This is the grand-daddy... virtually all graphics experts use Photoshop.
It is the industry standard, and we have it here on most machines in the lab at North Central College!
For a novice, however, it has its drawbacks:
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It has a pretty steep learning curve |
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It's really big (it can take quite a while to load over our network) |
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It's expensive ($500+) |
You can find more information at www.adobe.com
This program addresses every negative about PhotoShop... it's easy to use, it's of a manageable size, and it's pretty cheap (around $50, I think)
I use it... and for someone who is not a hardcode graphics designer, it does a great job.
You can find more infomation at www.jasc.com
Microsoft, bless 'em, has bundled an image editing program into Windows for a while now. I have not seen what is bundled into Windows XP, but it is touted as an improvement over the previous versions of Microsoft Paint.
For now, the Microsoft imaging products are beginner's tools only.
This may change though...