5 Open Source Apps to Edit and Organize Your Photos

If you took a bazillion photos over the holidays and have been dragging your feet about editing and organizing them, we're here to give you a nudge. Check out these five open source apps that make quick work of getting your pictures off your camera and on your computer for tweaking and viewing.

Shotwell - Here's a slick photo organizer for the GNOME desktop environment. Use it to reduce red-eye and adjust an image's exposure or saturation, or simply auto-enhance it in a single click. Shotwell also rotates, mirrors, and crops photos, and exports files as they are or according to user presets to reduce their size.

Hugin - If your digital camera lacks the ability to take panoramic photos, then this app is for you. It's a free, open source photo stitcher that easily assembles stacks of overlapping pictures into one big image, including a full 360° panoramic view. You don't need a lot of special talent to use Hugin, thanks to a built-in tool that automatically aligns your photos and does the stitching for you. Power users and professional photographers can take advantage of advanced features like stitching together auto-exposed panoramas or pairing it with a 3D modeller to create 3D surveys of buildings.

Pinta - Here's a solid image editing program for Gtk that makes a great lightweight alternative to GIMP. Pinta sports several drawing tools, including Pencil, Eraser, Shapes, Paintbrush, Zoom, Paint Bucket, Color Replacer, Line, and Pan. It supports an unlimited number of layers and unlimited levels of Undo/Redo for those times when you realize you made an editing mistake several steps back.

DigiKam - This app is packed with editing and organization tools that make it dead simple to tweak and manage your photos. You can also use DigiKam to share your images with social web services, create calendars, make slideshows, and more.

Gallery - This open source web-based photo album organizer is perfect for storing your pics online so others can see them. It includes a handful of image editing tools but Gallery's main purpose is to let you create albums of photos and, depending on the permission levels you set, allow others to upload pics of their own. Gallery is a great tool for safely sharing pictures among family and friends.

Have a favorite open source image editor of your own? Tell us about it in the comments.

Main image: tshein