This image viewer and editor is a longtime favorite among our staff, and with good reason. IrfanView is simple, fast, and free for individual use. Upon installation, the app attempts to install two Google programs, but you can opt out.

The program lets you open and edit images, as well as multiple media formats. You can cut and crop images, apply batch conversions, add, sharpen, or blur effects, create panoramas, and change color modes easily. The program continues to add support for an array of file formats and has plug-in support for most image, video, and sound formats, including MP3, AVI, audio CD, and WMA. The interface is far from fancy but should be easy enough for most users to figure out. An IrfanView Thumbnails shortcut on the desktop offers an Explorer-like file tree that quickly displays all images in a particular folder. The latest version includes a basic drawing palette made accessible by hitting F12. It contains simple Erase, Draw, Fill, Rotate, Draw an Arrow, and Color Picker commands, perfect for grabbing screenshots and highlighting image specifics.

IrfanView does what it does well. It's not going to replace a major paint program, but why use a meat cleaver to cut a stick of butter?