The JPEG image format is inherently lossy. Because of this, each edit and subsequent recompression of JPEG images in general purpose image editors, such as Adobe Photoshop, results in a progressive degradation of image quality.

Fortunately there is, in most cases, a way to avoid this unnecessary recompression. If you just need to quickly process a group of JPEG photos from your latest vacation - rotate, crop, remove red-eye, imprint date or comments - you do not need to compromise on image quality. Better JPEG is a batch JPEG editor that can do all of this without loss of image quality.

Get the best from your JPEG photos, with no compromises!

Main Program Features:
* Lossless Transformations - Rotation, Flip
* Lossless Crop (free, fixed aspect, fixed size, predefined and user-defined aspects and sizes), composition guidelines (diagonals, golden mean, rule of thirds)
* Lossless Canvas Enlargement
* Lossless Brightness correction
* Lossless Color correction
* Highly Customizable Lossless Date/EXIF Info/Text insertion (position, font, size, color, background, language, format, etc.)
* Advanced Lossless Red Eye Removal (anti-aliasing, adjustable size, sensitivity, darkening)
* Copy/Paste to and from an external editor for local retouching without full recompression (lossless)
* Resize JPEG photos
* Batch image processing
* Multi-level Undo/Redo
* Metadata preservation
* Compression optimization

Developer: Better JPEG Team
License: Shareware
OS: Windows All
Size: 0.7 MB
Download Better JPEG 2.0.0.3 link

FastStone Image Viewer is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. Its innovative but intuitive full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touches the four edges of the screen.

Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram and much more. It supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CRW, CR2, NEF, PEF, RAF, MRW, ORF, SRF and DNG).

Developer: FastStone Soft
License: Freeware
OS: Windows All
Size: 4,1 MB
Download FastStone Image Viewer 3.6 Beta link

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.

The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a small amount of C++ for installation and shell-integration related functionality. The source code is available under the terms of the MIT License.

Developer: Paint.NET Team
License: Freeware
OS: Windows All
Size: 1.5 MB
Download Paint.NET 3.31 link

FreeVimager is the Free Image Viewer & Editor for Windows. It can as well play avi video files and some type of audio files. There are many tools around doing that, but the aim of this Freeware is to be a small and handy tool doing what it says and running also as a standalone exe file (installer not necessary).

Features
* View & Edit graphics file of type: jpeg, bmp, gif, tiff (multi-page), png and pcx
* Works with all Windows versions from 95 up to VistaImage
* Multi-monitor support: switch form one monitor to another through context menu or TAB key
* Unicode support: Open, Edit, Batch Process or Batch Rename your files named in russian, indian, chinese, japanese…
* EXIF is displayed and all data are kept when editing and saving images
* IPTC & XMP single file / batch editing support for jpeg and tiff files
* Batch Processing and CD / DVD Slideshow creation
* Recursive directory slideshow to view all files in a directory and it’s subdirectories
* Print Preview with image positioning by dragging
* Size optimized Email sending of image(s)
* Well known editing features like: rotate, crop, resize, brightness, contrast, sharpen, …
* Live configurable Redeye removal tool
* Live Ansel Adams Zone System Histogram under Brightness, Contrast, … (thanks Jordi for the suggestion)
* Transparent borders tool (save the result to the alpha channel for png, tiff or bmp)
* Twain Scan multiple pages to tiff and pdf (possibility to Email directly)
* Avi video player has draggable borders in full-screen mode
* Live audio / video time shift slider (to fix out of sync. videos)
* Choosable GDI or DirectX video rendering in YUV or RGB mode
* Basic Audio and CD player
* Zip extraction (context menu entry available)

Developer: Contaware.com
License: Freeware
OS: Windows All
Size: 10.5 MB
Download FreeVimager 1.5.5 link

Easy GIF Animator is powerful yet very easy to use software for creating and editing animated GIF images. With this animated GIF editor you can easily create animated pictures, banners and buttons in no time. You can use special features to add stunning visual effects and prepare your animation for publishing on your web page. Easy GIF Animator supports all types of GIF animation and provides high compression and great quality for your animated GIF images. To top it all off, Easy GIF Animator is the best priced animated GIF editor on the market today.

The latest version of our GIF animator includes a built-in image editor, banner wizard and special tools to make your experience even more productive.

Developer: Blumentals Software
License: Shareware
OS: Windows All
Size: 2.5 MB
Download Easy GIF Animator 4.6 link