There's always the need for one or two graphics programs on your computer to edit, resize and scan photos. Irfanview has been a favourite for a number of years because it's simple and does the job. Recently Paint.NET has come along and it brings some sophisticated features that are only found in costly professional graphics applications. Yes, both Paint.NET and Irfanview are free so the buying pain is zero.

Ifranview can be downloaded from www.irfanview.com and Paint.NET from www.getpaint.net. While Irfanview doesn't have features such as layers and the range of tools of Paint.NET, it's a great program when all you want to do is resize or crop a photo or pull in your photos from your scanner.

Before we look at using some of Paint.NET's features, note you may have to also download the Microsoft .NET Framework version 2 which is a fairly large download. That's because Paint.NET - and lots of other Windows applications - use lots of programming code in the .NET Framework to carry out various functions. As a result Paint.NET itself, and its frequent updates, only entails a download of a megabyte or so.

The first time you load Paint.NET, you'll have a large canvas area into which you load your photos or create your own graphic image. The usual menus and icons are across the top of the screen. In the four corners are the tools pane, colour selector, a history of actions you've taken and the layers tool at the bottom right.

Included on the tools pane are the usual tools you'd find in most graphics editors, such as selection tools, text creator and cloner. As well there's a gradient maker to easily design a background. The colours pane enables you to select different primary and secondary colours as needed. The history pane enables you to return to any point in your work; in other words, it's the undo tool.

The fourth pane, Layers, needs some explanation. Taking an example where you want to add a title to a photo to explain what the photo is about and where it was shot. When you load the photo, it's automatically placed into a layer titled Background. Now make a new layer and use properties to give this layer its own name (say, Text Title). Now you can enter some text using whatever font, size and colour you choose, and this text will remain independent of whatever you do to the photo (say remove red-eye). If the text is not to your liking at a later date, you can remove it without destroying your original photo. The only point is to remember to save your file as a PDN file so you can return later for more editing.

If you wanted to add more clouds and text to your photo, you'd add more layers, one for each effect, and be able to edit these additional graphics elements without effecting your original photo in any way. When you save the final version of your work as a JPEG or PNG file, no one will be the wiser as all the layers are flattened and viewers of your work will be amazed at your creativity.

There are a large number of tutorials on the Paint.NET forums to achieve all sorts of graphics effects. Examples include simple graphics banners, making glass buttons, drop shadows and animations. To see some results, visit Ash's Paint.NET page, which also has plenty of tutorials to help you produce your own creations.

• Need help finding your way around? It's just a click away...»

• The webDotWiz Column is published fortnightly, on the same day as Rushworth's volunteer, fortnightly paper, The Waranga News, and updated regularly as sites are added to the webDotWiz Sites Directory.

• Comments? Questions? Contact the webmaster

• © Bernie Halpin, webDotWiz Online 2000-2007.