I used to enjoy photography but flogged all my kit years ago when skint.
There are some amazing bargains out there for DSLR as the industry has gone mirrorless.
So I have bought a Nikon D7100 and 18-300 DX lens for relatively little money to start with and am looking to get going. I used to own a D90 so like the Nikon set up.
I am saving pics in RAW and jpeg.
I don’t really want to spend £10 a month on Lightroom so am looking for a decent free software prog for PC.
Any suggestions?
Is this is for a PC or MAC
or
I use paint.net - it’s pretty basic in terms of effects (e.g. there’s nothing in the way of proportional warping just a grab-bag of distortion repeats), but in straightforward image tweaking it’s very clean for stuff like lightening shadows/darkening highlights or tweaking tone/saturation and doesn’t add any artefacts at any sane scale, unless of course that’s what you intend. The UI is basically ca. 2005 Photoshop. I find it stable, unbuggy, consistent and not resource hungry. And it’s free.
Gimp is pretty much the best free software. I used it for quite a while before getting Lr.
I’ve tried loads of them and although it’s never going to be as good as Lightroom (which I use now) it is very capable.
Editing is much more effective using RAW files, JPEGS are already compromised before you start.
I use the free LR app, i run it on a tablet when on my travels. I assume it can be used on a PC, dont know, but worth a look.
Agree, I still use faststone, 15+ years since your recommendation.
Thanks for everyone’s input, really appreciate you taking the time.
Going to give Gimp a go.
If you really want to do multiple masking type manipulations. Have a look at affinity photo 2 It’s dirt cheap and less of a clusterfuck
I have no idea if I want to do that or not, but when I find out what it is I will give it some consideration 
