For most people PhotoShop is overkill. It’s powerful, but complicated. It takes a long time to open. It costs a lot. And most people only use a very small number of Photoshop’s features, anyway. Paint.NET is my image editor of choice. It allows you to create, edit and manipulate images. It is a free program, only a 1.5MB download, and it is fantastic. Paint.NET requires the Microsoft .NET framework (which you probably have already installed).

About
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.