Working with digital images

[LAPIII]

I thought that Digicamhelp had somewhere a list of downloads and other softwares.  Anyways, please tell me what you suggest I should get, preferably free.  

I read that Picasa isn't much of an editor, but an organizer.  I have Photo Explosion 2.0, but never installed it because of bad reviews.  I have Kodak EasyShare, but never used it, and Adobe PhotoShop Starter Edition, its just too simple and doesn't fulfill my expectancy of an editor.  I assume that Kodak Easyshare is about the same.

What I meant by simple is not many functions and the functions are mostly "Auto" and not measured as I want.  I want one that can do what I started in the question at the following link, but to keep the original colors of everything but the face.  Pease tell me how you think that I can do that.

http://askville.amazon.com/askville/OpenQuestionViewer.do?requestId=2586530

[Mike54]

If you check back on your original post here you will see that Picasa can actually do what you want and it's quite simple.   Another "free" software that might is Gimp but I haven't used it in quite some time so I don't know how easy it may be for you to learn. As I indicated in my response to your original post, I use Paint Shop Pro which is less that $100 as is Photo Shop Elements. Both of these also have 30 day trials if you want to "try before you buy".