GIMP at http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp-win is FREE software.
It provides plenty of gadgets and gizmos in it. While it's not too easy
to use, what it lacks in ease of use it seems to make up for in other
ways. It's a paint and photo editing package and provides ways
to draw lines and connect photos, create fades and such.

It offers the following features which make it competetive with
commercial software of all types...

1) Layering
2) Animation
3) Color contrast, brightness, blending, fading, and more
4) Text insertion

If you're good with artwork, and you have some patience, the
package is great. I only have one complaint so far involving the
ability to grab and drag objects. I know it's there, but I just
don't see the hand with a set of fingers in the Tool box and that
throws me for loops. Oh, one more complaint, it requires two
downloads, both of which are available at the link above, free
of charge. It requires GTK (whatever that is and does, I don't
know, but it installs certain DLLs into the %commonfiles%
folder. And that needs installing first, then the GIMP package
gets installed.

Hope this helps.

Jim Carlock
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