I’ve scanned in a couple of documents for my dissertation, they’re not quite at the right angle, colours missed, and test is showing through (put white paper behind but its printed on the other side of the page), so I need to do a bit of photoshop type jiggery. Is there any free software our there which is suitable? Paint doesn’t quite do enough, can’t rotate by a specific number of degrees etc, and filling white back in is a painfully slow process by zooming in.
Your help is appreciated! Thanks.

Look on the Adobe site and get yourself a free 30 day demo of whatever one of their bits of software you want to use.

GIMP, bit different but does everything Photoshop does (almost).
link

Google for Gimpshop (GIMP with the UI changed to look like Photoshop…) or Paint.NET

Pixlr

another one for gimp.

or http://www.photoshop.com for an online editor.

Another Paint.NET fan 🙂

Paint.Net here. Very easy to just pick up and start using

I quite like mugtug darkroom

Fantastic, I’m set up with paint.net and done what I needed with 1 image already! Thanks again STW. I will probably try out GIMP at some point too, if nothing else just for the name 😆

+1 for Paint.NET. I tried really hard to get on with GIMP but I just don’t see eye to eye with it. I used to use Paint Shop Pro back when it came on three floppy disks and didn’t take itself quite so seriously, Paint.NET seems to be its spiritual modern successor.

Having said that, I’m about as artistic as a blind gibbon, so I’m prehaps not the best person to be giving advice on this subject. (-:

+1 GIMP

I use gimp all the time, personally and a bit for work I bought a book by Akkana Peck, v good, and there is loads and loads on the net.

GIMP is a fantastic tool, I just find it a bit OTT for the average user.

Paint.NET isn’t as powerful as GIMP but it’s powerful-enough for most day-to-day tasks while still being simple to use.

GIMP is a fantastic tool, I just find it a bit OTT for the average user.

I think that is completely true, I guess for me it’s always the default reply when the OP asks for a free photoshop alternative…