Photoshop alternatives please

Hi all

What photo editing programmes do you all use ?

I'm not paying 60 quid for photoshop...because I'm tight ...surely there are good ones which are free ?

I use the basic image adjustments in Photos for Mac. If I want to add "effects" I usually send the image to my iPad and use a couple of inexpensive editing apps, Mextures and PhotoToaster. For dialogue or captions, I use Plasq Comic Life.

But I do not have anything with which to do layering or to cut and paste bits and pieces from multiple images sources, so no fancy backgrounds or smoke or blood or explosion effects for me.

There is a limited "Instant Alpha" effect in Comic Life for cutting out and layering images, but I have not had much success with it.

{UPDATE} - I see in your other post that you are looking for a way to edit out joints. I use the "retouch" tool in Photos for Mac to do that. I don't know what the Windows equivalent to Photos might be. Corel Paintshop Pro, maybe. I do not know if there is a free or a trial version.

Cheers Dave I will have a look at the ones you suggested to see if there's a windows equivalent.