The Free Photo Editors May Be All You Need 

Not everyone needs Adobe Photoshop to make their photos look better. These free editors do about everything most people need except replace skies or remove objects and people from a picture.

Fastone Image Viewer does a LOT more than the name implies. Click on a photo file and it is displayed. Slide your pointer to the extreme right and full embedded information about the picture is displayed. Slide to the extreme left and menu for correcting the image is displayed.

Photofiltre V6 FREE is the earlier free version of this product from France that I still use. I like the ability to add text with special effects and to draw pointers. Also, if I take a screenshot, I can go to an empty screen and EDIT to "paste as new image."