Pixia and PhotoScape

Pixia looks like a promising program, but I can't make it open tif files. Since most of my files are tifs, that's kind of a deal breaker.

PhotoScape has a rather unique interface. Once you get used to it, you can find quite a lot to work with. The page section allows you to combine pictures into collages (even though I am not a scrapbooker, I can see how this would work well for folks who are). The print section gives you the ability to put multiple pictures on one page, which could save money on paper.

The viewer section lets you see thumbnails of the pictures in your folders. The editor section is where things get really interesting, with quite a few special effects under filter. (The "make a box" was a favorite, although I can not think of any practical use for it. Water painting turned out better than most of the painting effects that I have seen.)

The cropping and rotating tools work well. There are quite a few fun possibilities involving text balloons, adding cartoons, etc., but I have not worked to any great extent with these.

I have not found any tools that allow one to erase flaws or retouch (mole removal does some, but not enough for my purposes), so I assume you'll need another program to handle that.

PhotoScape and Pixia are free.