I've been looking everywhere and so far the only two apps that somewhat cover my needs are XNView and IrfanView but even these two popular viewers leave lots of room for improvement.  Below are the main features that I'm after:
1. Auto-rotate based on EXIF and object detection
2. Crop
3. Borders with transparent shadow
4. Manual rotation
5. Fast image browsing
6. Perspective (vertical and horizontal keystone) adjustments
7. Insert text objects with options to set font, size, alignment, shadow, transparency, glow, and ability to re-modify them before committing (saving) the changes
8. Insert shape objects with options to resize, line width, line colour, width colour, transparency, shadow and ability to re-modify them before committing the edits
9. Insert images with ability to resize and shadow
10. Layers or foreground and background ordering
11. Convenient tagging to simplify organizing
12. Auto-enhance (automatically improve contrast, levels, colours, sharpness, reduce noise, etc) with one click
13. Portability
14. Pixel-level editing like in MS Paint with ability to erase, clone and copy areas
15. Free. If no such free options exist, the cheaper the better.
16. Obfuscate (blur out)
17. Plugin support (photoshop 8bf format would be a plus)

For paid, Zoner or ACDSee would probably come the closest but I'm wondering if somebody has heard of similar free tools 
 

I have probably tried all of the local desktop search tools and nothing compares to X1.
Speed, beautiful previews using Oracle Outside In (acquired from Stellent), stability.

If anyone follows OutlinerSoftware forum, I have posted this Evernote v2.2.1.386.0 appreciation thread that might be interesting to people looking for a free, powerful, speedy, stable and cloudless note taking/organizing app.  I thought I would share here as well to help out those in need:
After months of searching for a local note taking app, I realized that the only one that still meets all of my needs is the ancient version of Evernote, specifically v2.2.1.386.0 (can be found here).  The desktop version contains additional features like OCR and installs without admin rights.
I have probably compared almost all of the alternatives in the following link that work locally:
Note Apps
In terms of search (multi partial keywords, fast-as-you-type), automatic OCR, rich text support including pictures and tables, tagging, speed, portability, minimalistic GUI, multi-windows if needed, and cloudless compatibility, Evernote v2.2.1.386.0 came out on top, way ahead of the competition.  Even with Win 8 or 8.1, it will still work if installed and ran in compatibility mode.
As most Evernote followers probably already know, with the introduction of v3, the company took a different approach and started stripping features and pushing for full cloud dependence.  By trying to maximize profits, an amazing product had to take a side turn.
I am interested to hear who else is still using this old gem and your views about the subject of negative impact of business factors on software development.