Recommendations for a free image viewer with strong editing features

[motiontwelve]

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 
 

[mouser]

Others will be able to give better advice for editing, which I rarely do, but my general advice might be to stick with irfanview or xnview for your #5 (fast image browsing) and some quick stuff like #2 (cropping).
That will make it easier to find an editing tool that meets your other requirements.

[MilesAhead]

I'm with mouser.  I don't know about viewing but for the editing I'm told Gimp For Windows is the free tool that can do anything PS can do.  The UI is a bit different so it often deters giving it a fair trial.

[Renegade]

Echoing some of the above sentiments, I've not yet seen a viewer that really is very good with editing for anything except basics. MilesAhead's recommendation for the GIMP is solid. You may also want to look at Paint.NET.

[Shades]

One of the DC members here (Vitaly if memory serves me right) has made RWpaint, which has editing covered pretty well.

PaintStar is another alternative (also free, but this one can be used as portable...at least the version that I have here does)

And if Gimp isn't what you like, there is Krita.

Still, a good viewer is not an editor and a good editor isn't a good viewer.

[anandcoral]

I use PhotoFiltre7 http://www.photofilt...tudio.com/pf7-en.htm, for most of the features you have mentioned apart from IrfanView.

PhotoFiltre7 is freeware and may fulfill your need.

Regards,

Anand

[hulkbuster]

I use Irfan View for quick view of images, which also does some mild editing for me.
But to make some editing, i use Fast Stone Image Viewer, it can also be made portable, settings can be
backed up.
It does most if not all the functions u mentioned.

[Curt]

Maybe forget about having a super editing viewer! In some viewers you simply click a keyboard hotkey and the picture will open in 1 of 3 of your genuine editors! In my setup Shift+1 will open app1 which I use only for cropping. Shift+2 will open another app for painting, and Shift+3 will open my super editor.

This procedure is faster than searching for one or the other editing programs, because IrfanView also has a keyboard hotkey of its own: Ctrl+Shit+i.

Sadly, IrfanView itself and most of the plugins are not "Unicode". I am not all happy recommending IrfanView!  

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[tomos]

# 5 - fast image browsing - or more specifically, fast thumbnail loading - can be extremely important if you're browsing large folders, or also displaying content from sub-folders.
-
My favourite from that POV is ExifPro, but note:
browsing folders is not particularly user-friendly (wont show tree view above current folder)
costs ~ $20

I would ideally want a viewer to be tied into my file-manager - but none of the file-managers have done what it takes to make a decent basic image-viewer (I'm talking about an image-viewer as a separate window showing images, from which you can easily open the image you're viewing in an external editor and/or copy the path of the image).

I cant comment about image organisers (I do own one, but havent used it enough to comment on it - there is an image orgnaizer thread here on dc, if you do a search you may find some helpful info - I have some more comments about ExifPro there).

[sword]

thumbnail viewing - two sizes, very fast image opening: Linux Fatdog64_700 portable live DVD free
most of the requested features: Gimp included in Fatdog (above) and many other free linux distributions
most of the requested features: Krita (Gimp on steroids) several sources for free, live DVDs. My favorite is KaOS_14.11
for inserting/editing shapes and text I often use Karbon (free) and save to .png before opening as a layer in Gimp

[motiontwelve]

Sorry for the delay.  Thanks for the tips. Like most have recommended, I will have to use a viewer along with an editor like Gimp to accomplish these tasks.