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Excellent digital signage content usually involves custom creation of "advertisements". Most people use products like PhotoShop. There are many amazing software products for editing photos and images that are free.

When considering which ones are right for you, the following factors should be taken into consideration:

• What do you wish to accomplish with a graphics editor? Add text to photo or create images from scratch?
  How big is the program? There's no point in learning to tame an elephant if you just want the basics.
  How easy is the program to use? After an hour, are you on a roll or ready to tear your hair out?

Also, you may want to consider having a couple graphics editors available to keep it simple. Even with advanced editors, there are subtle differences that make some better suited to certain tasks then others. For instance, one may have an easier layer manager while another may have a better collection of filters.

If you come across any free graphic editing packages, please let our digital signage community know with a post.

Gimp is an amazingly powerful editor that can be downloaded at http://www.gimp.org. It works on Windows and other operating systems as well.

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (or GIMP) is currently the most widely supported full-blown image editor and has capabilities measuring up to a commercial program that you'd normally pay hundreds of dollars for. Some may be put out by the two-pronged installation process and the 'blown apart' user interface but this is nevertheless an impressive program that offers a full menu of graphics editing tools and features including paint brushes, airbrush, clone tool, selection tools, working with layers and channels, a wide variety of filters and more. Another feature is the Script Fu option which provides a collection of ready-made filter 'macros' that will automatically transform your text into any one of a wide range of logo designs.

PhotoFiltre is a full-featured photo and graphics editor that works with Windows for beginner to intermediate level users who don't need to work with layers. If you don't know what layers are then this program is perfect for you. It is also small to download, and has an intuitive interface that includes a clone tool, magic wand, gradients, ready-made and user defined shapes tools, numerous special effects filters and more. There are also additional free plugins available to enhance your installation.

You can find PhotoFiltre at http://photofiltre.free.fr.

XnView is a great graphics viewer/converter that is lets you browse your hard drive with a Windows Explorer type viewer, read any of 400 graphics file formats and convert them to your choice of 60 graphics file formats. It also provides some fundamental graphics editing features including resizing, adjusting color, adding text, redeye correction, applying filters and more. This program is ideal for situations where you just want to do a quick and dirty touch-up and conversion and you don't feel like dealing with a fully-loaded advanced graphics editor.

You can find it at http://www.xnview.com.

This is the English version of a popular Japanese image editor. Although it does not have a standard user interface, this program has all the features you'd find in a typical high-end. Be sure to grab the help file that is provided separate from the program download as you're definitely going to need it. A good complement to this program is XnView which can convert the Pixia native file format (.PXA) to .GIF.

You can find Pixia at http://www.ne.jp/asahi/mighty/knight

PhotoPlus 6 is an excellent image editor with an array of features that easily rivals that of some high-end graphics editors and, in fact, sports a tool panel surprisingly similar to Paint Shop Pro. For advanced users, PhotoPlus 6 supports layers and masks and it allows you to apply deformable text, create animated GIFs, and has image slicing/mapping capabilities which can then automatically turn out HTML. It also includes special effects filters as well as ready-made shape selection tools.

You can find PhotoPlus at http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/photoplus