It’s all very well buying a photo editing package with lots of bells, whistles and complicated tools, but actually having to learn and use all that functionality can – to put it mildly – be slightly off-putting. Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 3 is designed to simplify the process of improving your photos by providing a number of one-click tools that can quickly improve individual photos or entire albums up to scratch.

Ordinarily, Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 3 would cost you $9.99, but the good news is that you can download and use the software for free via this link – all you have to do is register by email within 10 days and you won’t have to pay a dime.

Once downloaded, the program installs like any other – one tip, choose the custom installation option to avoid installing a browser toolbar. Once installation has finished, your browser will open and you’ll be invited to input your email address in order to register the program. You can do this from within the program itself, so there’s no need to register immediately (you have 10 days to do so).

You’ll now find yourself in the main program itself, which utilises a multi-paned approach to letting you select your photos and then fix them. Select the folder containing your photos, which will appear as thumbnails in the top-most pane. From here click your chosen photo to select it, and then you can access all of the program’s quick-fix buttons: optimize quickly corrects colour, brightness and contrast (click Color Correction to perform these tweaks manually using sliders). You can also remove red-eye, rotate the image or apply effects like greyscale or sepia too.

Nothing is done to the actual photo until you click Save, and there’s a handy “Show Original” button that lets you quickly compare how your changes fare to the original photo. It all adds up to an application that delivers quick and effective results for the busy snapper who doesn’t have the time to perform editing tweaks manually using their regular image-editing tool.

Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 3 is available now for free download for PCs running Windows XP, Vista and 7. Free email registration is required to use the program beyond 10 days. An upgrade to the latest version (4) is also available within the program for just $5.99 – see Ashampoo’s website for more details.