Picasa - A free image editing program.
Picasa is a free software download from Google that can organize all your photos on your computer as well as edit them. While it is not going to allow you to add meta data to a photograph or batch rename, for the beginner it is a good place to start. And for those intimidated by Photoshop with either it's price or interface, Picasa holds its own with quick fixes and features a more intuitive cropping tool.
Picasa is easy to learn and allows you to see the changes you make to your photos in real time. Having said that it is worth mentioning that this program is not suitable for any sort of serious cataloging and does not allow one to edit image EXIF data and has no meta data tools. What is a historical photo without the caption or history of the photo?
Even the best historical photographs are normally not of great value unless you know something about what is being pictured. Making sure all the information on the back of the photograph or any other information you have on the image is attached or kept with your photograph is critical during your digitizing projects, but even for those who may have access to the latest CS3 Photoshop and/or sophisticated collection management software Picasa may have a place in your workflow.
For example, it may be useful to quickly migrate data from a camera or scanner for quick and painless cropping and sorting. Of course, museums and those digitizing images need a tool that associates a written history of the photo with the image itself which is certainly not Picasa. Photoshop, the most recognized and popular image editing software has good metadata tools. You can create and apply templates to hundreds of photos at a time and then you have only to worry about the few fields like description that will be different. There are also a number of Controlled Vocabulary Keyword Catalog programs and image management programs such as iView Media (now purchased by Microsoft and named Expression Media), BreezeBrowser, Image Info Toolkit, BlueBoxKeyWordCatalog, Photo Mechanic or Adobe's new entry; Photoshop LIghtroom. Whatever your sophistication, Picasa is a fun tool that may help with the basic chores of working with images and for smaller collection that have little or no history to apply it may be all you need to edit your historical photographs.