You are not afraid of Google and like to tinker with your photos?

Google Nik Collection is free now.

Excerpt from Today we’re making the Nik Collection available to everyone, for free. Photo…

Great, another middleman to collect stats.

--there's no such thing as a free lunch.

The thing is that Google apparently hasn't updated this suite for sometime, and it going free may mean that it will never see anything more in the way of support or software updates.

hahaha
good point!

...and still needs a total interface overhaul.
(I'm using it anyway)

and a proper realtime brush painting system (which is why i dont use it - right now).

Disconnect can search for you privately on DuckDuckGo. Apparently I always thought that DuckDuckGo is also a private search engine? Regardless, I may obtain this Nix Collection Suite and find out what's the big deal. Never heard about it before now.

Suite? Weren't these Photoshop plugins?

The tools come as plugins for your preferred photo editor and as stand-alone apps.

Ah, I see thanks.

Any other free picture editing programs worth having? Gimp is good but not for everything.

Paint.NET - Free Software for Digital Photo Editing

Or have a look at
Best Free Digital Image Editor for Windows

Best Free Portable Apps for Photos and Graphics

Best Free Windows 64-bit Photos and Graphics

Gizmo's Freeware is always a good site to find and discuss free software.

While I do have the Adobe CS6 Suite, I must say that I've been a long time user of Paint .NET. Back when Adobe Photoshop was the bomb, it was prohibitively expensive compared to something like another alternative at the time, which was under the the $100 range and still pretty powerful.

When Paint .NET came along, it supported some really cool and necessary functionality, specifically layers and of course, the price was the best, *free*. (I did however, donate via PayPal.)

Now, when it comes to 3D modeling, rendering, animation, etc. on a budget, I don't think anything can beat Blender.