lightening and generally altering photos
 

does anyone know how you can lighten a photo?are there any free programmes i can download that will alow me to mess around with the look of my photos?

I'm not 100% sure what free programs can but I know in photoshop, you can use the brightness/contrast tool to lighten them.

I tend to use photoshop on most of my photos, but only to enhance the colouring, or brighten them. I don't personally on my photos, but I do know how to remove spots, and generally neaten them up.

Off the top of my head, GIMP is almost exactly like photoshop. Quite hard to use at first but I'm sure it has similar capabilities.

Hope this helps.