As you may have read in anohter thread, Ive recently had some pretty serious computer related issues. Resulting in me losing the photo editing software I was using. 

What I was using was Photoshop6. I dont think it was a legit copy, but I really dont remember where I got it from to begin with, its just a program I always had on my comp. Even though I didnt really use it much untill I started taking Pinky pics.
The fact is, a couple weeks ago my old computer (the one I did all my writing on, stored all my pics on, and used for role playing) had a massive,and I mean massive, hard drive failure. Sector 0, which houses the drive info and file structure of the comp had become corrupted and therefore rendering the entire drive unreadable.
I had to take my comp in to get it fixed, and the guy there had to use a special program to salvage files off my drive. Even then many of my story files, and picture files (Pinky pics included) have been lost and/or badly damaged. He did manage to salvage around 15,000 picture and text files, but although due to the nature of the HDD failure they were all un-named. So I had to spend an entire day sorting through each file individually. 

Anyway, so this brings me to now. And the need for now pic editing software. (Cause while its fun to play with, MSpaint really sucks for serious pic editing.) What I need is some simple pic editing software. Preforably free to download and simple enough to understand, that a monkey could use it. Cause I am by no means 'arty'. 

Any suggestions?

I haven't used these two but they have always been recommended to me (and they are free!)
GIMP (considered the "free Photoshop")
and also Pixia http://park18.wakwak.com/~pixia/ 
Like I said, I have yet to use them but the people I know that do use them like it.
Good luck, I hope this helps! 

what do you mean by simple? You could use Google's Picassa, it has a killer organising features, and that is primarly what it does, but it also allows you to edit photos, you can do things like remove red eye, crop, adjust contrast and colour. It also has some filters to turn pictures b&w or sepia, etc. I've tried it before, but since I'm a photoshop junkie, I'd never give it up    You can find Picassa here: http://picasa.google.com/ It really does have only basic editing features, so it might be not enough for you though.. 

Ack - MS Paint for photo editing?!  don't torture yourself that way!

Gimp is great!  Once you get used to the slightly different menus compared to Photoshop, it's just as powerful. Since it's open source, it is free too. My first choice is usually  Photoshop, but for quick edits and touchups, it's sometimes easier for me to use GIMP.

> URL to GIMP homepage <

Even though Photoshop is 20x more complicated a piece of software behind the scenes, I find it way easier to do simple stuff like resizing in it. Paint's navigation and way of doing things is pretty annoying.

(The program I'd suggest is already mentioned: GIMP )

I'd suggest photoshop elements (it's a limited version of photoshop, enough to do some very nice photo editing, but not so much that it gets confusing)... it comes as a pack-in with almost everything; printers, scanners, tablets, cameras... they're almost as annoying as AOL discs , so there is a good chance someone might have an unused one lying around. 

Well photoshop costs money. Unless you wanna get it the pirates way.
And while I enjoyed using it. I always got confused with all its features and what stuff did and the like.

I might give GIMP a look....aside from the suggestive name.

Photoshop Elements like blur says is a good altermative to Photoshop, I hear doesn't have as much as you'd think missing compared to Photoshop... something like no CMYK mode (for print work) and can't remember what else...

...and it doesn't give you as many options for tweaking styles and stuff, but otherwise it's a very good program, which you can probably get for free if you happen to know any graphic designers who've been stocking up on new equipment lately... or anyone who's bought a scanner, printer, tablet, computer etc, recently. 

I was going to recommend Photoshop Elements too, but blur and sai beat me to it. 

I would suggest Photoshop Elements.  Since you are used to Photoshop already, this one is a less expensive alternative to Photoshop. 

Also, I highly suggest you start backing up your pictures from now on!  Ever since my old computer crashed 4 years ago and I lost a lot of my earlier digicam pics, I have always made backups of my pics.  Now that I have a new laptop, I make it a point to backup all my files every 3 months to dvd.  I also save the unedited pics in case I need to re-edit or resize for printing them.

GIMP is what I've been told time and again, and I've started using it. Its taking a while to get used to it, but its not too complicated. If you are used to photoshop there is a ver. of GIMP called GIMPshop that rearranges everything to resemble photoshop. Go here for more info - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop . and its free  can't beat that