Played with some photo editing software. Found Fast Stome Image Viewer which is excellent. Unfortunately it is not free for commercial use. Finally landed on Paint.Net and Photo Plus.
Together with Picasa, Paint.Net and Photo Plus should satisfy my needs.
Spent some time looking into the free C++ compiler again, the DevCpp. Also looked at wxWidgets. I am really happy with this combination of tools that allows me to write windows programs without relying on Microsoft tools.
Compiling wxWidgets requires a little effort. But it is good to compile to understand its capabilities and features.