Help with photo editing

I've finally decided on what to get my mother, rather belatedly, for her birthday. One part of the present will be a clematis texensis or two. I've been telling her to get one for years, she needs something later-flowering and the shape of those clematises is usually gorgeous. Actually, she's muttering about finally getting one, but it won't matter if she does, since she has a gazebo, pergola, apple trees and various walls for hosting climbers, and her attitude is that you can never have too many clematises or roses in the garden. I can dig out some pictures of the garden, if anyone is interested. I designed the hard landscaping myself long-distance with pretty much no measurements, which I'm very proud of!

The other idea is to get an old photo of the dogs professionally printed and framed. I've found this place which can do it, but I need to get the image into a suitable state first. This is where we hit a problem. It needs to be messed around with in a graphics editor, and either Gimp is playing up or it's because my laptop is slowly dying, but every time I try to edit the image it just crashes. Is there anyone who can do this for me? It needs to be rotated a bit, cropped (don't worry about getting any particular aspect ratio, just get a ratio that suits it, probably something close to square), and have the occasional white dots edited out of it, which is the longest job but not as bad as it could be. You can see a smaller version of the photo (roughly cropped, though I'll probably want a bit less background than that) here. If you leave your e-mail address in the comments (which are screened by default), I'll send you a link to the full-size version. I'd put it up here, but it's linked to an e-mail address I'd rather not make public.

For those of you who don't have the time or inclination to edit pictures but are arty, do you have any thoughts on frames, mounts and such? I'm thinking a fairly simply medium or dark wood frame and a pale ivory mount, but I can't work out the sizes and proportions. If I make the photo about 6" square, what sizes should I make the frame and mount?

Help with photo editing

I've finally decided on what to get my mother, rather belatedly, for her birthday. One part of the present will be a clematis texensis or two. I've been telling her to get one for years, she needs something later-flowering and the shape of those clematises is usually gorgeous. Actually, she's muttering about finally getting one, but it won't matter if she does, since she has a gazebo, pergola, apple trees and various walls for hosting climbers, and her attitude is that you can never have too many clematises or roses in the garden. I can dig out some pictures of the garden, if anyone is interested. I designed the hard landscaping myself long-distance with pretty much no measurements, which I'm very proud of!

The other idea is to get an old photo of the dogs professionally printed and framed. I've found this place which can do it, but I need to get the image into a suitable state first. This is where we hit a problem. It needs to be messed around with in a graphics editor, and either Gimp is playing up or it's because my laptop is slowly dying, but every time I try to edit the image it just crashes. Is there anyone who can do this for me? It needs to be rotated a bit, cropped (don't worry about getting any particular aspect ratio, just get a ratio that suits it, probably something close to square), and have the occasional white dots edited out of it, which is the longest job but not as bad as it could be. You can see a smaller version of the photo (roughly cropped, though I'll probably want a bit less background than that) here. If you leave your e-mail address in the comments (which are screened by default), I'll send you a link to the full-size version. I'd put it up here, but it's linked to an e-mail address I'd rather not make public.

For those of you who don't have the time or inclination to edit pictures but are arty, do you have any thoughts on frames, mounts and such? I'm thinking a fairly simply medium or dark wood frame and a pale ivory mount, but I can't work out the sizes and proportions. If I make the photo about 6" square, what sizes should I make the frame and mount?