Let’s quickly go through what you can do with the Gimp. The painting function has the essential clone, airbrush or pencil tools and a powerful gradient and blend tool. You can also create and save your own brushes and patterns for later use. The program lets you manipulate your photos, adding layers, doing Bezier and polygonal selections or setting text. Load and save animations in a frame-as-layer format and batch process all your photos for quick editing. The multi-windowed interface can be moved around to fit your needs and resized according to your desktop space.

What’s more, the Gimp can be expanded with over 100 different plug-ins and extensions available on the Gimp’s website. These apply in majority for layer effects such as render, distort or blur and make a great addition to the ones already present in the program.

While the Gimp is user friendly, the installation process can be a bit hairy. Because the application works under the GTK Runtime Environment, you will have to install this kit to successfully launch the program. The process is fairly lengthy and some error messages tend to pop up, however if you persist, you will be able to install the Gimp properly on your PC

Despite this fairly hazardous installation process, the Gimp is a program we recommend. Whether you’re out of dough or are looking for a free alternative to Photoshop, the Gimp is excellent image manipulation software with all the tools you’d expect.

Download The GIMP 2.6.12 in Softonic

Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1 Update addresses some specific issues including fixes for scale errors, improved compatibility with QuarkXPress, acceleration of the opening of multiple windows and it now stores JPEG metadata correctly.

If you use Photoshop 7.0.1, Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1 is an essential bug fix download.

Download Adobe Photoshop Update 7.0.1 in Softonic

MacPaint X therefore contains many of the elements that made MacPaint popular i.e. ease of use and a simple palette based interface. Note that unfortunately, development of MacPaint X has discontinued and it will never come out of Beta. It also does not work on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or higher.

Main features of MacPaint X

MacPaint X offers all the tools you need to design your first raster graphics. It includes all the basic tools such as brush, eraser, line marker and a magnifying glass plus a rotation button to flip your images.

MacPaint X also includes a handy Undo button so that any mistakes can be immediately corrected. MacPaint X automatically saves your projects as you paint to ensure you don't lose your masterpieces.

Well organized interface

MacPaint X consists of three main floating windows:

- The first provides a customizable view of your creation
- The second provides quick access to editing tools (the palette)
- The third is used to undo actions, load or save a project

Compatible with many formats, MacPaint X is the ideal software for beginners in image editing. It's the closest thing to MS Paint since Paintbrush.

Download MacPaint X 0.3 Beta in Softonic

SeaShore is an open source image editor based on GIMP. It features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. It also supports multiple layers, alpha channel editing and uses the same native file format as GIMP. And due to Cocoa, it sports a much slicker OS X friendly user interface that definitely looks better than GIMP.

The beauty of SeaShore is that it's a lot simpler than GIMP and feels a bit closer to Photoshop in the way the menus are laid out. The downside of this, however, is that it's not as powerful as GIMP and lacks certain advanced editing features. In fact, even basic features such as Color Balance and Levels are missing from SeaShore. Stability can also occasionally be an issue but it usually manages to carry out most functions without any problems.

A slick OS X Cocoa style interface and a simpler GIMP style functionality will make SeaShore popular with anyone who has struggled with GIMP.

Download SeaShore 0.1.9 in Softonic

This means you shouldn't expect Pinta to be some kind of open source Photoshop clone. It does include some interesting features like support for layers, unlimited undo and redo, and a bunch of special filters and effects to spice up your images – but its nothing like a serious photo editor. It does, however, include a nice selection of drawing tools that can make Pinta a good choice as photo editor.

According to Pinta's developer, the program is still at an early stage of development – which may be the reason why some of its tools are not available yet. In any case, Pinta does look promising, so we'll keep an eye on this handy little editor as it grows.

Pinta is a simple drawing utility and image editor with a clean interface and an interesting set of tools.

Download Pinta 1.0 in Softonic

iPaint is a simple drawing application based on the classic Paintbrush application

The similarities between iPaint and Paintbrush are considerable. Everything from the interface to the editing tools and ease of use are copied to a tee. iPaint, however is a superior product - being easier to use, more polished and with a few more added features than Paintbrush

iPaint will mainly appeal to beginners (Photoshop fans need not apply) but it's also suitable for simple retouching, or kids that just want to have a good scribble. It features all the classic tools you'd expect from a paint package including pencils, eraser, brushes and geometric shapes. It is, however, highly frustrating in that there really isn't much scope for creative drawing, apart from scribbling and graffiti style effects.

Simple to use and an improvement on Paintbrush, iPaint is a good option for those that want a basic paint program without the fuss of a major paint package.

Download iPaint 1.9 v11 in Softonic

Download Inkscape 0.48.2 in Softonic

ImageWell can resize, crop, rotate your images and even store them remotely. It allows you to annotate your images with built-in shapes, labels and arrows. In addition, ImageWell allows you to extend its functionality thanks to third-party developers that have created templates.

ImageWell can handle most major image formats and has a built-in screen grab tool for screenshots. It's also surprisingly easy to drag and drop images into it from other applications. Although its quite basic, the third party add-ons allow you add layers, create collages, drop shadows, borders and much more. Other than that, you can also adjust the exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness.

Note however that ImageWell has recently been transferred to the Mac App Store. Users of previous versions will have to upgrade to the latest version via the App Store as it won't be made automatically.

ImageWell is a powerful and effective image editor that's high on features but lightweight and easy enough for anyone to use.

Download ImageWell 4.0.7 in Softonic

Collage Creator's main benefit lies in just how easy it is to use - technical newbies, children and the elderly would all be able to use it with a minimum of fuss. Simply drag and drop the selection of photos you want to use into the left hand panel, and Collage Creator will automatically arrange them in a loose collage on the right.

Once the photos are in Collage Creator, you can arrange them however you like simply by dragging with the mouse. It's very intuitive, and before you know it you'll be resizing and re-arranging your favorite photos to determine the most attractive layout. Collage Creator also allows you to add text, and a variety of backgrounds that are either a solid color, or one of you own photos.

Collage Creator's most complex area is the settings tab, but you only need to get involved with this if you want to. It's here that you'll be able to set borders around your photos, customize the shadow and modify the size of the canvas. This is especially easy with a variety of pre-set sizes and size ratios for you to choose from. One thing that's not so obvious, however, are the Move Up and Move Down buttons - these are actually bring to front/bring to back options, which is good to know.

Collage Creator is a collage maker that will appeal to the whole family - young and old alike.

Download Collage Creator Lite 2.0 in Softonic

If you've ever wanted to stretch your creativity to the limits, you know you'll probably need a graphics program to do it with. Adobe Rome is that and more.

Specifically designed for non-professionals such as small businesses, educators and general consumers, Adobe Rome is marketed as an easy-to-use alternative to other content creation programs. It allows just about anyone to create impressive multimedia documents without the need to spend hours learning how to use a slew of different applications for desktop publishing, design and website creation.

With Adobe Rome, you can create printed, electronic and web-based documents of all sorts. Users can integrate graphics, photography, text, videos, audio clips and animation into their content, to name just a few of the available options. This application is available as both a Adobe AIR-based cross platform desktop program and a browser-based web app.

Just a few examples of content users can create are business cards, posters, basic websites and interactive documents. This means that Adobe Rome is a fantastic option for students and business professionals alike. Families can also take advantage of Adobe Rome by creating websites or even a family photo album, covers for their DVDs or burned CDs and more.

While users might initially experience a bit of difficulty learning the ropes of Adobe Rome, that's really about all they'll have to overcome before they can jump head in to the creation process of whatever project they've set their sights on.

The sky is really the limit with Adobe Rome when it comes to easily creating a variety of different content, both on and off the web.

Download Adobe Rome 0.9 in Softonic

Even if you're not a nostalgic, it's a fun way to make music by using airplanes, cars and characters from Super Mario Bros. You can create music only in MIDI but this simplicity and Mario theme makes it ideal for kids that just want to have some fun.

To create music, you simply insert characters along the timeline. The different characters represent different sounds in Mario Paint Composer. Images placed on top of the line are high notes and lower notes are placed on the bottom line. Some controls at the bottom give control over playback although they are mainly limited to basic commands and controlling the tempo.

Once you've completed experimenting, simply record your song. The results are very limited in MIDI and you can't export yout creations to play on anything other than Mario Paint Composer.

Mario Paint Composer is a fun app for kids or those nostalgic for it on SNES.

Download Mario Paint Composer 2.00 in Softonic

For professional photographers, this can be a real pain especially if the EXIF data is all generic. The only way to change this is normally to go through them all manually. With shootShifter, you can simply drag and drop your images into the interface and it will automatically apply the EXIF data that you've configured.

When you drag the images into shootShifter, it immediately creates thumbnails for each images and displays them in chronological order. You can click on individual images to view them in a more detailed preview drawer which gives you the full EXIF data. To change the EXIF data, select a folder to make it active and then you can edit the EXIF data for all the images inside it thus preventing the need to go through them one by one.

This then makes it much easier when it comes to importing images into iPhoto, Picasa and other photo apps. The downside is that you can't roll back changes - once they've been made you're stuck with them unless you do a new edit.

Overall, shootShifter is a smarter and quicker way to edit the EXIF data of large numbers of photos instead of painstakingly going through them individually.

Download shootShifter 2.5 in Softonic

Download photo Drop 1.01 in Softonic

MozoDojo is a photo-mosaic creator that handle resolutions suitable to blow-up into a poster. It's extremely simple to use - just drag and drop an image into the main interface, or browse to it from the File menu. It's supposed to work with iPhoto and iTunes too and although I found it was integrated with them, I couldn't actually select any photos in my folders. It also lacks Picasa support.

MozoDojo is a deceptively powerful application, requiring the combination of CoreImage, QuartzComposer, CoreData, Spotlight, Quicktime and multi-threading - and yet it still remains very fast. Problems can occur though when saving your final images. Sometimes MozoDojo may hang or just crash on saving, although the majority of times it works fine.

Quick and fun to use, MozoDojo creates excellent Mosaics, although it can be prone to more than the odd bug.

Download MozoDojo 2.4.0 in Softonic