It's really unbelievable to find free software applications as amazing as Photoscape. But as they say, truth is stranger than fiction. Here you have a really excellent photo editing tool that includes just about everything you need to view, optimize, edit, print and have fun with your photos, all for free.

Photoscape strikes us from the very beginning with an uncommon interface design from which you can choose what you want to do: view pictures, optimize those that didn't come out so well, print several photos on a single page collage-style or perhaps add any of the dozens of filters and special effects included in the program. Other extra tools featured in Photoscape are a file renamer, a color picker, a screen capture tool and even a RAW converter.

We really have nothing negative to say about Photoscape. Just download it, test it, love it and keep it forever. It's free!

Download Photoscape 3.2 in Softonic

The Gimp is the open source reference in image manipulation. This free application will allow you to retouch, author and edit your photos thanks to a wide set of tools.

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 result 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. The friendly interface and expandability make this a program of choice.

Download The GIMP 2.6.1 in Softonic

Hardcopy is a professional and easy-to-use application that allows you to capture screenshots under Windows. You can capture rectangular parts of the screen as well as complete windows. Captured images can be cut easily and colour shade can be modified. Pictures can be saved, copied in Clipboard, edited with any imaging program or printed.

Download HardCopy 17.0.08 in Softonic

Numerador Fusión is intended to make our printing tasks lighter and easier, by providing us with an almost fully automatic method to print out incremental documents such as bills, invoices, member cards and so on.

Despite the terrible English translation, the program itself is easy to use thanks to a wizard-style interface that guides you step by step through the whole process. But if at any given moment you need to take a look at the program's Help, be aware that it's in Spanish.

This wouldn't be much of an issue because the program is pretty simple, but we did receive some error messages when trying to save the template and we would have appreciated it if we could have searched the Help file for some advice.

Download Numerador Fusión 1.0.13 MAX! in Softonic

Poster Forge is a fun tool that enables you to create posters with your own digital pictures in a very easy way. Unlike other similar tools, which only create larger versions of the image for you to print out, Poster Forge adds some cool effects that can turn any picture into a motivational poster, movie poster or a Far West "Wanted" style poster.

The program's interface is divided into three tabs (one for each kind of poster) and includes all the tools you need to customize them. Simply add a picture, type in any text you want, tweak a few settings and you're pretty much done. Unfortunately, there were things I couldn't customize, such as font size. Also, even though there's a tool to move the picture around and make it fit better, it's very limited and sometimes the picture needs to be cropped with a third-party app.

Once finished, the poster can be saved as an image file or conveniently printed as a poster with the built-in printing tool, which enables you to optimize poster printing and make them easier to assemble.

Turn your photos into original posters very easily and in just a few minutes.

Download Poster Forge 1.01.11 in Softonic

CyberLink is a comprehensive program designed to let you manage, edit, optimize and share your photos and videos.

CyberLink MediaShow allows you to arrange your photo collection in any way you like, supporting the dragging and dropping of images. You can organize and enhance your videos or photos easily or you can even create a personalized screensaver for your computer by dragging pictures onto the screensaver icon.

CyberLink MediaShow features what the designers call a "Liquid Interface" which allows you to browse pictures and videos in a unique way. The entire interface is in 3D which obviously puts a lot of pressure on your RAM but it really makes images jump out at you in much the same way as browsing pictures on Picasa. CyberLink MediaShow immediately detects external devices as soon as they are connected and imports the images into its library for instant use.

CyberLink MediaShow has everything to make your photo slideshows into something special but it does require a lot of RAM and processing power.

Download CyberLink MediaShow 4.0.1805.7150 in Softonic

ImagePut is all about sharing images and organizing them into beautiful albums in an easy-to-use and attractive interface.

However, it can also be used to share cool things you see on the Internet with others. So for example, if you see a great picture on a website, you can drop it into the interface and instantly share it with your friends. ImagePut allows you to upload a collection of internet images in as well as create image based presentations.

ImagePut works with most major image formats and allows you to upload images to Flickr, Inspiration, Glowfoto, TinyPic and PicOodle! You can upload files separately or in batches and it even includes a very basic but functional editor to add elements to a photograph or eliminate red-eye.

ImagePut doesn't really offer anything out of the ordinary for a piece of image presentation software but it does at least cater for all image needs whether it's presentations or just sharing.

Download ImagePut 1.2 in Softonic

Blackboards are what I grew up with at school although nowadays it's all about fancy whiteboards and computer screens.

Ardoise is a old style blackboard that allows you to write, draw and erase whatever you want. When you launch it, Ardoise remains hidden as a transparent small version which is called "Hide mode" and when you want to draw, just switch to "Draw mode" and you can use Ardoise just as you would a normal blackboard but with virtual chalk.

It can even "remember" different boards for different days of the week - so you can set a reminder board for every day of the week. You can also highlight the most important things in different colors. There's even a small syncing tool which allows you to upload your Ardoise board to an FTP server for downloading on another device later.

Blackboards don't come much more sophisticated or useful than Ardoise although it would have been nice to see it incorporate reminder alarms.

Download Ardoise 1.13 in Softonic

Fedit Image Editor is an image processing tool which appears simple at first but contains a wealth of editing tools.

These include advanced image filtering options, editing tools, multilayer documents, workflow history and multiple document interface model. However, Fedit Image Editor is still very much a work in progress although it seems pretty stable and polished as far as the eye can see.

Fedit Image Editor is certainly very flexible allowing you to work with just about any format imaginable. Like all standard image editors, it can focus on one particular art of an image or take the image as a whole and work in it that way. It has selection tools ranging from rectangles to polygons and can automatically and or cut text from images allowing you to redo and undo at will. It also allows you to change its skin, resize photos and add effects to change the look of the photographs such as making them look like collages or watercolours.

Fedit Image Editor really doesn't have any outstanding features that distinguish it from the crowd but it is at least lightweight and easy to use.

Download Fedit Image Editor 1.0.0.6 Beta in Softonic

Say you just came back from a long holiday trip and you have a ton of photos to show. Would you punish your friends and relatives with a two-hour photo album session or would you rather create something more special?

With Photo Slide Show you can create nice photo presentations in a snap. It doesn't include all the bells and whistles you find in other similar apps: the interface design is quite basic and the program basically lets you load photos, insert transition effects and add some background music. Also, the only accepted target format is AVI, and as the program lacks a progress bar, you have no clue about the progress of your presentation.

That said, the truth is that Photo Slide Show is a handy solution when all you need is a quick way to create a photo presentation without having to sit in front of the PC for two hours. It includes a varied selection of transition effects and can synchronize images and music automatically, so that they last exactly the same.

Photo Slide Show may be simpler than other similar tools, but it's also one of the easiest ones you can use to create a presentation with your photos.

Download Photo Slide Show 3.2 in Softonic

Easy GIF Animator is powerful yet very easy to use software for creating and editing animated GIF images. With this animated GIF editor you can easily create animated pictures, banners and buttons in no time.

You can use special features to add stunning visual effects and prepare your animation for publishing on your web page. Easy GIF Animator supports all types of GIF animation and provides high compression and great quality for your animated GIF images. To top it all off, Easy GIF Animator is the best priced animated GIF editor on the market today.

Download Easy GIF Animator 4.8 in Softonic

PIXresizer is a free image resizer PIXresizer to easily create web and e-mail friendly versions of your images with reduced file sizes. The reduced files are saved in a different folder, so your original images are not altered at all.

PIXresizer offers several different resizing methods to choose from and can automatically recognize image sizes to calculate the best fit. In addition, it can convert between image formats (JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG and TIFF), rotate images, convert to grayscale and resize multiple images in batch mode.

A great companion for webmasters and digital photographers.

Download PIXresizer 2.0.3 in Softonic

ID-sized photos tend to be something that you never have enough of and, given that it can be a pain to go to the closest mall and get some new ones taken, you could just take a recent photo and make multiple copies of it from the comfort of your PC. IDPhotoStudio is a program that will create and print passport sized photos for you in a snap.

Featuring only the bare necessities, IDPhotoStudio, will handle the job in seconds, allowing you to drag and drop your picture onto the interface. You can then select between three ID Photo sizes: US, Canada or France. Because you often need a certain number of photos printed out, IDPhotoStudio has a little drag meter to let you select how many photos you’ll need, from 1 to 15. Click on the print button to get the paper copies of your photo.

IDPhotoStudio is an original idea, and it’s good to see someone come up with a program to quickly print out ID photos. However, the application left us disappointed for a number of reasons. First of all, it doesn’t respect the aspect ratio of photos, so if you drag a large image there’s a risk it’ll appear distorted. Also, when it comes to editing functions, IDPhotoStudio only includes the option to apply sepia or monochrome color filters. We would have preferred if it included tools like a red-eye remover, cropping or contrasting, which are much more useful for improving the quality of pictures. The program doesn't even include an undo feature, meaning that if you accidentally set your image to greyscale when you'd prefer it in color, you'll need to start over.

If you have a good mug shot of yourself and want to quickly print out a set of passport sized photos, IDPhotoStudio will probably suit you. However, the lack of advanced editing features means you’ll never really be guaranteed with a high quality image of yourself. In all, if you want to be on the safe side, use a proper photo editing application like Photoshop or Photofiltre to edit and print good ID sized photos.

Download IDPhotoStudio 2.5.0.17 in Softonic

When it comes to photo editing, the undisputed king is Photoshop. But if you're looking for a cheaper alternative that can give you the same – or at least similar – functionality then Active Pixels is an excellent choice.

This photo editor resembles Photoshop in many aspects, from the way menus and windows are laid out on its interface to the keyboard shortcuts used for many actions. It also includes similar tools, like the magic wand, the gradient, the polygonal lasso and others. What's more, it supports working with layers. Active Pixels also includes some extra embedded apps, such as a red-eye fixer, a picture browser and a screen capture tool - although it only grabs full-screen images.

That said, bear in mind that this free photo editor is not as powerful as Adobe's big shot. Despite the large number of filters and effects included, some of them lack proper configuration settings. I specially disliked the way sliders are designed: they're very uncomfortable to use.

In any case, Active Pixels is an excellent photo editor that can be very useful for those cases in which you don't have Photoshop at hand or you just prefer to use a lighter app to perform the same tasks.

A great photo editor with which you can edit and optimize images, all for free.

Download Active Pixels 3.05 in Softonic

If you've ever needed to resize an image quickly, then you need a tool that makes it as easy and as straight forward as possible.

VSO Image resizer organizes your photos by shrinking their resolution or reducing them on your hard drive. It's a one stop easy to use solution for all those that need to resize, compress, convert, create copies, import or organize photos. The main benefit of this is that the photos take up less storage space and are much easier to e-mail. You can also use them in third party applications much easier too such as design applications and other image editors. In addition, it's a good idea for webmasters to use this because reducing the resolution alone can mean that your webpages load much more quickly. You can change their format and also edit large numbers of image files at once as it supports batch editing. While the program doesn't have a particularly great interface, it is integrated very well into Windows shell so it's easy to access simply by right clicking.

If you're looking for a super quick and easy images resizing solution, then VSO will more than cater for your needs.

Download VSO Image Resizer 2.0.1.11b in Softonic

Due to lossy nature of the JPEG format each editing and subsequent recompression of JPEG images in generic image editors such as Photoshop results in progressive degradation of image quality.

Fortunately, in many cases there is a way to avoid the unnecessary recompression. If all you need is to quickly process a bunch of JPEG photos from the latest vacation - rotate, crop, remove red eye effect, imprint date or comment - you don't have to compromize the quality. Better JPEG is a batch JPEG editor capable of doing all this editing losslessly.

Main features:

• Lossless transformations - rotation, flip
• Lossless crop (free, fixed aspect, fixed size, predefined and user-defined aspects and sizes), composition guidelines (diagonals, golden mean, rule of thirds)
• Highly customizable lossless date/EXIF info/text insertion (position, font, size, color, background, language, format, etc.)
• Advanced lossless red eye removal (anti-aliasing, adjustable size, sensitivity, darkening)
• Copy/paste to external editor and back for local retouching without full recompression
• Batch image processing
• Multi-level undo/redo
• Metadata preservation
• Compression optimization

Download BetterJPEG 2.0.0.6 in Softonic

For anyone involved in software reviewing like the team at Softonic, annotations of screenshots and other data are essential in day-to-day work.

The same goes for anyone who regularly has to use presentations and other graphical displays to share information. ZoomIt aims to make presentations and annotations easy enough for anyone to illustrate and add comments and annotations to their presentations and screenshots. The first time you run ZoomIt, you're presented with a configuration dialog that gives you some tips on what the program can do and how it should be used. During this time, you're also offered the chance to specify alternate hotkeys for zooming in and out and for entering drawing mode without zooming. In addition, you can customise the drawing pen color and size although this is one aspect where ZoomIt could do with some work as both the sizes and colour palette is rather limited. There's also what the program calls a "break timer" that remains active even when you tab away from the timer window but then allows you to return to the timer window by clicking on the ZoomIt tray icon.

This is by no means the most advanced screen annotation utility you'll ever use but for simple arrow pointing and circling of certain facts and figures, it does a quick and efficient job.

Download ZoomIt 2.11 in Softonic

Thumbnail Generator is an application that allows you to create thumbnails of folders of images, thus saving you time and work. The program boasts a simple appearance and it's very easy to use.

Just take your favorite pictures and create thumbnails to use in web albums, on online forums or as avatars for your IM app.

Take a look at what Thumbnail Generator has to offer:

• Fixed thumbnail size irrespective of original image size
• Create thumbnails for a whole folder in one operation
• Add watermarks to thumbnails

Download Thumbnail Generator 1.2.0 in Softonic

Panorama images may seem difficult to create but, believe it or not, it's more a question of choosing the right stitching software rather than being artistically gifted.

Microsoft has entered the already huge market of panorama tools with Image Composite Editor, a photo editor that lets you create panoramas in a snap. All you have to do is open the files that make up the panoramic view and let the program take care of the rest.

For those who prefer tweaking with settings, there are a couple of configuration options to fiddle with, namely Stitching Method and Cropping Area. When it comes to exporting the final result, Image Composite Editor lets you choose among several different formats.

In general terms I'd say Image Composite Ed¡tor is a fantastic tool to take your first steps in the creation of panoramas. Power users will probably find too limited and restrictive, and will surely miss having some more manual options, not to mention the possibility to view images separately.

Microsoft Image Composite Editor lets you create panorama images in a couple of clicks, with generally excellent results.

Download Microsoft Image Composite Editor 1.0 in Softonic

If you think that creating a video with your photos is too complicated for you, think again while you take a look at Windows Movie Maker.

This easy tool lets you create completely customizable multimedia presentations that include not only your dearest shots and favorite video clips, but also some nice video and transition effects that will add a professional touch to your creation. This is in fact a new version of Windows Movie Maker that has been especially developed for Windows Vista.

Windows Movie Maker is really simple to use: import all the media you'd like to use (images, video files and even video captured in real time) and drag it on the timeline. Then add as many effects as you like, and check how everything looks in the preview window. There's even a special tool that enables you to add titles and credits to your movie in a very easy way.

Once your work is finished, Windows Movie Maker lets you export the video with two main options, depending on where you want to use it: saving it to your hard drive or recording it to a tape on your DV camera. I'm surprised to find only these two options, especially when the XP version of Windows Movie Maker features a lot more.

Also, bear in mind that this tool is intended for people with little or no experience in video presentations at all, which means that more advanced users may find it a bit too limited.

With Windows Movie Maker you can easily create your own video presentations with your favorite photos, video clips and some nice transition effects.

Download Windows Movie Maker Vista 2.6 in Softonic