Download FastStone Image Viewer Portable 4.8 in Softonic

Viewing

While the viewing functionality is a no-brainer, FastStone Image Viewer comes with a range of methods with which to browse pics. First off, there is the standard file browser that displays thumbnails of your images with a preview window for the file that is currently selected. FastStone Image Viewer also offers an option to check out individual pictures in full-screen. When you're in fullscreen, remember, you'll also have access to the full range of FastStone Image Viewer tools.

Editing

However, FastStone Image Viewer goes beyond simply displaying images. You can perform quick edits to really bring out the best in your pics, such as adding a stylish frame that acts as a mask to reduce the sharp edges or, if you happen to be working with 3D, FastStone Image Viewer also offers a very effective bump map option that will serve you well for texturing. There are of course the standard tools of brightness/darkness adjustment, sharpness/blur, grayscale, red-eye removal and more.

Batch tools

Further great features come in the form of batch rename and convert options. These could prove invaluable to many web developers looking for a quick way to prepare their PSD files for the web. With the inclusion of these batch functions, it would have been good has FastStone Image Viewer pushed the boat out even further with an option to apply batch effects, for example to brighten up a group of photos that were taken in a dark space but alas, it's not there!

Looking for faults with FastStone Image Viewer is like looking for the corner of a circle, although if you insist on nitpicking, you can say that in the thumbnail browser view dragging and dropping should be possible for moving files. However when you realize that it is possible to drag and drop with the left nav bar that argument looses its legs.

There's healthy competition in the image viewer arena, but thanks to the innovative features of FastStone Image Viewer the bar has been raised to new heights.

Download FastStone Image Viewer 4.8 in Softonic

Download HardCopy 2013.03.20 in Softonic

Sweet Home 3D allows your imagination to run wild without you having to lift a finger or costing you a cent. Apart from being a very useful interior design application, it's also a hell of a lot of fun, allowing you to mix and match furniture with ease, take virtual walks around your creations, and indulge yourself in designs you'd probably never be able to do in real life.

Sweet Home 3D offers more than 50 different pieces of furniture, ranging from beds to lamps and desks tables, but you can import even more from the developer's website. To create your rooms, all you need to do is drag and drop elements into the grid view and you'll see them building up 3D in the viewing screen below. Once you've done this, use the virtual visit tool to get a 3D preview of what it looks like and talk a walk around.

The latest version adds a new level of realism to Sweet Home 3D. This includes a new ability to handle rounded walls, the possibility to store points of view, a new compass and even light and sun management to accurately show how your designs react under different conditions. They've also added a much needed auto recovery function if Sweet Home 3D crashes.

These are the basics and Sweet Home 3D is extremely easy to get to grips with. Unfortunately, the graphics on Sweet Home 3D are not great - many pieces of furniture look blocky, but its designed to give an idea of what an arrangement will look like rather than a perfect picture. You can take a photo of your finished design, which you can then send on to friends to view who won't need Sweet Home 3D to view it. The fact that it's based on Java shouldn't put you off either - it works very smoothly with virtually no delays in placing furniture or creating previews.

Sweet Home 3D is an excellent solution for all those that daydream about redesigning their home, or even for professionals that need a basic mock-up.

Download Sweet Home 3D 4.0 in Softonic

Screenshot Captor enables you to capture images in a variety of ways, ranging from the active window to a fixed size zone and including objects, scrolling windows (great for capturing sites from top to bottom) and even your entire working space, which means that if you have multiple monitors, Screenshot Captor will capture all of them.

But the best is yet to come: Screenshot Captor includes an excellent set of filters and special effects for your screenshots: frames, borders, shadow effects, blurring and a lot more. We tried all of them and were really happy with the results, although the program could do with more extensive undo features.

We also found some really good tools in Screenshot Captor, like the ability to automatically generate thumbnails from images or a zoom that can go up to an impressive 999%. You can actually see every single pixel in the image! The app also boasts extensive task bar options, and a really nice mini-interface after taking a screenshot, both of which make your job much easier.

Screenshot Captor may feel overwhelming, but give it a chance, it's really worth it!

Download Screenshot Captor 3.08.01 in Softonic

Download Pixia 4.80 be in Softonic

Introduction

PhotoFiltre is a relatively small application and unlike Photoshop, will install and launch very quickly. The interface, loaded with all the features and options, can be confusing at first glance but you'll soon get used to it. The right side is composed of the shape and drawing tools and an optimizable color palette. The top bar has all the essential image editing and modification options. PhotoFiltre sadly doesn't let you customize the interface and choose your favorite tools.

Features

Among all the image modification tools, of particular usefulness is the quick contrast/hue and saturation buttons because you can check out the effects and immediately and easily correct the image if you're not satisfied with its quality. If you trust PhotoFiltre, you can also let it adjust these parameters automatically.

Like any self-respecting image editing application, PhotoFiltre includes the most widely used filters to transform your image, but if you need to make really significant changes, you'll find yourself limited. Furthermore, unlike Photoshop, PhotoFiltre doesn't include layers, making it more challenging to work on different elements of the image separately.

Like the excellent free image viewer Irfanview, PhotoFiltre covers the majority of image formats and can batch process and convert images rapidly. PhotoFiltre has five different zoom options yet they seem to be more or less similar. The magnifier is probably less precise than the drop down percentage pane, and the auto zoom adjusts the image’s size according to PhotoFiltre's window size.

The image explorer is located at the bottom of the screen, and if you set it according to your image file you'll be able to quickly preview all your pictures. However, if you work with multiple image files, it can quickly become confusing, as you’ll have to open up an explorer tree pane every time to look for your pictures.

PhotoFiltre contains all the essential tools and options to edit and optimize pictures.

Download PhotoFiltre 7.1.1 in Softonic

Although it's completely free, Scribus offers some serious publishing power including support for CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation. Although the interface isn't as slick as it could be, Scribus works across platforms so it hasn't been designed with any one particular operating system in mind.

One thing that isn't so easy to master on Scribus is formatting. You may encounter several formatting issues when importing text as everything has to be done manually. Even just changing fonts doesn't happen in real time - you have to change them and preview how they will look in another window. You can however drag and drop elements with ease as well as export documents in EPS, SVG and PDF format. Importing PDF and EPS isn't so easy however - you need GhostScript to do so and this isn't easy for beginners to scripting.

Scribus has a lot of potential although its certainly not a patch on a Quark and can be very unintuitive to use at times.

Download Scribus 1.4.2 in Softonic

XnView Portable features the same design and tools as older brother XnView, which makes it a really convenient photo editor that can be carried with you anywhere. It has support for a few hundred graphic formats as well as other media files, such as AVI and MP3.

The interface in XnView Portable is divided into two sections: the left pane shows the folder structure, while the right one is where the contents of the selected folder are displayed. A double click on any image is enough to open it in full screen and work on it with the program's own tools. XnView Portable is obviously no Photoshop, but you'll be able to do some cropping and resizing, adjust brightness, correct red eyes and other basic editing and retouching tasks.

If XnView is your favorite image viewer, you can now take it anywhere with you thanks to XnView Portable.

Download XnView Portable 1.99.6 in Softonic