The major developers might not agree with us but the rise of open source equivalents to large, expensive packages has arguably been the most exciting development in the software industry in the last few years. The GIMP and Mozilla Thunderbird are two leading lights of the open source phenomenon and have collectively saved users millions as alternatives to their big-budget rivals.

Artweaver certainly has the credentials to take on the big players and comes stacked with an ample range of brushes, which can be tweaked and customized easily to suit your designs. Just like its more illustrious rivals, the brush selection can be beefed up through plug-ins, although the range of available brushes is pitiful compared with those you can download for Adobe Illustrator. Nevertheless, it's promising to see freeware products embracing extendability in this way.

Other welcome features include a mighty effects selection, layers and transparency functionality, plus support for a range of file formats. You can also add text layers, making it great for creating logos or promotional material. However, it's when you put pen to paper that Artweaver stumbles somewhat. The fact is that the app renders certain brush strokes much slower than its major rivals, and unless you're packing heat processor-wise you're likely to be frustrated by the lag time waiting for the strokes to appear on the page. For such a polished program otherwise, this drawback threatens to stifle its attempts to win over the graphic design market. This said, for a pre-release version ArtWeaver is an impressive piece of kit.

Download Artweaver 0.5.3 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 2.4.7 in Softonic

You probably know GIMP already, but now if you have a USB memory device you can take it anywhere with you thanks to Portable GIMP.

The Portable GIMP is a special version of the well-known open source image editing software that has been specifically developed for portable memory devices. The whole installation program and its plug-ins have been packaged to fit your USB stick, so that you can work on your images no matter in which computer you are.

Portable GIMP includes all the graphic editing tools any serious designer or photo editor could ask for. It's true that it takes a while to master the program's interface – especially for those who are not used to multiple-window working environments – but once you get the hang of it Portable GIMP enables you to do pretty much anything you want with your images.

With Portable GIMP you'll have the original GIMP's resources and tools always at hand.

Download Portable GIMP 2.4.7 in Softonic

Lightscreen is a free, simple and practical utility to capture images for those that don't want to mess about with post processing or resizing tools.

Lightscreen offers three ways to capture screenshots - full screen, active window, and an area that you can select yourself. All three offer you enough scope to capture just about any type of screenshot. You can configure the format, prefix and suffix of the file (numeric or date format) and specify the folder to save it to. You can also configure a hotkey to make screenshots instantaneous. There are also some other additional little additions such as control over image quality or you can also configure a delay on the screen capture if you're using the hotkey. Once configured Lightscreen becomes especially useful to make multiple catches because every time you press capture, it automatically saves a file with the filename, format and parameters that you specified. The slight downside is that you can only configure a limited number of formats to save screenshots in namely PNG, JPG; BMP, PPM, XBM and TIFF.

A free and easy screen capture tool that will appeal to fans of The GIMP or those that just need a simple screenshot solution.

Download Lightscreen 0.3 in Softonic

Linux is one of those things that most general PC users stay clear of because traditionally it has been viewed as intimidating to setup and use especially when it comes to installing external components.

However, did you know that you can enjoy all the benefits of a Linux environment without installing it courtesy of Ulteo? Ulteo is a virtual desktop that allows you to run Linux applications in a Windows environment. You’ll have to sign-up for an Ulteo account to synchronise data stored on your hard drive with Ulteo but once done, it’s a surprisingly powerful and useful way to run Linux without installing it. Ulteo comes preinstalled with all the major tools you need to work and surf the internet and is intended as a replacement for Windows. Amongst the packages you receive are Firefox, OpenOffice (that can now work with MS Office 2007 and 2008 documents), KPdf to deal with your PDF documents, Kopete (a cross-client instant messenger), Skype, Thunderbird, Enigmail, Gimp and Digikam to manage your pictures and Inkscape and Scribus to create great graphics and DTP projects. It’s a genuinely exciting package filled with open source applications that are easy to use and won’t bug you with ads or registration requests.

For anyone that divides their time regularly between Linux and Windows, this tool will speed up your productivity significantly.

Download Ulteo Virtual Desktop 20080514 Beta in Softonic

Lupo PenSuite is a completely free suite of portable programs and games (no need to be installed). This suite is designed to simplify the user’s life, by collecting the best suites and portable programs available on the web.

Optimized to be loaded on a pendrive and brought always with you, this suite works perfectly well on any hard disk. It includes over a hundred programs and lots of games, classified into several categories, such as Internet (Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype, uTorrent, Filezilla...), Multimedia (VideoLAN, XMplay, Audacity, mp3DirectCut, DeepBurner...), Graphics (IrfanView, PhotoFiltre, The Gimp, FastStone Capture...), Security (CCleaner, TrueCrypt, Keepass, CyberShredder...), System (SIW, DTaskManager...) or Office (AbiWord, Notepad++, Foxit Reader, EssentialPIM, Stickies...).

You can also easily customize your suite adding programs from our broad software database. Simply follow the tutorial in the Extras tab and see how easy it is. All your software needs covered in one single package!

Download Lupo PenSuite 6.60 in Softonic

The problem with many image editors is that they're large and cumbersome or they can0t edit batches of programs in one swoop.

This is not the case with GIMP which is an excellent batch processor for images and files that allows you to perform a whole host of functions with batch image processing in mind. If you need to manage a large number of photos and rename them all or at least change their location, then you'll certainly find some use for this program. One of the advantages is it allows batch processing of thumbnail resizing which allows you to specify a particular width or height or define fixed image dimensions. You can then superimpose text onto these thumbnails or photos (useful to stop copyright infringements). If you need your photos in a variety of formats, then you can also batch convert pictures to GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, MIFF, TIFF, PCX or TGA. Best of all, you're not restricted to one format at a time . you can select a whole bunch and then specify what format you want certain ones to change into. The icing on the cake is an FTP client which, while not exactly sophisticated (or particularly reliable in terms of maintaining connections), allows you to upload your photos to the net as quickly as possible directly from the application.

A very useful tool for anyone that has to process batches of photos at the same time or needs a very lightweight photo and thumbnail processor.

Download BIMP (Batch Image Processor) Lite 1.62 in Softonic

Photo editing applications are ten-a-penny these days. Besides the scores of programs that are freely available for download or to buy, you normally get some kind of image manipulation software bundled with your digital camera, scanner, etc. However, if you're new to the image editing or digital photography game then you may find that many of these applications are either too complicated or just downright garbage.

PhotoImpression sets its stall out as a powerful, feature-filled photo editing application that doesn't make creating classy graphics too difficult to achieve. It has to be said that it pulls this off pretty well, and its colourful interface manages to marry some of the advanced features of programs like Photoshop with the simplicity of an app like the GIMP or IrfanView.

The GUI is laid out in a way that leads you intuitively through the process of organizing, enhancing, and creating interesting looking photos and graphics, whether it's to share on the web, email to your pals, or print out. Clicking each of the tabs that represent these stages of production will bring up a series of controls that help you perform a variety of tasks, from fixing problem photos to applying effects and frames to your images.

It would have been nice to see support for more advanced manipulation tools such as layers and gradients in PhotoImpression, but for someone who's just retouching or revamping their snaps, this is ideal. The application performs admirably compared to the wonderful, if strangely-named, GIMP. However, perhaps the key difference with this and its open source rival is you must part with cash for the full version of PhotoImpression.

Download ArcSoft PhotoImpression 6.5 in Softonic

The original purpose for GIMPshop is to make The GIMP more accessible to the many Adobe Photoshop users out there. If you’ve never used Photoshop before, you may not appreciate it but the GIMPshop hack really makes a difference.

What the program does is rename and reorganize GIMP’s tools, options, windows, and menus to closely resemble Adobe Photoshop’s menu structure and naming conventions. Many of the menu options and even whole menus were recreated to faithfully reproduce a Photoshop-like experience. After running GIMPshop you’ll find that Photoshop and the GIMP are strikingly similar. Longtime Photoshop users should feel very comfortable using GIMPshop.

GIMPshop is by no means a one-to-one copy of Photoshop and you may find some menu items that are not in perfect order. But GIMPshop’s pretty close, and it does the job pretty well.

Download GIMPshop 2.2.8 in Softonic