The exact bundles of special effects it features are RetroPixels: retro art effects from the sixties and seventies, LoveFor80s: retro video effects from the eighties, BentPels: image warping effects from the nineties, FewTile: image tiling effects and BoobToob: analog TV effects.

Each bundle of effects in CatEye can be installed separately and they are conveniently grouped together when presented in Photo Booth. When you want to spice-up a conversation or surprise a friend, activate the Pong video game and watch balls fly across the screen.

If you're looking for a retro effect, then how about rolling back to the days of VHS video including a green hue for a really authentic worn effect? Alternatively, for fans of flower power CatEye has some cool flower child polaroid style effects too.

Although the selection of effects in CateEye is generous, only a few of them are really well done. Many of them are either poorly designed or are hard to identify exactly what they're supposed to be.

Nevertheless, CatEye is a fun way to spice-up iChat and Photo Booth sessions on your Mac.

Download CatEye 1.002 in Softonic

The 56 different effects offered by the developer are very varied, from distortions, to blurs, crystallization or retro. There's even a few more elaborate themes like penguins, iPod, Earth or clown. More iChat Effects is easy to install and remove from your Mac and changing between themes only takes a second.

Overall we felt that the effects really added a bit more to the iChat experience, and having 56 is plenty to choose from. Since the effects have all been recently updated, they fit in perfectly in Lion, and can even be used in Photo Booth to take funny pictures of yourself. However, many users have experienced crashes running Photo Booth in 64 bit mode with More iChat Effects so it's recommended to run it in 32 bit mode for better stability.

Note that if you want to remove all effects, run the installer or remove files in /Library/Compositions.

More iChat Effects is a fun way to spice-up your iChat conversations.

Download More iChat Effects 2.0.5 in Softonic

Adding special effects to your photos can breathe new life into them, create a great gift for someone, or just be a hell of a lot of fun.

ImageLobe offers more than forty special effects that you can apply extremely quickly and have a lot of fun with in the process. Using it couldn't be easier. Simply drag an image into the ImageLobe interface, select one of the effects to apply from the panel at the bottom (use the arrows to scroll through them), and then drag the photo out of ImageLobe to save your changes.

Using ImageLobe is far easier than trying to apply filters (such as in Photoshop) because it does all the hard work for you. If you've ever used Photo Booth, then it works on the same principle as that, except there are far more effects to choose from, albeit some of them are very similar. Some of the best include Line Overlay, Posterize and Bulge. Rather than scroll through them all using the arrows, you can also click 'Open Effects' to bring-up a scroll menu instead. You can also activate your iSight to take photos of yourself that you can then apply effects to.

The only annoying thing about ImageLobe is the 300KB photo limit. Try to load any picture taken on anything more powerful than a phone camera and it will block you with a license purchase warning.

Whether it's breathing new life into images or just having a lot of fun adding cool effects, ImageLobe is a lot of fun.

Download ImageLobe 4.3 in Softonic

Having fun with Photo Booth always seems to entertain kids (and some adults too). So when I read that Voice Candy is the 'Photo Booth of voice software', I thought it would be a lot of fun.

However, the reality is that Voice Candy is rather disappointing. This is mainly because the voice effects are limited to just eight choices and many of them just simply aren't very good at all. Voice Candy works as a simple voice recorder. To apply the effects on Voice Candy however, you have to select one of the effects before recording, i.e. Normal, Chipmunk, Vader, Robot, Old Radio, Bad Science Fiction, Phone, and Sore Throat. Many of these effects are poorly implemented, though. The Bad Science Fiction effect, for example, seems to simply add a few 'eerie' noises to the background, and the Phone effect is barely audible. The Old Radio is a bit better, however, as is the Chipmunk.

The fact that you have to record in each voice every time you want to apply an effect in Voice Candy is a bit annoying too. You should be able to record one voice sample, and then apply the effects of your choosing at will. There are a few other things you can do with your recording. Voice Candy allows you to send recordings directly to iTunes, set a reminder using the recordings and share it using Apple Mail. However, this hardly makes up for its limited effects and the fact that it only saves in MOV format.

Voice Candy is a handy recording tool for normal voice recordings. However, as far as the effects go, it's certainly not the Photo Booth of voice recording.

Download Voice Candy 1.5.1 in Softonic

Photo Booth is great fun on a Mac and Sparkbooth adds a new dimension as it uses your iSight camera to take photo booth-style photos and save them to your hard drive, upload them to a host of popular networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitpix and Posterous, or simply print them.

Sparkbooth more or less configures itself - it detects your iSight camera and starts taking the photos when you hit the Space bar. It then automatically saves, prints or uploads them and the entire application follows the same format you'd find in a real photo booth.

To upload your Sparkbooth photos to other websites, just enter your log-in details for each one in the Settings section. You can also add a logo and background image to your photos to spice things up a bit. You can also customize the logo on the main screen although this isn't really anything special. Sparkbooth would probably be particularly fun at a wedding as a way for guests to snap themselves during the celebrations.

Sparkbooth will give you and your friends hours of photo fun..

Download Sparkbooth 3.5.50 in Softonic

Fortunately, programs like AlterEgo mean that you can continue having fun with PhotoBooth long after the initial novelty has worn off. In the full version, there are 36 "Egos" in AlterEgo that change your image radically although in this version you only get 6 for free initially and the rest you have to purchase. Unfortunately, none of them are particularly impressive and leave you with little motivation to upgrade.

The 6 free egos are Bitter Glow, Black Hole, Carving Block, Megapixelated Psychotic and Zebra, none of which add anything particular radical to the effects you get with PhotoBooth by default. A look at the online gallery shows that those egos that you can purchase aren't much more exciting either. A few of the more original ones look interesting but probably not worth the upgrade.

Unless you're a real PhotoBooth freak, you probably won't find many exciting effects in AlterEgo to spice up your iSight.

Download AlterEgo 1.3 in Softonic

BannerZest Standard is a very slick application which makes Flash photo presentations easy. Simply drag and drop pictures from your images folder to the time line into the order you want them to appear. iPhoto and Photo Booth are already integrated into the program but for other folders, you'll have to browse to them using the file browser at the bottom of the media library window.

Using the Settings window you can add all manner of effects, themes and animations. You can add a title (although it should be easy as double clicking on the 'Title' word but it's not), add subtitles and borders to make your presentation look swish. Once finished, you can share it via FTP or upload it to a website. Note that it doesn't work with OS X 10.4 but an older version available on the developer site will do.

The Pro version of Bannerzest doesn't offer any major advantages other than that it allows you to export an alternative version of your banner in a format that can be viewed when the navigator does not have Flash installed (such as on an iPhone) and you can publish banners in a single .SWF file.

BannerZest Standard allows you to create impressive photo slide shows and banners without having fancy design skills.

Download BannerZest Standard 2.2 in Softonic

BannerZest is a very slick application which makes Flash photo presentations easy. Simply drag and drop pictures from your images folder to the timeline into the order you want them to appear. iPhoto and Photo Booth are already integrated into the program but for other folders, you'll have to browse to them using the file browser at the bottom of the media library window.

Using the Settings window you can add all manner of effects, themes and animations. You can add a title (although it should be easy as double clicking on the 'Title' word but it's not), add subtitles and borders to make your presentation look swish. Once finished, you can share it via FTP or upload it to a website. Note that it doesn't work with OS X 10.4 but an older version available on the developer site will do.

The price of upgrading to BannerZest Pro might put many off although the Lite version is cheaper and produces equally impressive results while lacking some features.

Download BannerZest Pro 2.2 in Softonic

Funtastic Photos is a photo editor that's packed with mainly fun features and special effects to make photo editing fun.

There are two main viewing modes - thumbnails or actual size. Once you're viewing the photo, you're given a choice of filters and effects below. Choose one and it will be applied immediately and you can keep doing this until you've found one you really like.

Probably the stand out feature of Funtastic Photos is the photo montage feature. Firstly, it allows you to select a backdrop template. Then, you drag the photos that you want to see into the order that you'd like to view them. The templates are highly imaginative and it's a lot of fun trying out the different designs. You can later share photos via Fun Cards or iPhone with your cellphone and other services online.

Funtastic Photos is a fun and highly flexible photo presentation package that makes creating slideshows a particular pleasure.

Download Funtastic Photos 1.0.4 in Softonic

What good taking pictures with your iSight camera if you're not going to share them? With FlickrBooth you can upload them to Flickr and YouTube.

Make sure you have a YouTube or Flickr account and that you're logged in. The program will allow you to add extra information like tags, title, privacy level and which set to join the pictures to if you're exporting them to Flickr.

You'll also get to choose from three different actions after you've taken a snapshot with Photo Booth, including automatically upload. I'd advise checking 'Prompt for Information' so you can enter details for the photo and check it's all good before upload.

Obviously it would be nice to have the option of exporting to other online services than Flickr or YouTube, but considering how popular these are, there's hardly much to complain about.

Download FlickrBooth 2.1 in Softonic