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

You'd be surprised to see how much disk space you're wasting with duplicate files. In fact, you can actually check it with this tool. Duplicate File Detector scans your system and finds all duplicate files, no matter how hidden they are.

You can analyze the whole drive or set several specific folders, but beware of the filters the program uses as default, as they may sort out folders that you want to include in the scan. The process takes a while, but in exchange for your patience the program delivers a complete list of all duplicate files in your system. This list also offers a preview of each file, so you're sure of what you're going to delete before marking them.

Duplicate File Detector works with a wide range of file formats and can detect duplicates based on a large variety of criteria. In fact, there are so many configuration settings that it may feel a bit overwhelming at the beginning.

Download Duplicate File Detector 4.5 in Softonic

Would you like to impress your friends with an impressive presentation of your last holiday pictures and are you looking for a special way to do it? What could be better than having a whole art-gallery just for you, maybe set in an ancient castle, or in a modern skyscraper or, why not, in a Chinese garden?

Photo! 3D Album is a simple free program that lets you upload your photo collection in very nice 3D settings that you can choose from a menu that pops up when you create a new project. If you don't like your original selection, don't worry as you can change the template later. It's like a first-person computer game, where you navigate through the gallery and you attach your photographs to the available canvases. Although there are many, frames are limited and this is a real problem for medium-size collections.

When you have finished navigating and uploading, you have several options in order to export your photo-collection. You can create a screen saver or a stand alone gallery which can be run with a double-click, or alternatively a web gallery in VRML or Shockwave format. For the latter format you will have to register, for free, on the developer's web site. When you launch the final video, press F1 if you want to navigate freely around the gallery.

Photo! 3D Album is great to create cool animations with the photos you want. Unfortunately the spaces available in the art gallery are limited, as they would be in a real one. It's also an interesting program to create your own personal screen savers.

Download Photo! 3D Album 1.1 in Softonic

Slideshows are one of the best ways to add colour and life to a photo collection no matter what the subject matter is.

Slideshow Magic is aimed at both home users and business professionals who want to impress friends or colleagues with their photo slideshow creations. Best of all, it doesn't require the viewer to have the program installed as all slideshows can be saved in any QuickTime compatible format.

The easy to use interface is somewhat like that of a video editor allowing you to add music or audio tracks either for the whole slideshow or just specific segments. You can add some impressive transitions and titles much in the same way as you do with Windows Movie Maker for example. The program also features a useful guide to help you get your photos online or burnt to DVD. However, unfortunately the program doesn't provide either it's own webspace or burner for uploading and saving photos. For uploading, you'll need an FTP client and web host and for burning, a third party burner such as Nero.

In addition, although it's a cross platform application, sharing with other platforms requires some form of network solution between clients (although this needn't be something complicated - a program like MSN Live Messenger is enough

Slideshow Magic is a relatively cheap but powerful way to get your photos either online or burnt to DVD.

Download Slideshow Magic 5.0.5 in Softonic

Creating collages with your photos is an easy way to breathe new life into an ageing or rather dull photo collection.

With PhotoCool, you can print multiple photos in one page and arrange them in custom designed collages. Alternatively, you can make photo albums, passport photos, mini ID card photos and CD covers via simple templates. Most templates have wizards which take you through the setup process in 4 steps.

However, note that you'll need glossy paper for best results when it comes to printing. PhotoCool can be used as a TWAIN app too which means that I will retrieve photos from your external device or camera without the need for using third-party software. Once detected, you can drag-and-drop images into PhotoCool or alternatively, you can arrange them by thumbnails and allow PhotoCool to extract them automatically on it's own.

PhotoCool makes it easy to create collages, passport photos, ID photos and just about any other kind of photo template you can think of.

Download PhotoCool 2.01 in Softonic

Esmas Player is a truly multimedia application that provides the user with almost any tool they may need to enjoy image, music and video files on the computer.

The program's interface is suspiciously similar to that of iTunes, which makes us wonder why is it that developers weren't able to come up with a more original design. Similarities to iTunes don't end here, though: as you'll see, you can organize your library, play your favorite songs, edit tags, listen to podcasts, synchronize contents with your portable music device and even buy music online. Some people may find this resemblance somewhat uncomfortable – like a cheap imitation – but it's also a way to make the program look familiar and be easy to use from the very beginning.

Leaving comparisons aside, Esmas Player goes a step forward and also enables you to organize photos and videos, and also features extended functionality such as a disc burner, a DVD player and support for online TV channels and radio stations. During our tests, however, I had the impression that some of its functions were not properly implemented or at least not as easy to use as I expected. Also, though the program's language can be set to English, both the installer and documentation haven't been translated from Spanish yet.

In all, Esmas Player works fine as an all-in-one multimedia organizer, but it still needs some improvements in usability – as well as adding the necessary distance between iTunes and itself in order to avoid odious comparisons.

Download Esmas Player 11026 in Softonic

When you first start up FxFoto it searches your entire hard drive for images and imports them into a handy thumbnail viewer. From there it’s as easy as a drag-and-drop operation to add pictures to your collage. You can also import you pictures directly from your scanner or digital camera.

If some of the pictures need a little tweaking, FxFoto provides you with all of the basic image adjustment controls and also has an impressive collection of filters which are all easily accessible from the well laid-out interface. You can add frames to individual pictures in your collage or to the entire creation.

FxFoto can also be used to make scrapbook pages and slide shows and has a great number of ways to publish your creations including, email, print, web sites and slide shows. This makes a brilliant for non-techy users or even small kids to use. There are a few more advanced photo management tools out there, but FxFoto provides a cheap alternative that is more than equal to most tasks.

Download FxFoto 6.0.070 in Softonic

I'm sure we've all come across hundreds of awesome high quality photo collections or impressive image galleries online. The trouble is, if you want to transfer all of these beautiful shots onto your hard drive, it takes forever, as you need to save each one seperately. Don't lose too much sleep over this though, because you can always use Bulk Image Downloader to do this task for you.

The app lets you schedule downloads of entire online image collections through a dead simple interface. Or, you can even choose to dispense with this altogether by taking advantage of the built-in IE and Firefox integration to grab multiple pictures even quicker. Although there are no options for editing the resulting images or categorising them into galleries of your own, the program does contain settings for things like blocking pop-up windows, restarting incomplete tasks and repairing broken downloads.

Download Bulk Image Downloader 1.36 in Softonic

RGB MusicLab is probably the most strange – or should I say original – music software tool you've ever seen.

Instead of letting you compose music by using your computer keyboard as a music keyboard or writing notes right on the tablature, like you may have seen in other music composition apps, RGB MusicLab creates music automatically from any image you load on the program.

Yes, that's what you read: music out of images. RGB MusicLabs reads any photo you load on it, turns it into a mosaic and creates the music all by itself based on the color, brightness, saturation and other elements from the picture. Being an automatic composition there's not much you can do to change it (and sometimes you do feel like changing it because it sounds really bad). Luckily there are some settings you can tweak, such as the number of tiles in the mosaic, the length of notes and the kind of instrument, which can help you improve your musical piece of art.

RGB MusicLab provides you with a whole new way to create music, where you don't have that much control over the creating process but which proves to be really original.

Download RGB MusicLab 22 in Softonic

There are a myriad of programs out there to manage your photos but some seem to do the job better than others.

IDimager Personal Edition is designed for those who deal with a huge quantity of photos on a daily basis and need something ultra powerful and organised. Normally, I only use Picasa to organise my photos because it's simply well integrated with the internet for uploading photos. However, this program comes with all the tools and basic features you need to get yourself organised with your photos. It can import images from a digital camera, browse, organize, catalog, control versions, archive, edit, e-mail, print, find and make slide shows. However, what really impressed me was the ability to publish images to the internet which is not always common in such programs. I wouldn't say it was as well done as with Picasa because it doesn't link to any kind account but it does prepare you very well for uploading by optimising photos into more manageable resolutions for speedy uploads.

This won't really impress professionals but amateur photographers could find that it helps them organise their collection.

Download IDimager Personal Edition 4.1.0.2 in Softonic

One way to make your photo collections less boring for others is to turn them into presentations with music etc.

ExeShow is a user friendly program that takes your photos and turns them into impressive presentations in just a few minutes. There's not much to it other than selecting the photos you want to use (although it can only handle BMP, JPG or GIF formats) and ExeShow processes them and then creates an EXE file that you can send to anyone to watch. The advantage of this is that they don't need to have ExeShow or any kind of presentation software installed to view it - the EXE show comes with it's own player. You can preview the slideshow at any moment and change the way the transitions work (from top left to top right, bottom to top etc). However, while you have a lot of control over the way the transitions work, you don't actually have much choice over how the style of the transitions. In addition, it would have been nice if you could add a few special effects to your photos and presentation but there are none on offer. On the plus side, you can add a soundtrack to your presentation to make your friends really impressed with your design skills.

Very easy to use and producing impressive results, ExeShow is a useful program for anyone who needs to send their presentations without relying on third party presentation software.

Download ExeShow 2.0 in Softonic

There are a few utilities out there which can make your life so much easier, you wouldn't contemplate living without them. As someone who works on the web, I'm taking screenshots all the time and SnagIt is the only tool I'd use for this vital element of my job.

In its latest incarnation, SnagIt has added a lot of new features and a jazzed-up interface. While the old familiar 'big red button' remains, much of the UI (particularly in the Editor window) has been completely overhauled. Gone is the XP blue of previous versions, replaced with a Vista-friendly charcoal look which works pretty well.

The program's key features (taking and editing screenshots) remain pretty much unchanged. You still have a huge amount of power of just what type of screenshot you can take, with timers, cursor settings and profiles all still playing a major role. I was pleased to see that my profiles from the last version of SnagIt were kept as it would have been a real nuisance to have to re-program them.

The biggest improvements to this new version are certainly connected to the Editor window. For example: whereas previously, you had to take a capture, work on it, save it and then take your next one; now you can take as many screenshots as you like, using whichever profiles, and work on them all as you wish. This is a huge time-saver and a very welcome addition to the program.

Another feature that has been added is of less obvious use. SnagIt now supports meta-tagging and labeling of captured images. The idea behind this feature is that you start to use SnagIt to categorize your images as well as capture them. I can understand the thinking behind this addition but I'm not sure if it's really much more than feature-creep. I can't see myself changing my workflow to fit with SnagIt, nor do I want to lose the capability of moving image files around at will (if you use Windows Explorer to move tagged images, the tags and labels are lost).

SnagIt 9 represents a big step forward for a great utility. While some of the new functionality may not appeal, the most significant changes are major improvements to what was already a very good piece of software. Strongly recommended.

Download SnagIt 9.0.0.351 in Softonic

Enhancing photos is an essential part of any professional photographer's day and while this is no professional tool by a long stretch, it gives amateurs a chance to add enhance their photos in a professional manner.

Pos Free Photo Editor is a very simple, free and user friendly photo editor that allows you to easily view and enhance your photos. In terms of flexibility, it accepts just about any conceivable format so no conversions are required. There's very little to pick up or learn with the program - most of the learning is done on the job via trial and error with the handy preview function. The enhancements are mainly focused around changing the focus and altering the colours of your photos although you can't shift photos on their axis which is a bit annoying if you've taken a slightly badly angled photo.

What it's really useful for though is creating collages. You can add multiple images to the same sheet meaning you can print them all out on one page. This not only allows you to create some pretty impressive designs but it saves on printing out multiple images on expensive photos and then sticking them together.

Pos Free Photo Editor is a far cry from Photoshop but it's completely free and allows beginners to add simple enhancements and effects that are sure to improve your photos.

Download Pos Free Photo Editor 1.0 in Softonic

If you can't wait to show off the photos from your last vacation in the Fidji Islands, this program is what you're looking for.

There are already many slideshow tools out there, but Slideshow Creator HD is one of the first ones to offer support for HD video, so that you can enjoy your photos in the highest quality, be it on a website, on your TV set or right in your computer.

The program features a user interface with the classic video/audio editing design, including your hard drive's folder structure, a built-in video player and the image/sound timelines at the bottom. In any case, if you find this too confusing, you can always use the program wizard to create the slideshow.

But what Slideshow Creator HD stands out for is the amount of filters, special effects and transition effects included in the program. There are literally dozens to choose from so that you can create a really customized slideshow.

Slideshow Creator HD is not the first program with which to create photo slideshows, but certainly one the first ones to offer HD support, besides an impressive array of filters and special effects.

Download Slideshow Creator HD 5.0 in Softonic

Adding water effects or ripple effects to videos is one of the coolest ways to give your videos an extra touch of class.

Sqirlz Water Reflections allows you to add rippling pools of water, rain or snow effects, to images or AVI videos. The pools can be any shape and you can define several factors such as the wave size, perspective and water transperency. You can also change the ripple shapes and wave details plus even add snowflake effects and add depth to other ripple effects. Unfortunately, there are not a large amount of output format options to choose from. Animations can be saved as Adobe Flash files, animated GIFS, AVI video clips and for images, bitmap, JPEG, PNG and TIFF files. The latest release has added some extra effects which are quite interesting which include general rainfall and glossy reflecting areas of water in cincentric circles. Some of the effects you can create are truly stunning - check out the developer homepage for a few examples - although it can take some time to render photos correctly, it's certainly wrth the effort.

If you want to impress friends with your photos or just have a very unique photos collection, Squirlz Water Reflections produces stunning results.

Download Sqirlz Water Reflections 2.4 in Softonic

Pictomio is a photo viewer that enables you to search your hard drive for photos and create presentations with them.

The main outstanding feature is that Pictomio turns all your photos into 3D images giving your collection a really cool and unique look. It's great for impressing friends or just breathing life into old images. Previously, from the visualizer in Pictomio you, could only see the photos, their EXIF information and histograms. Up until early 2008 you could only score them and rotate them but now the program has reached Beta stage and it has to be said, it's an impressive package. The program is now a much more serious photo manager contender with completed features such as 3D models for albums and categories, improved models for drives, album/category sidebar to quickly drop your images, automatic upgrade checker and a filter drop down menu amongst many others. This is only a tiny selection of the program's new functionality as other completed features include the saving of user settings (positions and sizes of UI elements, view mode, filter settings, etc.), direct renaming of thumbnails and a new option to show and hide hidden files. Of course, the program is still in beta stage which means that it may be vulnerable to some bugs and errors although none were noted. Of course, Pictomio still also allows you to categorize photos by topics, sort and view your photos by date, rating, or category and view every pixel of your photos using smooth liquid zooming. You can of course still also view your photos in a slideshow presentation.

This is a very easy to use but powerful program and deserves to do well in the 3D imaging market.

Download Pictomio 1.0.10 in Softonic

Paint.NET is an efficient, small, light photo editor with a minimalistic GUI. It's impressive how it can have so many tools in just 1.8MB of space and it uses less then 55 MB of RAM to run. Although it wouldn't be fair to compare it with Photoshop, it is true that many home users will find Paint.NET perfect for their needs and really easy to use.

Unfortunately, it limits you to edit only one image at a time and there are two major features missing: the magnetic lasso for the selection of objects in a picture and support for Twain-scanners/cameras. That said, the program is constantly updated and you can always find different ways to do things.

A very interesting feature is the possibility to install many different plug-ins that you can choose in the program's forum. You can for example install a shape3D tool, a pack of custom brushes, a motion sharpen plug-in and or silhouette tool.

Paint.NET is a very promising photo editor which is good enough for non professional users. Although it lacks some important functions and limits you to work on one picture at a time, it's useful enough for everyday use.

Download Paint.NET 3.31 in Softonic

Now that most people own a digital camera, there’s no reason to maintain traditional photo albums anymore. Online galleries are in fashion and Arles Image Web Page Creator is certainly a good option for you to take your first steps into the HTML photo album world.

The first impression you get after launching the program is that you’re right in front of a standard image viewer, with the usual interface design: directory tree-like structure on the left, picture thumbnails on the right. In fact, Arles can also be used as image viewer, even with full screen capabilities, which are pretty handy.

However, this is not its main function. Arles is primarily designed to help you build HTML galleries with your pictures, but we must say it won’t make things easy for you, at least at the beginning. The customizing options are a bit hidden and you may end up with the feeling that you don’t even know where to begin. However, after a reasonable learning curve, you start taking advantage of all the possibilities featured in Arles.

You can basically personalize every little detail of your gallery, ranging from the size in which thumbnails should be displayed to the titles showed for both pictures and album pages. This high level of customization is something that users with some knowledge of HTML will appreciate, but the good thing is that you may just leave everything as it is, a possibility that novice users will be grateful for.

Arles also features the image effects function, a great tool that has been recently implemented. It allows you to add a series of special effects to your pictures, such as text or image overlays, borders, shadows, etc. These effects can be combined with each other and saved as presets to use them again some other time. The results are really attractive.

So, if you want to show -and share- your best digital pictures, Arles Image Web Page Creator is definitely the answer to your prayers. Give it a chance: create your own HTML image gallery and you will never go back to printed photos again.

Download Arles Image Web Page Creator 7.4.3 in Softonic

If you like your driving games real, high speed and without any kind of flashy special effects, then Driving Speed is for you.

With great handling and some impressive graphics, this is a great driving simulation and best of all, it's for free. Of course, if you're looking for a Need For Speed clone, then look elsewhere because this game is not designed in that vein. The choice of cars is limited to European or Japanese but pick of the bunch is probably the Mustang 68. The overall handling and sound are incredibly realistic for a free game of this type although be careful with the controls because it's hypersensitive to even the mildest movements. As regards the graphics, they're not first class but they do extend to the sound and visual effects of the wind blowing, advertising billboards and grass embankments. The gameplay is simple - you have 11 opponents although you can spice things up by playing against 8 friends over the internet. The icing on the cake is that you can compare your fastest laps with other racers so this is truly a global game.

Racing fans looking for fast thrills and no fuss action will love this game although let's hope the developers add more circuits to it soon.

Download Driving Speed 2 in Softonic

Desktop Author sets out with an ambitious promise - to provide you with everything you need to publish your own eBook. Whether you want to create multimedia presentations, newsletters, photo albums or marketing infromation, the program aims to oblige.

The published output is designed to be as true to a real book as possible, allowing the reader to flip the pages realistically by clicking on the right side of the page to move forward, and the left side to move back. Besides text, you can adorn the pages of your virtual tome with images, MPEGs and even Flash movies.

There are many slick looking magazines and books appearing on the web these days that are beginning to seriously compete with traditional print publications in terms of reader experience. Judging by some of the example files on the publisher's site, there's certainly a lot you can achieve with Desktop Author, considering you need no special knowledge or programming skills, as used by many of the Flash-built flip-page publications online today.

The GUI is loosely modelled on a traditional desktop publishing app, and although it lacks the range of tools of a heavyweight like InDesign or Quark, Desktop Author contains the standard features you'd expect in such an app, including snap-to guides, image insertion, text formatting and shape drawing.

Considering the program is supposed to be aimed at beginners, the interface is a little cumbersome to navigate at first. Of course, you get used to it, but perhaps the program would have benefited from a Properties Inspector displaying the information about the currently-selected item, allowing you to move, edit, resize, apply styles or just view data on the file in question.

Having said this, there are a few useful tools that speed up the eBook creation process, such as the integrated (albeit basic) image editor, preset buttons to add to your pages, and a collection of built-in templates to get you started. This makes it possible to rustle up a decent looking book in just a few minutes. Of course, as with all creative applications, the more time you spend honing your skills the better the results will become.

Publishing your finished digital books is a matter of simply pressing the 'Publish' button and waiting for everything to be neatly packaged into a DNL file. This can take some time, and once it's done, you still need to install the DNL Reader provided by the developer. There is, however an option to package the eBook inside an executable file, which might be the best option to ensure everyone can read your words of wisdom.

The trial version only allows you to create two pages, but if you have the patience to overcome the slightly awkward toolset layout you'll be crying out for the functionality to add more, making the full version worthy of its $189 price tag.

Download Desktop Author 5.6.1 in Softonic