As the hard drives and Flash memory cards of the world’s burgeoning photography community continue to fill up, there is increasing demand for low-cost methods of keeping their images in some kind of order. With some snap-happy enthusiasts taking hundreds of pictures a week, there’s a danger that the fun of photography will be replaced by the mundane task of finding the shots you once they’re on your PC. While programs such as Photoshop Album and PaintShop Album are pretty good at helping you sort images, StudioLine aims to take things one stage further – by not charging you for the privilege.

You might expect that by not demanding a fee for a photo organizing program, you’d have to settle for a largely scaled-down version of its costly equivalents. We were pleasantly surprised to see this wasn’t the case, and the application is brimming with features that not only make it easier to sort and search for photos, but which can instantly improve the appearance of your images.

The main premise of the program is to help you whip your photo collection into some sort of order, and it does this admirably. You start with an Image Archive, which is basically a database where you can load in all of your images. From here, you can create a hierarchical tree system of folders based through an Explorer-style interface, making it a painless process. Sorting through your images is aided by the capacity for adding information about a photo using the ‘Descriptors’ data, photos, allowing you to categorize by image topic, date, location or person. You can even enter a star rating for each image to help you later in the sorting process. Another nice inclusion is the ability to change the size of thumbnail previews using a slider when viewing all the images within a folder.

As if the slick sorting facilities weren’t impressive enough, the program boasts a range of editing tools that rival many priced image editors. There’s a diverse variety of tools ranging from preprocessing, through photo correction, to special effects, all of which can be previewed and applied with ease. The fact that you can apply changes you’ve made to one photograph to hundreds of other images in one click is another major boon, and is ideal if you want to turn a batch of images into black and white, or apply an auto-colour correction to an entire album of photos, for instance.

The user interface is generally a joy to use, with lots of customizable options, and draggable palettes like those you see in professional editing suites. There are a couple of bothersome aspects of the interface which could do with changing though, such as the fact that an image loads in a new pop-up menu when its thumbnail is clicked on, rather than in the main window (as a tab perhaps). The tips boxes that spring up a little too frequently can also get a tad irritating, especially as there seems to be no way to permanently disable them.

Apart from these minor niggles, this is a fantastic program which, is arguably the cheapest way of effectively managing your image collection. The addition of features for creating slide shows, web galleries and emails only serves to raise its status as a serious contender to its big budget rivals.

Download StudioLine Photo Basic 3.50.54 in Softonic

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

CyberLink DVD Suite includes ten basic tools designed to help you make the most out of your multimedia library. Tasks like burning music compilations onto CD and DVD, creating data backup copies, or designing photo slideshows to share with friends and family are just some of the tasks that you'll be able to carry out with CyberLink DVD Suite.

The suite includes an application launcher, known as PowerStarter. This launcher works as some kind of control panel from where you can easily access all the tools included in the suite. They're categorized in tabs according to the task or action you can do with them ("watch movie", "make an audio CD", "copy a data DVD") instead of displaying the actual tool's name. PowerStarter also includes a special Favorites tab where you can add shortcuts to your most frequently used actions.

This app launcher obviously makes things much easier for the average user, but power users may find it confusing, as they're probably used to choosing the application they want to open – not the task they want to do.

What does CyberLink DVD Suite include? As a starter, you'll find a powerful recording tool (Power2Go) with which you can burn audio and data CD and DVD, perfect to enjoy your favorite music anywhere and make backup copies.

Another outstanding app is PowerProducer, which lets you create VCD, SVCD and video and photo compilations. If you want to create a fully customized slideshow with soundtrack, transition effects and all the bells and whistles, then your best choice is Medi@Show. PowerDVD Copy and PowerBackup also deserve a mention, allowing you to copy non-protected DVD movies and create security copies of your sensitive data respectively.

CyberLink DVD Suite is undoubtedly a very complete package with high-quality tools, which is very suitable for the average user. I'm not that sure about more advanced users though: I'm convinced that the more you learn about how to use computers and software, the less you need to download a huge-sized suite with a dozen tools from which you'll probably only use three or four - especially in the case of CyberLink DVD Suite, where you can't choose which specific tools you want to install.

CyberLink DVD Suite is a fully featured multimedia suite with a very varied set of tools to burn discs, create backup copies, design slideshows and more.

Download CyberLink DVD Suite 6 Essential 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 YouCam is one of those applications that allows you to add wacky and bizarre effects to your webcam chats and conversations.

You can do just about anything from turning yourself into Abraham Lincoln to a talking dog to shock, surprise and even disgust your friends. It works in conjunction with Windows Live Messenger, Skype, Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger. CyberLink YouCam doesn't just stick a dogs face in front of yours however. It uses facial-tracking 3D avatars that mimic the real movements of your face so it actually looks pretty good (except the dog, it has to be said).

There are two different modes to choose from - Live Chat Mode which allows you to pepper your chats with video effects; Video and Photo Capture Mode - this allows you to record yourself on video, capture a single photo, or photo burst. And finally, Automatic Capture which records videos by setting your recording time, or to starting with the detection of motion.

CyberLink YouCam is a fun tool that will spice up any webchat conversation, although some of the effects are clearly more realistic than others.

Download CyberLink YouCam 2.0 in Softonic

CyberLink DVD Suite includes ten basic tools designed to help you make the most out of your multimedia library. Tasks like burning music compilations onto CD and DVD, creating data backup copies, or designing photo slideshows to share with friends and family are just some of the tasks that you'll be able to carry out with CyberLink DVD Suite.

The suite includes an application launcher, known as PowerStarter. This launcher works as some kind of control panel from where you can easily access all the tools included in the suite. They're categorized in tabs according to the task or action you can do with them ("watch movie", "make an audio CD", "copy a data DVD") instead of displaying the actual tool's name. PowerStarter also includes a special Favorites tab where you can add shortcuts to your most frequently used actions.

This app launcher obviously makes things much easier for the average user, but power users may find it confusing, as they're probably used to choosing the application they want to open – not the task they want to do.

What does CyberLink DVD Suite include? As a starter, you'll find a powerful recording tool (Power2Go) with which you can burn audio and data CD and DVD, perfect to enjoy your favorite music anywhere and make backup copies.

Another outstanding app is PowerProducer, which lets you create VCD, SVCD and video and photo compilations. If you want to create a fully customized slideshow with soundtrack, transition effects and all the bells and whistles, then your best choice is Medi@Show. PowerDVD Copy and PowerBackup also deserve a mention, allowing you to copy non-protected DVD movies and create security copies of your sensitive data respectively. The Pro version of the suite also includes PowerDirector, a handy video editor to tweak, cut, crop, copy and paste your video files.

CyberLink DVD Suite is undoubtedly a very complete package with high-quality tools, which is very suitable for the average user. I'm not that sure about more advanced users though: I'm convinced that the more you learn about how to use computers and software, the less you need to download a huge-sized suite with a dozen tools from which you'll probably only use three or four - especially in the case of CyberLink DVD Suite, where you can't choose which specific tools you want to install.

CyberLink DVD Suite is a fully featured multimedia suite with a very varied set of tools to burn discs, create backup copies, design slideshows and more.

Download CyberLink DVD Suite 6 Pro 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

If you're anything like me, you get bored of your desktop wallpaper very quickly. And like me, you'll be interested in testing tools like Wallpapers from MSN.

This app is a complete wallpaper manager that includes a collection of more than 50 images you can use as desktop background right away. You can also add you own photos to the Wallpapers from MSN collection and comfortably browse through them thanks to a thumbnail list and a small preview window.

What makes Wallpapers from MSN different from other similar applications is the fact that you can add special effects to the images. By "special effects" I mean you can add clipart on top of the image, insert a line or two of text and, of course, crop, resize and adapt the image to make it fit your computer monitor.

On the downside, there's no clear indication if you'll be able to download more wallpapers apart from the ones that come already bundled with the program. Also, Wallpapers from MSN is certainly a bit too heavy on resources to have it permanently running in the background – a requisite if you want it to cycle through your wallpapers automatically.

If you're a wallpaper collector, Wallpapers from MSN is made for you: a wallpaper manager that includes more than 50 images and also lets you edit them.

Download Wallpapers from MSN Beta 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

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

If you like your CD and DVD burners to support drag and drop then CyberLink Power2Go might be the right solution for you.

CyberLink Power2Go features everything you'd expect from a burner produced by a big developer such as CyberLink, including the ability to burn onto double layer DVDs and Blu-ray discs. It's also been designed to produce photo slideshows with Digital Dolby audio and even extract audio tracks from video files.

The ease of access and speed of use is what impresses with this burner. If you want to burn any DVD or CD, simply drag them into the desktop shortcut and CyberLink Power2Go whizzes into action. It even takes it's image seriously with the option of downloading fresh new skins and templates online.

CyberLink Power2Go is a powerful and extremely quick burner that will handle all your CD/DVD and Blu-ray burning needs.

Download CyberLink Power2Go 6 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

Few can dispute the fact that Apple created a flawless product when it built the iPod. However, the company did omit to include one feature that still bothers me. The legally-aware developer made it so that you couldn't copy tunes from your iPod onto another computer. OK, so it means everything is above board, but it also means that if you get a new computer or your hard drive fails, you have to build up your MP3 collection all over again. Luckily, there are now several programs available that let you copy your iPod tunes to any machine, and CopyTrans is a good example of one of these.

The process of synchronising your music with CopyTrans is a simple one and you can choose to archive your collection or import it into a new iTunes library. All you need to do is connect your iPod, wait for the program to scan the device, choose your transfer settings then wait for CopyTrans to work its magic.

It does take quite a long time to copy across the music, but the operation works very well and I experienced no problems other than that it didn't reproduce all of the album art I had. The program boasts some nice features such as selective transfers, incremental back-ups, and repair to damaged iPod databases.

If you're scared of losing all your iPod data then install CopyTrans and erase your worries with ease.

Download CopyTrans 2.590 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

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

Wallpaper Master offers a number of options to renew your desktop background image. Create categories to organize your wallpapers and order your different images in a list on the interface. Individual Overrides, like style, alignment or border can be modified directly from the program window. Images can also be set up on multiple monitors in one click.

Despite a good deal of options, we were slightly disappointed with Wallpaper Master. There's no drag and drop, which means you have to browse and select all the pictures you want to use as wallpapers. The effects you can add to them, mirror, black and white and mosaic, are fairly limited and do not add much to your images.

Once you chosen the image you'll use as wallpapers and set up the rotation you can let Wallpaper Master take care of the rest. The program could be a bit more intuitive and offer more effects, but on the whole is a good piece of software to manage your wallpapers.

Download Wallpaper Master Pro 2.16 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

Over the years Nero has evolved from being a simple CD burner in its earlier versions to becoming the complete multimedia suite we find in its latest version, Nero 9.

As well as the classic Nero Burning ROM tool – which now includes support for Blu-Ray – Nero 9 includes pretty much everything you need to make the most of your music, photos, videos and creativity. You'll be able to carry out complete multimedia projects, from ripping your favorite audio CDs and mixing the tracks with Nero SoundTrax to creating videos with your photos, and even design CD artwork (top and back covers, booklet and CD sticker) by yourself with Nero CoverDesigner.

All these tools are conveniently available from Nero StartSmart, a handy app launcher with two main toolbars: on top of the window, shortcuts to Nero's apps; on the left-side menu, direct access to the most frequent tasks (data burning, audio burning, copy disc, etc.) than open right on StartSmart's main area.

Nero 9 features other interesting tools that try to cover even more areas. You can use the built-in Nero Backup tool to make safety copies of your most important data, for example. Nero also includes an embedded video player and a photo editor (known as Nero PhotoSnap) though these two apps are quite basic and could have probably been left out without much remorse for the user.

Talking about extra apps, Nero has often been accused of being bloatware, and this version won't change that. It does include a large array of tools, though to be honest they're all quite straightforward and easy to use. I guess the discussion about complexity versus simplicity will still go on, but my view is that Nero 9 is no longer a simple burning tool: it's a full-featured suite that happens to include a burning app, plus many other features that make it an excellent application for all your multimedia projects.

Nero 9 follows the trend of previous versions and adds even more features. If you only need a DVD burning tool, look elsewhere; but if you're looking for a complete multimedia suite, this is your program.

Download Nero 9.0.9.4b in Softonic