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

Hardcopy is a professional and easy-to-use application that allows you to capture screenshots under Windows. You can capture rectangular parts of the screen as well as complete windows. Captured images can be cut easily and colour shade can be modified. Pictures can be saved, copied in Clipboard, edited with any imaging program or printed.

Download HardCopy 17.0.08 in Softonic

Fraps is a universal Windows application that can be used with all games using DirectX or OpenGL technology. In its current form Fraps performs many tasks and can best be described as:

Benchmarking Software

See how many Frames Per Second (FPS) you are getting in a corner of your screen. Perform custom benchmarks and measure the frame rate between any two points. Save the statistics out to disk and use them for your own reviews and applications.

Screen Capture Software

Take a screenshot with the press of a key! There's no need to paste into a paint program every time you want to capture the screen. Your screen captures are also automatically named and timestamped.

Realtime Video Capture Software

Have you ever wanted to record video while playing your favourite game? Come join the Machinima revolution! Throw away the VCR, forget about using a DV cam, game recording has never been this easy! Fraps can capture audio and video up to 1152x864 and 100 frames per second!

Download Fraps 2.9.6 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

MatchWare ScreenCorder is a video recording program that captures everything happening on your screen.

It's the kind of tool you need when you're building tutorials or instructions about how a particular program should be used. You've got two ways to control MatchWare ScreenCorder - either by mouse or by keyboard shortcuts. Mouse is a lot easier but keyboard shortcuts are useful if you don't want the annoyance of a mouse cursor on your screen.

What makes this particular screen recorder a bit different are the multimedia elements which means arrows, boxes, magnifying glasses and notes that can be used to annotate your screencasts in an interactive way. For example, you can add elements such as self-assessment questionnaires, the results of which can be sent automatically by mail to the researcher. Screencasts can be imported to WMV, AVI of Flash although the developers only recommend exporting to Flash if you've used a questionnaire.

If you're looking to do more than just show but also question people how they use a program, MatchWare ScreenCorder is a very promising solution.

Download MatchWare ScreenCorder 5 in Softonic

HandySnap is a precision-engineered screen capture software designed to capture any portion of the computer screen and insert comments and various graphics to captured images. HandySnap features a tiny, concise user interface that doesn’t obscure the desktop. By implementing a Photoshop-style design in the interface, the program minimizes the learning curve for users.

Download HandySnap 1.4.2.0 in Softonic

Sometimes I prefer watching movies and TV series on the computer rather than doing it on the couch. The image quality in my PC monitor is better and I can handle more formats than just DVD.

Of course, I need a good video player in order to enjoy my favorite movies at their most, and my choice is no other than BSPlayer. This great video player features anything you need to watch movies or any other kind of video on your PC. It supports all popular video formats (and audio as well, in case you were wondering) and though its basic interface is not really the nicest one I've seen, you can easily customize it with skins.

BSPlayer supports video subtitles, takes screenshots of movie currently playing, lets you create bookmarks and chapters to move along videos more easily and has also support for plug-ins. I especially liked the way you can control playback, either by using keyboard shortcuts or simply your mouse: one click to stop the video, two clicks to go full screen, mouse wheel to raise or low the volume…

The only thing I didn't like was the fact that, being a free version, you're obliged to install an adware element on your PC that displays ads from time to time while you're browsing the way. It's a safe app that doesn't compromise your privacy, but still it's not my cup of tea. I guess it's just the price you have to pay for having such a great video player for free.

BSPlayer lets you enjoy your favorite movies on the PC with a wide range of features (subtitles, screenshots, bookmarks and more) provided you're willing to accept some ads on your desktop.

Download BS.Player Free 2.31.974 in Softonic

The ALShow codecs included movie player lets your watch all your videos, movies, and DVDs without searching for video codecs or audio codecs. From AVI to XviD, playing movies is first-click easy with codecs for all popular video, audio, and movie formats. ALShow also recognizes codecs that you do not have and automatically helps instantly install the right codecs. ALShow loads movies fast and plays movies smoothly.

No more video playback stuttering. Audio, video, and screen captures let you save portions of movies to share with friends. You can also import them to your favorite audio or video editor. Video looping lets you repeat parts of a movie. Captions and subtitles are supported for monitor and TV output. The ESC key hides ALShow when you are supposed to do homework. Click the tray icon to resume playing your DVD movie or video.

Download ALShow 1.62 Beta in Softonic

When it comes to photo viewers there are many alternatives to choose from. I've always had something of a crush on Picasa and this new version has made it my absolute favorite.

The brand new Picasa 3.0 is still at a beta stage, but you can already get a glimpse of all the eyecandy it brings to your desktop. The interface remains pretty similar to the previous one, but has been enriched with new options to manage and edit your photos, as well as some new ways to show them off.

Among other features, Picasa now includes a folder manager to handle your folders right on the hard drive, a screen capturing tool, an improved and extended photo editing menu (with new filters and effects) and new exciting options for your creativity, such as creating a movie with your photos.

Picasa now lets you manage your pictures in more comfortable way, both online – by automatically syncing your photo library with Picasa web albums – and offline, with an awesome photo viewer you can use instead of the default Windows image viewer.

The all-new Picasa has successfully completed what it seemed a difficult task: improving a software app that was already very good.

Download Picasa 3.0 Beta in Softonic

All My Movies is a nifty utility for cataloging one's movie collection. It supports all formats, new ones - DVD, Video CD, AVI and MPEG files, and old ones as well - VHS tapes, for example. The program helps easily track films - which movies are loaned, which ones are borrowed, etc. Most importantly, the program is specifically designed for DVDs and works fully automatically with all digital carriers.

Basically, all a user has to do is to insert a DVD or scan a hard-drive. The program will extract all movie information - title, director, actors, description, genre, languages, subtitles, etc. If absent, this information can be imported from online movie databases, like IMDb.com with one mouse click or entered manually.

The best thing about All My Movies is how easy it is to use. Having a tree-like database structure, program owner can quickly sort movies by genre, actor or director. Another great perk is an option to capture movie screens for DVDs and AVI files and attach them to the database. User comments can be added too.

True movie fans with thousands of titles in their collection are certain to like the fact that movie data stored with All My Movies can be exported to HTML, MS Excel or plain text files. In addition, the program comes with password protection options to prevent unauthorized access, and a straightforward loan manager. Another advantage is that the program support third-party plug-ins, including database import from other popular movie cataloguing applications.

Download All My Movies 5.0 in Softonic

How often do you need to share a screenshot online? Whether it's just for fun or serious professional matters, Jet Screenshot makes it a breeze.

As a screen capturing tool, I must say Jet Screenshot is a bit limited: it only features two capturing modes (full screen and user-selected region) and some basic editing capabilities such as adding text, cropping the image and marking certain areas in your screenshot with a pen.

The main feature in Jet Screenshot though is the possibility to publish any of those captured images straight to an FTP server. You can use your own server or make use of the one provided by Jet Screenshot, which, obviously, has a few limitations regarding size and storage.

In any case, this is probably the fastest and easiest way to get your captured images online. The only thing Jet Screenshot needs to improve is the method used to show you the web link of your newly-uploaded image: the current balloon tip is certainly not very user-friendly.

With Jet Screenshot you can capture and share images online in just a couple of clicks.

Download Jet Screenshot 1.0 in Softonic

Don’t you ever wish you had a virtual marker to highlight certain paragraphs on any website? Well, guess what: your marker is here, and it's called Wired-Marker.

Wired-Marker is a handy Firefox plug-in with which you can highlight any text on a website in different colors. The colors can be easily selected from the browser's context menu, so simply select the text you're interested in, right click on it and choose our favorite color.

Wired-Marker maintains highlighted texts even after closing the browser. What's more, Wired-Marker also stores text in its own menu on the browser's toolbar, so it's also a handy way to keep interesting information at sight.

The only thing I missed was having a way to share these text snippets with other users (may be a built-in screen capturer?).

With Wired-Marker you can easily highlight and store text snippets on any website, in different colors.

Download Wired-Marker 2.0.08072400 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

River Past Screen Recorder is River Past's award winning screen video recorder. It is the fastest screen video recorder on the market, with a speed comparable to TechSmith's Camtesia Studio, and way better than any other similar software we have tested.

Capture AVI video from the full screen, a window, a rectangle region, or a defined area around the cursor. Decide whether you want the cursor image to be included. You can even record audio into the AVI, from the microphone, line-in, or speakers. River Past Screen Recorder Pro allows you to record to WMV files using Microsoft's Windows Media Screen codec, which is specialized in producing high quality and small screen videos.

Download River Past Screen Recorder 7.7.11 in Softonic

Taking video shots of your desktop is essential for those that are building tutorials or trying to help others in using a program.

The problem is that sometimes, the recording software can be often be complicated or difficult to use but Screen Video Recorder attempts to be one of those rare breeds that keeps everything to an absolute basic minimum. Although it only saves video captures in AVI or WMV format (which are not exactly the smallest formats to share via e-mail or upload etc) it compensates by making taking screen captures very easy indeed.

The interface consists of little more than small window that allows you to stop and start recordings with a few options to configure the audio codec you want to use, video codec, start a timer and a hotkey that you'd like to use to start and stop recordings. The region that's captured depends on which of the 5 options you've asked it to record - random region, window, full screen, fixed size and fixed region.

However, it not only covers screen activity but it can also record images from webcams attached to IM clients such as AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo Messenger. It can also capture video from TV Cards, DVD's and just about any other video input device except video cameras.

A very simple screen video capture tool just about anyone can use for capturing screen activity, webcam chats and video in general.

Download Screen Video Recorder 1.5.33.0 in Softonic

You're sitting in front of the computer, watching time as it goes by… well, now with DropClock you can literally watch time dropping into water.

DropClock awesome screensaver shows a bunch of thick, huge numbers in white Helvetica, falling from the top of your screen into water. The whole scene in DropClock is recorded in very slow motion, capturing every single detail in the number's movement and the reaction of water as they drop into it.

DropClock is not only a very relaxing screensaver, but also a very original way to check time, because the numbers shown on the screen are not random figures: they show the current time. On the downside, it doesn't have any configuration options and the file is too heavy for a screensaver.

DropClock is a beautiful screensaver that displays current time in a very original, relaxing way.

Download Dropclock Screensaver 1.0.1 in Softonic

Massive photo editing tools like Photoshop are great, but some find them too heavy and complicated for everyday usage.

PicPick is definitely a better choice if what you need is just a simple image editor. With PicPick you can easily perform simple editing tasks to your photos, including brightness, contrast and color adjustment, grayscale, blur, pixelate and other special effects. There's also a cool whiteboard feature which enables you to write and draw directly on the screen.

But PicPick is not only an image editor: it's also a full featured screen capturing tool with which you can capture the image on your monitor in several ways: full screen, active window, user-defined area and more. Plus, PicPick can work with several documents simultaneously and captures can be triggered with customizable keyboard shortcuts, which makes it even handier.

I liked the versatility of PicPick, as well as the fact that it doesn't require installation. On the downside, I missed certain features such as support for printing or the ability to capture complete webpages with automatic scrolling.

PicPick is a lightweight yet full featured image editor and capturer, perfect for simple daily image editing tasks.

Download PicPick 1.7.2 in Softonic

Do you ever want to take a screen shot of a web page in your desktop or web application? Html Snapshot can capture the whole web page as JPG, BMP, PNG, TIFF and GIF image on the fly.

With Html Snapshot, you can build thumbshot server for millions of web pages easily. You have full control of the database yourself. And Html Snapshot is especially suitable to be used on server side. It works well on Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2003 Server and can be used with popular server side script languages like ASP, ASP.Net, PHP and Perl etc.

Download HTML Snapshot 2.1.2008.701 in Softonic

PhotoEchoes is a Kaleidoscope software running as a stand-alone program or as a screensaver. It generates dazzling images based on digital photos. The program will use your collection of photographs (from the folders you choose) and pick images randomly.

It will process the images to enhance them and project the result on screen in multiple animated reflections. With the ability to capture and save the images at high resolution it creates either to a file or directly as the desktop wallpaper. The resulting images are never repeated, so it's always fresh.

Download PhotoEchoes 2.1.2 in Softonic

The WhiteCap visualizer is a highly configurable add on for your media player with a wide range of impressive effects.

WhiteCap works with most media players out there, including the more popular iTunes, Windows Media Player or Winamp. The free version has a few limitations but you can still choose from a number of wave shapes and backgrounds. You'll only have one color scheme to work with though. From the settings menu you can adjust frame rate width and height and sound response scale.

If you pay for the Gold or Platinum versions of the program, you'll be able to save up to five presets.

Apart from the setup menu, which is really easy to use, I was well impressed by the effects themselves. The morphing wire frame effects really flow and manage to capture the essence and rhythm of different tracks really well.

Although the free version has its limitations, WhiteCap is an impressive visualizer for iTunes. Kick back and enjoy!

Download WhiteCap 5.1.2 in Softonic