Aperture could be defined as 'iPhoto on steroids'. It's a complete photo organizer and viewer, easy enough for the amateur, but with the powerful tools that any advanced user would need. Plus it features a comfortable interface that hardly takes a few minutes to get used to.

Aperture lets you import images from various resources (including your photo camera), organize them in an intuitive way and optimize or fix them if necessary. When ready, sit back and enjoy them in a fullscreen slideshow, or use them in various creative projects such as a book, an album or a web gallery.

When I said Aperture was a bit like iPhoto, I wasn't exaggerating. This new version includes Faces, the popular facial recognition technology implemented in the last version of iPhoto. But Aperture goes a step beyond and also includes Places, another special technology that geolocates your images using the information stored in metadata by some cameras. However, I have to say that this feature wasn't working properly: the map took ages to load and controls were over-sensitive – which made map navigation a real pain. It even caused a program crash while testing it.

Besides these organizational features, Aperture includes a bunch of interesting tools to enhance your pics. You can tweak the image's balance, exposure, color and light values, levels and more with easy-to-use slides. The so-called Adjustment presets let you apply quick, frequent fixes to images in just two clicks. Finally, the all-new precision brushes help you fix the problem with extraordinary accuracy.

Other features in Aperture I found specially interesting were the possibility to share your images online in MobileMe, Facebook and Flickr right from the program, and to create printed copies of your photos – which always works as a nice present for grandma.

Aperture is an excellent photo application, there's no doubt about that. But in a way I felt disappointed when testing this new version. I expected to have more editing and drawing tools, and – why not – support for layers and masks. I found the controls uncomfortable and hard to manage, and my overall impression was one of disappointment.

Aperture is a powerful photo organizer and viewer that includes a handful of features to view, fix, optimize, enhance, share and enjoy your photos!

Download Aperture 3.4.4 in Softonic

Desktop sharing is not just the field of tech professionals anymore. Whether you want to show how an application works or simply be able to explain things on someone else's computer, you'll need to find a way to share desktops easily.

TeamViewer for Mac offers a simple way of creating desktop sharing sessions with other users whether on a distant computer, local connection or over the internet. Both users will each have an ID and password with which to connect to their session.

Taking control of another computer is a great way to solve issues from a distance and demonstrate things on a desktop without actually being there physically. TeamViewer also allows file transfer and includes a chat function to communicate with your contact. You can also record sessions and play them back afterward with TeamViewer. These can then be used as tutorials or to go back on what you've done in previous sessions. If you dig into the details you'll be able to choose not only whether to optimize quality or speed, but also configure the amount of access you want to give to your desktop with TeamViewer.

The free version of TeamViewer for Mac has a number of limitations, and lacks some modules like the TeamViewer manager or customer module. In addition, the program can be a little complicated to get the hang of at first.

TeamViewer for Mac is a solid program for quickly sharing desktops with another user.

Download TeamViewer for Mac 8.0.16901 in Softonic

It is meant for professional users and while I doubt you have an x-ray machine or an electro-magnetic scanner in your bedroom, you might learn something by looking at the demos available. You actually have two very big samples to download, with lots of DICOM images (the standard for radiological and non-radiological medical images). What does it have this kind of image file more than a JPEG? Well, a lot. You can see the picture in 3D, zoom in, discovering details, basically you can navigate within the picture, even turning it upside down if you wish. This gives you a perfect idea of the shape of human organs and could be useful for any science student or generally curious person.

OsiriX is used by doctors and while they may find it fairly easy to use, non-professional users might find it intimidating and difficult understand at first. You might find it useful to quickly read the relative wiki to find more DICOM images to download and understand how to use the 4D functionality (a 3D image with a temporal event in it, like the heart beating). It’s not easy to view what you would like, unless you find an online source of DICOM images or you have your own magnetic resonance imaging machine.

The human body is fascinating and OsiriX allows you to analyze it with 4D images that you can zoom in on and explore. It might be difficult though to find DICOM images which you are interested in.

Download OsiriX 5.6 in Softonic

Instamac features classic single image scrolling view, grid views, multi-touch gesture support and easy image enlarging. You can also view people's profiles, follow people, and tag/tag search for images and friends. It's not perfect by any means though. It's not integrated with iPhoto or Aperture for example and it can be unstable at times but generally, it offers one of the best Instagram experiences possible so far on Mac.

As with Instagram for iPhone, you can view the most popular images in Instagram and Instamac also uploads the images you favorited to your account and view them all at once. In addition, there's a slideshow feature for photos with specific tags. Finally, there are notifications for new photos which is integrated into both Mountain Lion Notification Center and Growl and support for multiple accounts.

Please note that the early release of Instamac does not support Lion - only Mountain Lion - although the developers are working on a fix for this. It will also be updated shortly for Retina displays.

Overall, Instamac is probably the closest thing to Instagram for Mac although there are some big fixes and improvements needed.

Download Instamac 12.3 in Softonic

Download MenuMeters 1.6 in Softonic

If you're an amateur photographer who takes photos in JPG format with a simple compact camera you probably won't need to deal with RAW images, but professionals certainly will.

Being a more professional-oriented format, RAW images require special software applications like Capture One Pro. This complete photo viewer and editor lets you manage your RAW images with ease. It features an interface divided into three different sections, namely system directory tree, folder contents preview and image preview. Capture One Pro also displays a complete analysis of each selected photo.

With Capture One Pro you'll be able to tweak exposure, white balance, focus and other values in your RAW images and then save them in other formats (the program also works as a RAW converter). Each time you apply a change to the image you'll be able to preview the result in real time.

The downside is that, because it's aimed at professionals, Capture One Pro is a little complex to use. Also, bear in mind that Capture One Pro is not compatible with all RAW formats, so you will need to check if your camera is supported before using the program.

Camera One Pro is a powerful tool that allows you to tweak, edit and convert your RAW files in a professional working environment.

Download Capture One Pro 6.4.1 in Softonic

A fire and fireplace show through the front window as smoke gently billows from the chimney. Snow bunny periodically hops across the field in front of the house and a quaint pipe smoking snowman.

Deer and bunnies appear at random intervals along the woods behind the house, delighting the viewer. Peer through the uncurtained window to see woodland animals moving alongside the house.

Want a soothing nighttime wooded scene? Just set the time of day to night and a dark shadowy blue hue is cast on everything. Prefer a dusky sunset scene?

The sunset setting produces a deep orange hue. Demo contains full set of features. Have fun customizing this screen saver to your preferences including tint, brightness, time of day settings, sound mute and volume control.

Have fun customizing this screen saver to your preferences including tint, brightness, time of day settings, sound mute and volume control.

Download 3D Snowy Woodland Cottage in Softonic

A fire and fireplace show through the front window as smoke gently billows from the chimney. Snow bunny periodically hops across the field in front of the house and a quaint pipe smoking snowman.

Deer and bunnies appear at random intervals along the woods behind the house, delighting the viewer. Peer through the uncurtained window to see woodland animals moving alongside the house.

Want a soothing nighttime wooded scene? Just set the time of day to night and a dark shadowy blue hue is cast on everything. Prefer a dusky sunset scene?

The sunset setting produces a deep orange hue. Demo contains full set of features. Have fun customizing this screen saver to your preferences including tint, brightness, time of day settings, sound mute and volume control.

Have fun customizing this screen saver to your preferences including tint, brightness, time of day settings, sound mute and volume control.

Download 3D Snowy Woodland Cottage in Softonic

Ever wanted to stare all day at the busiest city centers of the world? PhotoStickies lets you do just that right from your desktop. The application shows webcams and images on your desktop, and features a huge list of webcams, showing places like Times Square or the Eiffel Tower. You can also choose to display your own photos and arrange them how you like on your desktop.

The program features numerous filters and other settings like fading or setting image contrast. Setting favorites doesn't really work, as you never know when you've picked an image or webcam and you can't really browse through them. While you'll probably find much better image viewers for Mac, PhotoStickies is fun to use just to gaze at those webcams all day.

Download PhotoStickies 5.6.4 in Softonic

iScrapbook is a well built application that gives you all the tools to create your own scrapbook. After choosing your template, you can play around with the application and build your album. Thanks to the graphic/text/favorites side tabs all the essential elements are readily available to you. We also were impressed by the choice given to you in the graphics tab in terms of elements, shapes and clip art. You can also choose to quickly import all sorts of photos.

Text editing is very well handled by iScrapbook. First choose the sort of title you want, then double click on it to open up a hovering window with all the editing options like font, size or style.

Although iScrapbook only offers 9 template, you can still decide to create your own. Printing and exporting your creation is also a snap. iScrapbook is accessible and has enough features to make good looking scrapbooks.

Download iScrapbook 3.3.0 in Softonic

flickery makes it easy to browse photostreams, favorites and photosets. It enables you to edit, add effects, tags, titles, descriptions and even locations to your photos and videos. flickery works via drag 'n' drop meaning adding and removing photos is very easy. Viewing photos in full screen is also possible within flickery.

The search options are particularly good allowing you to search either by name or even location thanks to integration with Google Maps. Finally, you can also directly eMail and tweet directly from within flickery. flickery loads photos very quickly although you can only load one account at a time. You can also only view one photoset at a time since there's no tabbed viewing yet.

However, overall, flickery is an excellent desktop flickr client that will enhance your photo browsing and uploading.

Download flickery 1.9.25 in Softonic

Photo Wrangler is made to sort quickly through your images. It can be used for example right after having downloaded your digital pictures to your Mac. Photo Wrangler offers all the basic functions, including zoom and rotation. To sort through picture use the back and forward arrows. All you need to do to store images in folders is to click on the destination folder when the picture is selected.

Photo Wrangler's interface felt a bit rigid and even though it manages to sort through pictures quickly, we found a considerable slow down when simply rotating them. A basic tool, but then again most photo viewers and even digital cameras will be able to do the same. We did appreciate the wide preview screen though.

Photo Wrangler is a basic tool to quickly sort through images.

Download Photo Wrangler 2.2 in Softonic

HyperImage allows you to quickly download images from the internet onto your desktop.

You can include or exclude file names and extensions that you choose and set a maximum number of links to follow. HyperImage can also download images from up to 100 different sites.

While the downloading process is fairly straightforward, HyperImage does have a tendency to stall every now and then. HyperImage offers an activity viewer though , which will display a list of all images downloaded, active, skipped and still in queue and it's useful to keep track of what you've collected.

You can set HyperImage to full screen view, which gives you a quick overview of all your images in a folder, or slideshow to automatically play them back.