Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular graphic editors in the world, but it's certainly not the only one. There are several good alternatives for those who cannot afford Adobe's flagship product. Two of them are The Gimp and PhotoFiltre, which may seem similar at first sight, but show quite outstanding differences when analyzed in detail. Let's take a deeper look at both.

The Gimp has always been considered as Photoshop's open source substitute. It was launched in 1995 and is now maintained by a very active user community. As for PhotoFiltre, its first version was released in 2004 as freeware. This program is currently also offered as a shareware version with extra functionalities.

Differences appear from the very beginning. The Gimp requires a DLL package (GTK+ 2 Runtime Environment) before even beginning to install, while a few clicks on the "Next" button is everything PhotoFiltre demands to be up and running. Also, Gimp's interface is probably very different to anything you have seen so far, with separate floating windows, whereas PhotoFiltre keeps the standard interface common to all Windows applications.

Regarding the functions offered by both programs, on the one side The Gimp features support for layers as well as a bunch of tools that Photoshop users will find very familiar: smudge, blur or clone stamp, to name a few. Just don't forget that many of these tools have different names from the ones you're used to in Adobe's application. On the other side, PhotoFiltre also offers many Photoshop-like tools but has no support for layers. It does have, however, a huge amount of filters and effects of all kinds ready to be applied to your pictures with a couple of clicks.

Although The Gimp and PhotoFiltre are similar applications, the former is aimed at more advanced users and particularly useful for graphic design, while the latter is perfect for novice users who want to add some spice to their photos.

As soon have you turned on your computer, you need passwords of all kinds to check your email, to write on your blog, to log into your favourite IM application... dozens of passwords which end up being hard to remember, especially if you follow computer security advice like having different passwords for different services and not using your dog's name or your birthday.

Fortunately you can always get hold of a password manager. This app stores all those tricky words securely so that you only need to remember one single password, the one that grants you access to the program. Here at Softonic we have quite a few password managers, but today we'll focus on two of the most popular options: LoginControl and Any Password.

There are a handful of P2P TV streaming apps out there but only a few available with interfaces in languages other than Chinese. These two monsters of the P2P TV streaming world offer exactly that with excellent streaming stability and good image quality to boot.

As a big soccer fan, I find myself naturally gravitating towards SopCast. Even though you can select 12 different languages for the interface, most of the channels are Asian but it's these channels – such as Star Sports, ESPN Asia and CCTV5 – that broadcast most international soccer league matches. However, SopCast is for much more than just watching TV – it's also for creating your own TV content, as embraced by its slogan "Deliver your media to the world!". To do this, you need to complete a simple registration process on the SopCast website (if you just want to watch, you can log on as an anonymous user). To broadcast, you simply upload your video to one of their servers via an easy interface.

With broadband connections or WiFi set up almost anywhere you go, and portable devices like USB keys offering bigger storage space than ever before, you'd think file compression technology would become obsolete. Surprisingly though, archiving applications are still very popular with users, thanks to extra features like encryption or file repair.

A few years back, having Winzip on your PC was a prerequisite, but with time many more versatile competitors and better compression formats have popped up. Nowadays the name of the game is not really the size of compressions but securing your files and quickly transmitting them to other users. We've chosen 6 different compression utilities to put to the test.

Read more »

With so much downloadable audio visual material on the internet, people are getting more creative with their content. Just look at the millions of submissions to You Tube by wannabe directors and home movie aficionados. If you're not ready to take on heavy duty editing programs such as Adobe Premiere, there are a few cut and splice programs out there to help you.

One such example is Video Cutter and Splicer which can split the movie file into two parts at a certain scene and save them as two movies which could help you get your clips under YouTube's 10 minute limit. You can even save your favourite frames from movies as an image to make a nice thumbnail preview. This program allows you to cut and splice video in AVI, MPEG, WMV, ASF, QT, and MOV format but note that it can only output your masterpieces in AVI, MPEG and WMV format.

For something a little more versatile, you can try Quick Video Converter. As its name suggests, its main job is as a converter but it also cut part of a file, merge two or more files into one and even rip parts of a DVD/SVCD/VCD to video files. It also supports a huge amount of formats, including 3GP and MP4.

If you're looking for an altogether more powerful solution though, take a look at Video Workshop. Video Workshop is a digital video converter/editor for home video processing and for people who are just getting started with video editing. It also performs conversions but allows you to be much more creative including ripping audio from a film to mp3, mixing soundtracks and adding your own voice overs. A great program for those that want to assemble all their favourite clips in one place and merge them into their own film or mish-mash.

Now that BitTorrent has gone all sensible and started charging for licensed downloads, free torrent clients are likely to experience a surge in usage. uTorrent and BitComet are two of the most popular torrent apps around, allowing you download audio, video and software at high speeds through torrents, downloading a file in pieces rather than from one source in order to speed up transfer times.

uTorrent (also written as 'µTorrent') has quickly become a favorite among torrent users worldwide thanks to an innovative interface, minute CPU usage and extensive download details. The program is undoubtedly one of the most reliable torrent clients on the market, thanks to an ultra quick installation process and a minimal use of PC resources. You can have a good number of torrents downloading and still be able to use your PC without suffering any lags.

uTorrent makes it easy for you to look for new downloads without opening up your browser. You can search the main torrent sites by typing the name of the file you are looking for in the box on the top right corner of the interface. uTorrent also includes an RSS downloader to receive feeds of your favourite torrent sites. This little feature is great for checking out all the new torrents in one click.

Apart from Picasa's indisputable first position among image viewers, there's a very interesting competition in the Top Downloads list for this category on Softonic. Two of the most powerful candidates are FastStone Image Viewer and XnView, two popular image viewers that share many features but also have certain differences. Let's analyse both of them in depth.

When launching both programs, the first noticeable difference is their interface. Whilst XnView looks very much like Windows Explorer, with a tree-like structure on the left and the selected folder's contents on the right, FastStone Image Viewer uses a neatly designed interface that you can customize with skins. Both programs use thumbnails to display photos and ALT text windows to show detailed information about each picture.

Today we're going to take a look at eMule and Limewire, two of the biggest free P2P filesharing programs around. We will compare them according to a certain amount of factors like version, network, downloading process, search function and extra features.

First of all, let us remind you that both programs are at very different levels of development. While eMule is known to be one of the most popular P2P applications, it is still only at version 0.47c. Limewire is now 4.12 and offers a PRO (but not free) version with advanced features. However there are loads of moded versions of eMule, like MorphXT, Plus or Xtreme with different skins or performance enhancements.

Concerning networks, eMule and Limewire are in two different ball parks. eMule connects to the eDonkey and Kad networks while Limewire connects to Gnutella. These are probably the most popular around, and yield excellent results, whatever you may be looking for. When setting up Limewire, if your router is UPnP enabled it will automatically forward a port for you. This is because Limewire supports UPnP port mapping. With eMule you will have to choose and forward a port yourself.

You've probably noticed by now the large number of good, free video players available. We've decided to compare contenders KMPlayer and VLC Media Player and see how they fare.

First off, let's look at the interface. KMPLayer is fully customizable and, like Winamp, allows you to open multiple windows for controls, playlist or equalizer. You can move these around and adjust them to your liking. VLC has a very basic and intuitive interface, but also supports a number of skins. Each program offers a basic menu and hotkeys, giving you quick access to the playback functions.

Compatibility with a great deal of video formats is what makes both of these video players extremely popular. However VLC Media Player probably has the edge here, because, Real video being an exception, it seems to cover all existing video files. It can also play incomplete videos and will try to play an unknown format in its raw form. Each player has a large array of audio and video filters to process and enhance your videos. However, KMPlayer adds a feature for effects like aspect ratio or colors, to improve playback quality, not available in VLC.

Given that phones have had cameras built-in for a number of years now, it can be pretty disappointing that when you first fire your camera up, it'll more likely than not be lacking in anything beyond the most basic features. That's where programs like Camera Magica come in. Camera Magica is capable of using bigger zoom, higher contrast and larger image sizes as well as being able to create new types of images such as seamless panoramas and 'joke' pictures.

While opening up the possibilities of your phone's camera, programs like this are actually using some pretty clever technology. When creating panoramas, Camera Magica automatically detects the edge of the last image you took and looks for it as you slowly move the camera. When lined up, it takes the next shot, making it easy for the program to blend the edges of your images for that seamless effect!

PhotoFusion, from Scalado, has similar features. Along with its panorama tools (which use transparent overlays to help the user line up image edges), PhotoFusion allows you to create 'Photo Strips' (one image made up of nine others, in grid format), and warped images. Its developer, Scalado is recognised as being at the forefront of phone camera software development so we can expect more to come from them in the future.

Separating these two programs on anything other than price is pointless: they're both well designed, fun programs which will help you get the most out of your smart camera phone. Camera Magica is true Freeware and is thus our favourite but PhotoFusion certainly deserves a test run for its novel approach to user-interface and attractive output.

As Sony Ericsson's latest offering (the CyberShot Phone) makes clear, portable telephony and photography are now inextricably linked. What may have seemed like a fad has become a major feature - one which is improved and enhanced by programs like CameraMagica and PhotoFusion.

Planning a trip for the weekend? Well you'd better make sure the sun is on your side. There's a good number of weather forecasting applications around. We've taken two relatively popular programs and compared them to see which one fared best.

Weatherbug is free and discreetly fits into your deskbar. You can also choose for it to appear in your browser bar so you get weather info while you're on the net. Unfortunately, the program is limited to the United States and you'll realize this when you set it up, because you'll need to enter a ZIP code. If you've forgotten it, you can easily browse for your location in the program. Weatherbug includes a cute little chirp sound alert to inform you of new weather updates. What we liked most was the wealth of features and maps like live camera views of key metropolitan areas (good for traffic updates), the severe weather alert notification and fun weather games and quizzes. On the downside, you'll need to register Weatherbug when you first start it, and it will install adware (an extra search bar) in your browser.

On the other side of the ring we have Weather Watcher, a free application that also fits in the deskbar and includes sound alerts. Unlike Weatherbug, this application takes its data from the Weather Channel, meaning you can check out any place in the world. The satellite imagery is very basic however and there's not much information you'll get out of it. The real asset of Weather Watcher is a clean interface, with hourly meteorological cycles and regular updates. Weather forecast details appear as you roll over data on the screen.

So to our verdict. Even though Weatherbug is limited to the States, it has many more maps and features and an overall fun user experience. Weather Watcher offers detailed worldwide meteorological data but it just doesn't have that spark of user attractiveness. That said, you're best trying them out and choosing the one you like most.