Photoscape is an excellent free alternative to commercial photo editing programs like Photoshop. It includes a wide variety of filters, tools and special effects that help you touch up and edit your digital images.

Blending one image over another to create a combined image is a great way to add an artistic effect to some of your photos. It's also convenient for people who take multiple photos in quick succession and want to add certain objects in one photo to another with a similar backdrop. With Photoscape, this is quite simple to do, once you learn the process...

Adobe have announced the launch of Carousel for Mac and iOS which enables users to share photos seamlessly across Apple devices.

Adobe Carousel gives you access to your entire photo collection from your iPad, iPhone or Mac. Adobe Carousel also allows you to enhance them using the same technology as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. You can import as many photos as you want but you have to pay a subscription fee to use it. At the moment, Adobe are offering an introductory price of $59.99 a year or $5.99 a month although this offer expires January 31, 2012.

The photo enhancement tool is somewhat limited compared to Adobe Lightroom but is useful for just simple effects. Most importantly, you can fix exposure, white balance, and saturation. A slider enables you to change contrast, brightness, vibrancy etc. Changes are none destructive i.e. they don't affect the original photos.

Finally, you can create libraries which friends and family can access via an Adobe Carousel app for iOS via which they can also add photos to albums.

Adobe Carousel is very polished app and for anyone that doesn't plan on using iCloud regularly and only wants to share photos, it's a quick and convenient way of sharing. However, the price of the subscription price will no doubt put-off many mac users but if you only intend on sharing photos and love Adobe products, it may be worth it.

Some of the most promising start-up companies were present at yesterday's Pitch San Francisco 2011. Hosted on the club level concourse of AT&T Park, the venue was just about as impressive as the start-ups.

There were some really great new mobile and web apps on display at Pitch. From a new way to listen to and share music with friends to a comprehensive photo editing and sharing app and everything in between, here are some of my top picks from the event.

If you use your Mac to store all your images, you might find they start to take up some serious space. With ImageOptim you can cut JPEG, PNG and GIF images by around 20-30%, without losing noticeable quality.

ImageOptim is a graphical user interface (GUI) for a range of open source optimizing engines, and is extremely easy to use.  Simply drag and drop your images into the app, and they will be automatically analyzed and optimized. Be aware that ImageOptim actually changes the files you give it, so you may want to keep your original images in case you don't like the results. We tested a range of images, and the results are good.

You can often save 20-30% of the size without losing any image quality. With a large collection of images this can be significant. ImageOptim is ideal for image you want to upload to web pages, as it improves load times.

Download ImageOptim for Mac here, it's free and incredibly easy to use!

If you own an iPhone, chances are you use Instagram, the popular iOS app that lets you apply effects to your photos and share them online in no time. Some of the filters included in Instagram can make your photos look really awesome, to the point that you may want to apply them to the images on your computer. And here's where Daniel Box gets into action.

Being an Instagram fan himself, Daniel was looking for a way to replicate the app's filters in Photoshop. After not finding any satisfying results, he decided to create a set of Photoshop actions that let you apply Instagram filters to the images in your computer. Though he says he didn't get a 100% match, I have to say results are very close to the original Instagram filters. They look great and best of all, can be applied in just one click.

Today's digital cameras deliver high quality images that look pristine on the computer screen and also on paper when you print them out. The problem comes when you want to want to share those same pictures online, or send them to your family by email. One 3 MB image is still  manageable, but when you want to share 52 photos from your last vacation things suddenly get difficult... and this is when RIOT comes in handy.

RIOT stands for Radical Image Optimization Tool, and this is precisely what it does: optimizes your images while keeping quality as high as possible. It's a free tool (for personal and non-profit usage) that works with JPG, PNG and GIF images, and that can be used as a plug-in for GIMP, IrfanView and XnView.

Right on the heels of Google+, another site supported by the search engine giant is up and running, although it's also currently in invite-only mode.

Photovine is a new image sharing service created by Slide which, according to the site's Privacy Notice, is part of Google Inc. The concept seems relatively simple - create an account, download the app (apparently for both iPhone and Android smartphones, if the image on the service's initial web page is any indicator) and share with friends and family. As people connected with you upload their own photos, the images can be linked based on common user-created captions, until you've gone from a single picture "seedling" to a full-grown photo "vine" that's growth is virtually limitless.

If you're wondering whether Google plans to connect this new service to Google+, it's unclear so far. With the obvious and enthusiastic interest in garnering a Google+ invite from the general public though, it'll be interesting to see how the two new web apps might end up being connected. For the time being, Photovine is taking requests from interested web users on its main page and promising to roll out invites later this month on a first-come first-served basis.

Google+ may be more than "just" a social network, but it can be used in in a similar way to Facebook, and many people want to join precisely because they want a change. Facebook has suffered a number of privacy scares as it has grown, so how does it compare with new kid Google+? Let's take a look at the  privacy options of both social apps.

Privacy Settings:

Facebook's privacy dashboard has a neat table that shows you who can see what. Click Customize and you can edit these settings. You can choose to share things with just you, friends, friends of friends or specific people. You can also opt to hide certain categories from specific people. Here you can also preview your profile as it appears to any of your friends.

The Google+ privacy settings page is much longer, but every segment is clearly explained. Editing your settings takes you to your profile, letting you see exactly which part of your profile you are altering. Google+'s Circles means you choose who can see your posts and updates as you make them, giving you much greater control.

While their approaches are different, I think both are good attempts at making privacy and sharing settings accessible and user friendly.

I was testing a few new Windows 7 themes on my computer, when I suddenly wondered whether it would be possible to extract the wallpapers included in any of those themes. My idea was to grab only the images used as desktop background and share them with a friend who doesn't use Windows 7. After a bit of Googling, I found the solution: yes, you can extract wallpapers from a Windows 7 theme, and it's easier than you think.

Actually, there are two ways to extract desktop background images from a Windows 7 theme. If you already have the theme installed, first of all you need to make hidden folders and files visible in the Tools > Folder options menu in Windows Explorer (we explained how to do that in this post).

Once you've done that, then go to C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes and choose the theme you want to extract the wallpapers from. Inside the theme folder you'll see another folder called DesktopBackground, with all the images used as wallpapers.

If you don't have the theme installed (or if you don't even have Windows 7) you can still extract those images and enjoy them as your wallpapers. All you need to do is download the themepack file and open it with any archiving utility like WinRAR or IZArc, and you'll get access to the theme's folder structure. Just open the DesktopBackground folder and extract the files.

If the images in your photo album are dull and boring, maybe it’s time to spice them up! You don’t need to be a Photoshop guru or known all GIMP menus by heart; there are dozens of easy photo editing tools – available for free or in trial versions – that help you apply eye-catching effects to your images without requiring any experience in photo editing.

Want to add a Polaroid effect to your photo, or turn it into a pencil sketch? What about a pop-art effect like a painting by Andy Warhol? With this collection of apps to edit and retouch images, the only limit is your imagination!

eezPix - photo editing for everyone

eezPix is an easy-to-use, yet complete photo editor that includes all the tools you need to work with your images: adjusting brightness and contrast, converting from one format to another, adding a frame  or inserting a watermark are some of its possibilities.

All the effects included in eezPix are highly customizable. In addition to that, the program supports working in batches – adding the same effect to multiple images at the same time.

Tint Photo Editor - make color stand out

Tint Photo Editor is a photo retouching tool that specializes in one single effect, but does it really well. It highlights one color in your image while keeping the rest in black and white, thus achieving an impressive result.

Again, it’s very easy to use. Tint Photo Editor analyzes your image in search for all the colors used in it. All you need to do is choose which one you want to emphasize.

You might assume that whenever you upload your photos to Facebook, you retain the copyright.  They're your photos, so only you have the right to use and distribute them, right? Well not necessarily. In return for using the services of Facebook, the site reserves the right to distribute your images freely and even make money from them within certain limitations without your consent.

Facebook explicitly states in its lengthy Terms and Conditions that by uploading content of any kind - photos included - you're effectively giving-up control of your material:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sub-license) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

This means not only do Facebook own your photos, but they can also grant other companies the right to commercially exploit them. However, it should be highlighted that according to the Terms and Conditions set out above, they can only use images in conjunction with promoting the Facebook brand itself.

Perhaps the most concerning thing though is that these Terms and Conditions can change at any time without asking for users permission the next time they log in. Rather, Facebook expect users to keep an eye on their blog where any new changes are announced. However, in response to an outcry of almost 150,000 users over one particular a change to Terms and Conditions in 2009, Facebook setup their own page where they welcomed users to discuss it, suggesting they are now more sensitive to the issue.

Other than this, there two simple pro-active ways you can protect your image rights on Facebook:

1. Restrict your privacy settings.

Facebook have pledged to respect the wishes of those who do not want their images published openly for all to see. Whether this respect extends to commercial exploitation of their images isn't clear but tightening-up your privacy settings can't hurt. Elena has written a useful guide to adjusting them here.

2. Use a watermarking tool before uploading

Adding a watermark is a surefire way to ensure that no one other than yourself will want to profit from images you upload and virtually eliminates the temptation of companies like Facebook to use your images for their own means. A good tool for this is iWatermark available on both Mac and Windows which allows you to drag and drop images to add an instant watermark to photos.

Since Instagram released its API four months ago, we've seen lots of new apps being developed to work with the popular photo-based social network. Whether they aim to provide users with a more comfortable interface for browsing their pictures or to allow them to make use of published images to create something completely new, these Instagram apps have created a niche of their own in the software market. And some of them are really worth taking a look at!

Screenstagram - This free app takes Instagram images and turns them into a screensaver for your Mac. The good thing about Screenstagram is that it can be used without an Instagram account, in which case it takes pictures from the 'Popular' feed - but if you use your login credentials, it'll create a more personal screensaver with your photos and those of your friends.

Carousel - Though it's a paid app, Carousel is also a great alternative interface to interact with Instagram - with the added value of not having to use your browser. This Mac desktop client gives you access to all of Instagram's basic functionality, including photo browsing, commenting and liking images, and finding new users to follow. It also lets you save images to your Mac just by dragging and dropping them onto the desktop.

I've always felt a special fascination for color effects applied to black and white images. So, when I saw this quick Photoshop tutorial on the OnSoftware BR blog, I couldn't help trying it out! It's a very simple effect often used to draw attention to certain areas in the image, and it's really easy to apply. Just follow these steps and turn any image into a little piece of black and white art.

Apple's new product is called iCloud. But according to The Guardian and some other sources, lots of people remain mystified by what iCloud actually is. Here's a brief guide to Apple iCloud with a summary of its main features, and what you need to do to get it.

What is iCloud?

To start with, Apple iCloud is a collection of web services, rather than a physical device. In other words, it's a piece of software that helps you get more out of your iPad, iPhone or Mac. And if you don't yet own one of these shiny gadgets, iCloud might just convince you to get one.

Apple iCloud lets you store your photos, music, apps, mail and more online in a single space, accessible wherever you have an internet connection. For example, your iTunes music is stored in the cloud, meaning you can play it on your iPad when you connect to wifi in the move. What this means is that you no longer have to worry about making sure you have all your photos backed up to all your devices, or all your iTunes purchases copied across from your MacBook to your iPhone: iCloud takes care of this automatically.

Which services does iCloud support?

Apple is launching the service with support for: Apps, iBooks, Documents, Device Backups, Music, Photos, Contacts, Calendar and Mail. Some services may be limited to the USA only at launch.

What do I need to do to get iCloud?

iCloud will be available in fall/autumn 2011. For some features, you'll need to have a newer iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch with iOS 5, as well as a Mac running OS X Lion (10.7) or a PC running Windows Vista or Windows 7. Full requirements can be found on Apple's iCloud page.

How much does iCloud cost?

The basic Apple iCloud package is free. With this basic package, you receive 5GB of cloud storage for your mail, Camera Roll, account information and other settings and config files. Your music, iBooks, Photo Stream and apps don't use up any of that space. Some advanced features, such as iTunes Match, which allows you to add music you didn't buy in the iTunes Store to your iCloud library, cost extra.

When creating a presentation in PowerPoint or a paper in Word you often need to use images, and most of the times you need to edit them in some way before they can be imported into your document. You probably have a favorite photo editor by now, but did you know that the Microsoft Office suite includes one? It’s called Microsoft Office Picture Manager and you can find it in the Microsoft Office Tools subfolder, inside the Office folder in the Start menu.

Microsoft Office Picture Manager features a very simple, yet functional design. The tree-like structure on the left side pane lets you browse the hard drive for your pictures folder, while the main area displays the content of the currently selected folder and lets you choose the images you want to work with.