The best free tools for your digicam pictures

Everyone in the world seems to have a digital camera nowadays and many seem to be happy using the software that came with the camera. I’m going to introduce some of the free products that I’m using with my camera - you might have heard about some already but I’m sure some are relatively unknown to most of you.

I’m using Xnview to view the pictures that are already on my hard drive. I use it because it is fast and efficient. Other tools that have a similar functionality are Google Picasa and Irfanview. All three are way better than the solutions that come with Windows or using software suites like paintshop, gimp or photoshop to view images.

Every saved picture contains information which are saved at the same time the picture was taken. A tool like Exif-Viewer reveals those information. Exif means Exchangeable Image File Format and is used by most digital cameras.View-Exif is a plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox.
You can use either Smart Recovery from PC Inspector or Digital Photo Recovery from Art Plus Software to restore images that you deleted accidentally. You might want to try the Memory Card Safe Eraser before you sell your camera or the memory card.
Use Jalbum or Photo Meister to create photo albums form webpages or CDs. Photo Meister is able to do more than that though, it is able to do some basic image manipulation on your pictures and import them directly from your camera.

If it is effects that you want you should take a look at Photo Filter Studio which has some awesome filters for creating nice effects with your pictures, the website has some samples included. Autostich is capable of creating full panoramas of your pictures.

If you are looking for big image editors you might want to consider GIMP or Paint.net.

Last but not least we have some misc utilities that might be great for a smaller number of users, it always depends what you need your pictures for. Filter Sim simulates photo filters, Hello provides instant photo sharing with chat and can be used with picasa and neat image can be used for noise reduction either as standalone or as a plugin for photoshop.