The Download Blog

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A recent review of Corel Digital Studio 2010 got me close and personal with the consumer-oriented multimedia suite. Corel's studio excelled at providing a consistent, unified look, navigation, and toolset across its applications for editing photos and videos, making movies, burning content, and playing videos. It also copies photos, videos, and music to your mobile device, and can create photo projects like photo books and cards.

All good stuff, but it doesn't come cheap. Multimedia suites like this will put you out about $100. They're worth the price if you frequently use the tools, or if you vastly prefer the convenience and accessibility of a consumer-friendly setup. However, if you don't mind being scrappy, you can cobble together a spread of multimedia tools--your own "suite"--for next to nothing.

Edit and create

FastStone Image Viewer has quick-access editing tools.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Photo editing, video editing, and making movies are the three largest focal points of multimedia suites like Corel Digital Studio 2010 and Roxio Creator 2010 (unfortunately, no download trial is available for the latter). Google's Picasa is one of my favorite freeware tools for casual users, and one of the closest direct matches to what's offered in a multimedia suite. Its uses are multifarious: organizing your photos and videos into albums, editing images and videos, sharing online, creating projects like collages and movies, and ordering prints.

The image-editing tools are serviceable, with red-eye removal, one-click lighting fixes, cropping and straightening, and finer tools for addressing blemishes and lighting. There are also 12 effects, like sepia tones and soft focus. This contrasts with Picasa's low-grade video editor, which can at least rotate videos and trim them. The movie maker has many more controls, but is basic; it doesn't build in the polished templates of a premium program. Picasa does, however, offer to sell you prints from a choice of providers (choice is good), and can help create a collage.

For standalone photo editing, the freeware applications FastStone Image Viewer, IrfanView, Paint.NET, and GIMP range in features from the accessible to the powerful. Read more about them in this resource guide.

Vista and Windows 7 users can try out Microsft's new Windows Live Movie Maker (review), freeware that can slap photos and video clips into a new movie in seconds. Deeper controls let you tweak transitions, captions, and effects after the automation. Editing tools include splitting, trimming, and applying fade points. As a point of comparison, video editors in these consumer-focused multimedia suites are better-equipped, perhaps with audio-tuning tools and features to adjust video lighting.

Windows Live Movie Maker works on Vista and Windows 7 computers.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Creating calendars and photo books are a DIY project within your reach if you have an excellent photo printer and a home bookbinding kit. Otherwise, you can spend your energy on the editing and captioning and get a project printed somewhere else. Retail shops, like FedEx Office in the U.S., will print projects. Online photo albums and services like Shutterfly, Snapfish, and Zazzle will also gladly accept your business. The 12-month calendars run from $15 to $20; large photo books are often in the mid-$30 range (online services often charge for shipping). Corel Digital Studio is similarly priced.

There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes here at CNET Download.com, and that includes the videos we editors create for the products we find most worthy--or the ones you keep coming back to time and again.

In that vein, we've stuffed this glorious playlist with the the top 10 software videos you watched on our site in 2008. Take a look--you may wind up with a new app you never knew you needed!

(Hint: Click the word "Playlist" to view the whole list or skip ahead.)

Here are the winners:

1. AVG Anti-Virus Free 8
2. Orbit Downloader
3. VirtualDJ
4. Avast Home Edition
5. Firefox 3
6. Ad-Aware 2008
7. FLV Player
8. FrostWire
9. Paint.NET
10. Spybot - Search & Destroy

See more video reviews on Windows, Mac, and Mobile software.

For quick retouches, Photoshop is more than overkill--it's like going rabbit hunting with a nuke. All that bloat can take much longer than is necessary. Paint.NET, on the other hand, is an open-source editor with all the essentials, including tools to crop, rotate, resize images, adjust colors, and create collages. Unlike many free image editors, Paint.NET supports layers and has an actions manager. The pleasing interface boasts semitransparent windows for ease of use.

Paint.NET supports common image formats--JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and others--but not high-resolution RAW files. There are enough basic and intermediate effects and features to keep image-tweakers happy, though the red-eye removal tool is notably weak; those images may require manual attention. Way more advanced than Microsoft Paint, this is a must-have for even experienced digital image demigods.

Paint.NET provides a free way to create high-quality greeting cards.

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If you think you've got it tough on Valentine's Day, consider your poor, humble Download.com editor. My wife's birthday is on Valentine's Day! Luckily, we've been together long enough that I don't have to impress her with dozens of roses, buckets of chocolates, and the rest of the conventional commercial holiday paraphernalia. However, a homemade card is always a great way to demonstrate my love.

Creating your own Valentine's Day cards with commercial design software like Adobe Photoshop or CorelDRAW will provide you with a wide array of options for tweaking your images, text, and other graphical elements. Those programs also offer instructional assistance and templates to help you through the process. But if you're willing to use a little elbow grease and your imagination, you can create a fantastic Valentine's Day card using free design software.

For this tutorial, I'm going to use Paint.NET, a top-rated download that offers many of the important features that you'll find in commercial image editors. GIMP is another great free program that actually offers a bit more power in terms of third-party plug-ins and online tutorials, but I find that Paint.NET is an easier program for new users to learn.

Also, I'm going to create a basic Valentine's Day card that includes an image with overlaid text and the date on the front, and some graphic elements and romantic sentiments on the inside. If you're the artistic sort and can create your own graphics, more power to you. One good free app for doing so is the vector-illustration software Inkscape. I'm artistically incompetent, so I tend to focus on using cool pictures and injecting some wit into my text.

First, install and launch the Paint.NET application. A new document should already be waiting for you, but if not, create your own by selecting File -> New or hit Ctrl-N. By default, your workspace will be 800x600 pixels, set at a resolution of 96 pixels/inch. Feel free to play around with the dimensions and resolution, but the default settings will let you create a reasonably high-quality card without having to worry about the borders of your page.

Before even selecting an image, we're going to divide your project in half, for a traditional folded card. Unlike Photoshop, Paint.NET doesn't seem to have "guide" lines that you can use to mark specific measurements in your project. What I do instead is create a one-pixel black line down the middle of the page.

Information about your cursor position sits in the lower right corner.

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Click the Rectangle Select tool in the Tools dialog, and move the cursor to the very middle of the top of the 800x600 project by watching the cursor location in the bottom right corner of the Paint.NET interface. When it reads "400, 0" you're there. Now click and drag your cursor down to the bottom of the page and move it one pixel to the right, or to "401, 600." Select black as your foreground color using the Colors dialog (if it's not visible, hit F8), then select Edit -> Fill Selection. Now you've got a black line down the middle of your page that will represent the fold mark of your card.

Next, choose the image that you want to use for the front of your card. Luckily for me, my wife is an excellent photographer who is a power Flickr user, so I've got thousands of images with which I can work. Save your selected digital image to your computer if it's not already on your machine, and then open it in Paint.NET. You should now have two files open, your blank card (with a black line down the middle), and the image for the front of your card.

After opening your selected image in Paint.NET, you may need to crop and resize it to fit onto one half of a standard 11-by-8.5-inch piece of paper. In my example, I've cropped my image to 330x392 pixels, which allows about 2 inches of white space on the top of the card, and a little more than an inch on the right border. I'll cut off that extra paper when I'm done, leaving me with a lovely card that's about 4x6. At the default resolution settings, you've got about a maximum height of 600 pixels and a maximum width of 430 pixels before your image will become too large to fit on half a sheet of standard paper. Crop to Selection is the first option in the Image menu, and Resize is right underneath it.

Thumbnails in the upper right corner of Paint.NET help you navigate between open images.

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When your image is at an appropriate size and shape for your card, select the whole thing by using Edit -> Select All or hitting Ctrl-A. Copy it to your clipboard with Ctrl-C, then switch to your card project. Paint.NET displays thumbnails of your open documents in the upper-right corner of the interface, making it easy to navigate between them.

Now create a new "layer" in your card project. A layer is a discrete part of an image that can be moved, edited, or tweaked without affecting the rest of the image. All the layers for an image will be displayed in a Layers dialog. If you don't see it, hit F7 to make it appear. To create a new layer, select Layers -> Add New Layer, or hit Ctrl+Shift+N. In that new "Layer 2" you've created, paste your copied image onto your blank card.

We need to position your image so that it sits directly to the right of the black line running through the middle of the page. Select the Move Selected Pixels tool from the Tools dialog (hit F5 if you don't see it). It's the darkened cursor with a plus sign at the top of the left column. You can also select it with the keyboard shortcut "M." Then use your move to drag and drop that layer directly to the right of your black fold line. The arrow keys also move your selection pixel by pixel for fine tuning its location. Use Ctrl-+ to zoom in for a closer, more precise view.

The image for the front of your card is in the right spot. Now we need some text. I usually add the date in the upper right corner (or wherever is appropriate) for historical reference, and then write a big "Happy Valentine's Day" ("Happy Birthday" in my case) or other clever phrase in big letters on top of the photo. In this example, I've added "February 14, 2007" at the top and the short-but-sweet "I do!" at the bottom.

For maximum flexibility and editability, I recommend creating a layer for each text element you want to add to the front of the card. After creating the new layer, select the text tool from the Tools dialog. It's represented by the letter "A." (You can also just hit "T" if you're into keyboard shortcuts.) Position your cursor where you want to add the text, click, and type. It's that simple.

A secondary text menu at the top of the Paint.NET interface lets you select the font, size, effects, and orientation of your words. One nice aspect of Paint.NET is that the font drop-down shows how each font looks, so you don't have to keep applying them to see. Once you've decided on the content and appearance of your text, select the Move Selected Pixels tool (M) again to position the text exactly where you want it on the card.

Adding a drop shadow to your text helps it show up on the card.

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One quick aside: a semifancy trick for making your text pop on the front of the card is to apply a drop shadow, and there are a variety of methods for doing so. In my case, I've created one layer of text with "I do!" in black, and then other layer on top of that with "I do!" in white. I positioned the two text elements exactly so that the black background text disappeared below the white. Then I used the arrow keys with the Move Selected Pixels tool to set off the black text from the white text by 2 pixels to the right and 2 pixels down. Super snazzy.

Also, if you're looking for some fancy new fonts, I highly recommend the Web site dafont.com. Just download the font you want (if it's free), extract it using a program like WinRAR, open up your Fonts controls from the Windows Control Panel, select File -> Install New Font, and then navigate to the extracted file on your local drive to add it to Paint.NET and all your other applicable Windows programs.

Who's that handsome guy?

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Hooray--you're halfway through! (No one said love was easy.) Save your current project as a Paint.NET (PDN) document, so that you can edit any part of the document. Saving it as a JPG or other "flattened" format will remove your ability to edit specific layers.

What I would do now is print the front of your card to see if you're satisfied with the appearance. If not, go back and fix whatever's bothering you. If it looks good, it's time to move on to the inside.

I'm going to assume that you're using a single-sided printer (color obviously looks better), so we'll need to eventually print the inside of the card on the back of the paper upon which you printed the front. That will give you a nice, foldable card, but it's essential to line up the inside contents of the card with the front.

First, save your current front-card Paint.NET document with a new name, such as "cardback.pdn." This will let you create a new document without affecting your existing one. Now create a new layer, and select the entire area represented by the front image of the card, using the Rectangle Select tool (keyboard shortcut "S"). Choose light gray as your foreground color from the Colors menu, and Fill Selection, just like we did when we make the black folding line.

Now you've got the exact area for the inside of your card demarcated by that layer of light grey, so you can delete all of the other layers from the front of the card by selecting them in the Layers dialog and hitting the "X" mark.

Flipping images vertically and horizontally is a quick way to make corner pieces.

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Next, create new layers for the additional graphic elements and text that you want to use on the inside. In my example, I've taken a selection of a picture of my wife's wedding bouquet and used Image -> Flip Horizontal and Image -> Flip Vertical to create four cornerpieces. I've kept each of them in their own layer in order to position them independently. If you're looking for some clip art to include in the inside (or front) of your card, Pat's Web Graphics has a lousy site design but a great collection of relevant images.

After adding the flowers in the corners, I added text to the middle of the page using the same procedure that we used on the front of the card--create a new layer, select the text tool, type it in, and tweak the appearance and location. In my example, I've spared you the romantic mush and used a generic "Romantic sentiments go here!" placeholder.

Once the images and text for the inside of the card are complete, you can delete that layer of light gray that we created to mark the card's area. You'll also want to delete the folding line from your background layer. Select the entirely area of the background layer using Ctrl-A, then simply hit "Delete" button to clear its contents.

Now it's time to print the final card. Take the piece of paper upon which you printed the front of a card, turn it upside down and reinsert it into your printer. Print the inside of your card on the back of that paper and then fold the entire piece of paper along the black guideline on the front. Use scissors (or better, a paper cutter) to cut along the lines of your card, discarding the blank extra space along the top, bottom, and right of the card.

Voila! You've got your own homemade Valentine's Day card. It didn't take that long, did it?

Did this tutorial work for you? (You can thank me after Valentine's Day.) What other software or tricks do you use to create your own customized greeting cards? Tell me about it in the comments.

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Once I've taken care of installing security software on a new a PC, one of the first programs I end up downloading is an image editor. Whether I'm using it to make a quick edit to a screenshot, convert a digital photo to a more Web-friendly image format, or even something as mundane as cropping an image for a desktop background, an easy-to-use image editor is a must have. Those of you with recently acquired computers probably have a lot of holiday photos you've resolved to go through, so this little collection will definitely come in handy.

Obviously, Photoshop is the heavyweight champ in the image-editing category, but most people don't need such an advanced toolset for everyday image-editing tasks. Also, $650 (for Photoshop CS3) is not exactly pocket change for most of us. Fortunately there are a lot of options available at a fraction of the cost, and some of the best downloadable image editors are completely free. For those who just need a tool with a modest feature set for everyday tasks, I've rounded up my three favorite free image editors.

For the most lightweight and nimble editor, IrfanView is the best choice

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IrfanView is longtime user favorite for its simplicity. It was the go-to for free image editors a few years ago and remains as one of the best for quick image editing. Basic features such as cropping, resizing, and file conversion are all part of the toolset, and if you want more options, there are IrfanView plug-in packs you can download from the IrfanView developer site. This one doesn't have the prettiest interface of the group, but for basic tasks it gets the job done.

FastStone Image Viewer's easy-to-access full-screen mode lets you view and edit your images without distraction

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FastStone Image Viewer is the program I use to crop and resize screenshots here at work. I even have Photoshop on my hard drive, but it just can't beat the speed and convenience of FastStone Image Viewer. An intuitive interface lets you browse your image folders and select what you want quickly and easily. But my favorite thing about this free program is the ability to double-click an image to bring it up in full-screen mode for closer inspection. You can then mouse to each side of the screen for pop-up tools for editing and basic effects, file management, and image info.

Paint.NET gives you more effects to play with along with a layer manager and history window.

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Paint.NET is a free alternative that is closer to Photoshop than the rest in this collection. Complete with Photoshop-like toolbars, a layer manager, a history window, and more image effects than the others, Paint.NET offers just about everything you might need. Though the feature list is not nearly as long as Photoshop, you can't beat what you can get for free with Paint.NET. The only caveat is you'll need to download Microsoft's .NET framework to run this program.

If you're a digital camera enthusiast or like to scan or collect images, you need a good image editor. These apps are definitely great for the basics and some offer extra features that make them an even better value. As always, if you have a favorite image editor which is not listed here, let me know in the comments!

Molly Wood and CNET TV's Insider Secrets takes you through a tripartite of free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Although Photoshop's a great program, for some users it provides way too much editing power and it's way too expensive. Try one of these freeware substitutes, and also check out our series on building your own Adobe Creative Suite using top-notch freeware applications. Part One; Part Two

Writing up a list of items for which I'm thankful is such a cliche at this time of year...that I can't pass up the opportunity to add my own contribution to the Thanksgiving fray. I have very little need for 3D turkey screensavers, but luckily, there are a few more valuable applications listed on CNET Download.com upon which I can bestow appropriate tribute.

In honor of Thanksgiving week, I've decided to serve up a heaping helpful of my nine "most useful" Windows utilities on the Download.com site. Now, notice that I didn't use the word "favorite" or "best." These are simply the nine PC utilities from which I get the most mileage. Your list may of course vary, and if it is, please be sure to tell me about your own "most useful" Windows utilities in the comments.

With little further ado, read on for the list of my most useful Windows utilities. For a better look at each of the applications in the list, be sure to check out this related Download.com gallery.

9. Audacity

Audacity

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Imagine: The custom mix you created as a soundtrack for the thundrous entrance of your clogging group is nearly perfect. If only your instrumental version of "Here Comes the Hotstepper" were a minute shorter and faded out near the end to the sounds of a Michael Bufferesque exhortation proclaiming, "Let's get ready to clog!"

While the above scenario might be slightly far fetched, many of us often need to edit audio, whether it's clipping a soundbite from your boss' recent speech or removing the vocals from your favorite rock track so that you can create a karaoke video for YouTube. Audacity is a free, full-fledged audio editor for Windows, Mac, and Linux distros. It takes a bit of practice to become an effective audio editor, but a well-design interface that focuses on the most common editing tasks will have you cutting, mixing, and dubbing in no time.

8. Paint.NET

Paint.NET

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Quick! Resize those pictures of Halloween at Aunt Dottie's to upload to your photo-sharing site before you leave for Thanksgiving vacation. Oh, and reduce the file size so that each is under 100K. And while you're at it, fix the red-eye in some of the pictures of Mom. Of course, Photoshop is an excellent program for all of those basic image-editing tasks, but it's overkill in many cases. Paint.NET will provide 99% of the editing features most amateur photographers need, use a lot less system resources, and less your wallet much heavier.

The only downside is that the freeware app requires the most recent version of Microsoft's .NET framework. .NET is also free (and even included in the Paint.NET installation), but it has proved to be a minor hassle for some users.

7. OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org Calc

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At Download.com, we pay a lot of attention to OpenOffice.org, and with good reason. For starters, it's an essential tool for anyone who wants to be able to edit .DOC, .XLS, and .PPT files without a copy of Microsoft Office.

That's almost enough to merit inclusion on a "most useful" list, but the addition of a powerful personal-database app and a drawing application for creating graphics and diagrams make the suite quite an impressive package. Personally, I love the ability to quick create shortcut keys for frequent actions that don't have them by default.

6. Pidgin

Pidgin

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The battle of the multiservice instant-messaging clients is far from over. The popular app Trillian is currently king of the hill for Windows on Download.com, and the online client meebo is impressive too. Right now, however, I prefer the open-source program Pidgin, formerly known as Gaim.

There's not a huge difference in functionality--all three of the mentioned multiservice clients work well. However, Pidgin's open platform makes it very easy for third-party developers to provide plug-ins. Based on the limted amount of valuable plug-ins created so far, it's not a huge advantage for Pidgin. If Mozilla Firefox is any example, though, the Pidgin developer community will contribute to some interesting advances for the app. Several features in Trillian that aren't available in Pidgin by default--docking buddies or transparent interface, for example--can be accomplished via plug-ins.

As with Paint.NET, there is a slight barrier of a required install. Since Pidgin is cross-platform, it runs on Windows using the GTK+ environment, which is included in the Windows installation. The installation will also inform you if you need to update GTK+, and then complete the update for you, if desired.

5. VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player

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Remember those days when you had to add a new codecs nearly every time you downloaded a video because of the vast array of file formats available? In some cases, you even had to download a separate application just to watch a specific movie file. We certainly haven't settled on one dominant Web video file format, but we do have more applications that can play them all.

My favorite for a while has been VLC Media Player, a smallish program that doesn't look like much at first glance, but includes all of the playback options you need hidden under its surface.

4. FileZilla

FileZilla

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FTP clients seem so 20th century, but I'm willing to bet that most of us need one from time to time, whether we're updating our Web site or downloading a file from a company of friend. One of the most frequent searches we get at Download.com is for "free ftp," so it's not only me.

There are oodles of free FTP clients to choose from, and I'm always willing to listen to recommendations, but the choice is simple for me. FileZilla incorporates an intuitive design with all of the features that I need from an FTP client, most importantly simultaneous file transfers. Simple view buttons at the top show and hide treelists for local and remote directories, the transfer queue, and the message log. A very useful "Quick Connect" bar at the top of the interface lets you connect to another site without even accessing the options.

3. WinPatrol

WinPatrol

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Of all the possible security software on Download.com, WinPatrol may seem to be an unusual choice at first. After all, it doesn't directly do a whole lot to protect your computer from attacks. What it does provide is a comprehensive information about many facets of your system that are intimately tied to the security of your PC.

For Internet Explorer users, WinPatrol's detection and restriction of browser-helper objects can help stave off the results of an ill-fated click on the Web. The Startup Programs list has proven invaluable to me. Aside from teaching me that QuickTime will try to get in every time I update iTunes, it also provides alerts whenever any new or existing apps try to shove their way into my Windows startup.

There are several security apps that could have made the list (HijackThis is another essential tool that springs to mind). However, for sheer amount of overall application use with minimal time spent customizing, upgrading, or tweaking, WinPatrol earns my commendation.

2. Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox

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It might seems a little unfair to include Mozilla Firefox in a list of the most useful "utilities," but I'm taking a very broad sense of the classifying term. In many ways, Firefox is the ultimate Web utility, opening up the vast majority of content on the Internet to your personal desktop. The browser wars are far from over--Internet Explorer 7, Opera 9, and Avant Browser all have their own positive and negative qualities--and Firefox is certainly running slower and using more resources in its default configuration than ever before.

For now, however, Firefox is still cream of the crop, primarily because of the open environment for developing third-party extensions and themes and the impressive collection of plug-ins that have already been developed. Also, the configuration options are all transparent and customizable. Don't like the Go button? Kill it by opening "about:config" into the address bar, and changing the browser.urlbar.hideGoButton setting to true. Firefox is your own personalized browsing experience; ambitious users can fine-tune it to their hearts' content.

1. Process Explorer

Process Explorer

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It's certainly not the sexiest of Windows utilities to put at the top of my heap, but it's downright essential for any Windows user who installs and runs a variety of software, i.e. everyone who has read this far. Process Explorer was created by Sysinternals--a software company eventually purchased by Microsoft itself--with a variety of other valuable system tools for filling the diagnostic gaps in Windows.

Very simply, Process Explorer displays all of the running processes on your Windows system, along with a variety of data around those processes, including memory use, CPU share, window status, and directory path. And that's only in the top window. An optional second pane displays either all of the handles related to any selected process, or the relevant DLLs or memory-mapped files. You can also search for any specific problematic handle or DLL and find the related process.

A little running graph in your system taskbar can provide a helpful display of your resource usage, and it's easy to lower the priority of any specific process that might be sucking up all of your CPU. Once you swap in Process Explorer for your standard Windows Task Manager that's accessible from Ctrl-Alt-Delete, you'll likely never go back.

The free app Paint.NET offers strong image-editing features in a small package.

(Credit: Paint.NET)

Adobe Photoshop is a fantastic software product. I use it at CNET every single day. However, I don't own a personal version at home, and I find that I don't miss it much for my own limited image editing and graphic design needs. For cropping snapshots, removing red-eye, resizing, or creating LOLcat images, I turn to the free image editors available at CNET Download.com.

The grandaddy of free design software is the GIMP (short for GNU Image Manipulation Program), which provides much of the functionality of Photoshop, with a very large and dedicated community that produces tons of valuable tutorials. However, the GIMP isn't the most user-friendly application. Newbies would be advised to try GIMPshop, which puts a Photoshop-like interface on top of the GIMP's core functionality. ... Read more

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So, you need to finish up a design project that requires the image-editing capabilities of Photoshop along with the vectorized lines of Illustrator, and it needs to be animated in Flash with documentation in a PDF. However, you blew your budget on bling and a sweet alpaca-skin bongo set.

Take your head out of the microwave. There is indeed a way to save your project and your wallet from the $2,500 price tag of Adobe Creative Suite 3. You just have to be a bit...creative.

Photoshop is arguably the most powerful and certainly the most well-known of the Adobe set. Heck, the term "photoshop" is now a slang verb that describes altering an image. The program's popularity is well-deserved, with an array of features that is mind-boggling. Unfortunately, that incredible feature set comes with associated bloat, and Photoshop is quickly becoming the military tank of image editors: yes, it gets the job done, but no, the job description should not include cruising down Highway 101.