Links to free computer programs that I found very useful (use then myself) and sometime better than the commercial programs.
If you know of good software for the arts let me know and I'll put it here. send me a line to ben@benzviart.com
PhotoFiltre is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use, and has an easy learning curve. The toolbar, giving you access to the standard filters with just a few clicks, gives PhotoFiltre a robust look.
This photo gallery software makes web albums of your digital images. JAlbum aims to be the easiest to use and most powerful tool in this category - and free!
http://park18.wakwak.com/~pixia/
Pixia is a Very Good painting and retouch software for full color graphics, have different languages. (You can download some plug ins and add ins in the bottom of the download page)
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/
FreeSerifSoftware.com is owned and operated by Serif, the leading independent developer and publisher of desktop publishing, design and graphics software for the PC. Serif is privately owned with operations in Europe and North America. Serif has award-winning software for desktop publishing, digital imaging, drawing and graphics, 3D effects and animations, Web publishing, Movie and DVD creation as well as editing
IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003
Movies 13 is a GIF-Animator with 98 animation wizards including text and actor wizards. Edit existing animations, create new from imported images or from images created with integrated Movies Draw. Features: GIF explorer, GIF optimizer, quick backgrounds, smart shape (100 shapes with 25 gradient fills, rotated text etc.), animate selected frames; 3 free floating actors for creating cartoons; actor and text wizards;actor paths; AVI to GIF and GIF to AVI converters. NEW: Movies script.
http://www.spybot.info/en/spybotsd/index.html
Spybot - Search & Destroy can detect and remove spyware of different kinds from your computer. Spyware is a relatively new kind of threat that common anti-virus applications do not yet cover.
AVG Free Edition is the well-known anti-virus protection tool. AVG Free is available free-of-charge to home users for the life of the product!
http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp
Automatically backup files, directories, even entire drives! Karen's Replicator copies selected files from one drive/folder to another. Source and Destination folders can reside anywhere on your network. Files larger than 2 GB are supported
http://johannesmueller.com/gs/
Excellent program that generate site map for submission to Google, Yahoo and other search engine.