I thought I’d take some time today to tell you about some of my top freeware choices.  (Keep in mind that I use Windows; if you’re on a Mac, or Linux, these may or may not have versions available for you.  I believe some of them do, but probably not all.)

These are all programs that I personally use – or have used – and find to be great quality.

1. PhotoScape

I used to use Adobe’s PhotoDeluxe (it came with our camera, I think), and really loved it for simple edits like fixing red eye or cropping.  But then it disappeared into oblivion and I was really frustrated.   Not only is PhotoShop expensive, it has a huge learning curve, in my opinion.  In my quest for a replacement, I found PhotoScape.  It’s very easy to use, with an extremely intuitive interface, so simple edits like this are very, very easy to make.  But it’s surprisingly powerful.

2. GIMP

If you need more advanced image-editing capabilities and don’t want to shell out the big bucks for PhotoShop, you’ll want GIMP.  It’s the open source (rough) equivalent of PhotoShop.  It will open PhotoShop files (mostly; I’ve run into a glitch with them on rare occasions) and will handle things like manipulation of layers, pattern fills, etc. that PhotoScape doesn’t do.  I’m using an old version of PhotoShop now (released temporarily by the manufacturer as a free download), but I used GIMP for years.

3. Inkscape

Now this one I’m pretty new to, so I can’t say a lot about it.  Inkscape is a vector-drawing program.  If you don’t need that, you don’t need this.  It’s pretty powerful software, and has so many options and is so different from what I’m used to that I can’t do much with it yet!  But I’m enjoying playing around with it a bit and learning.  (For those of you who are wondering, vector images are “drawn” based on mathematical designations of the locations of colors, rather than as pixels.  This makes them scale cleanly.)

4. Pixie

Pixie is a tiny little utility that is amazingly handy if you ever work with graphic design – to any degree – across programs.  When Pixie is running, you simply mouse over a color and the program will show you the hex code, RGB numbers, etc. for the color your mouse is pointing at.  I’ve been using this for years, and as piddly as it is, it’s one of the programs I’d most miss if I had to do without it.

5. Firefox

There’s not much to say about Firefox; I imagine everyone reading this knows what it is!  It has its issues, for sure, but I hate Internet Explorer and Chrome, so Firefox it is.  (I know there are technically other browser options, like Safari, but they’re not sufficiently mainstream to be well-supported by a lot of websites, which is a deal-breaker for me, at least for a primary web browser.)  I like my extensions, and the ability to put whatever searches I want in my search drop-down.  (Like SwagBucks.)

6. Thunderbird

Thunderbird is Mozilla’s (the makers of Firefox) answer to Outlook Express.  It’s an email program.  Honestly, it has some issues.  It doesn’t “just work” as cleanly as OE, in my opinion.  But it’s not Microsoft, and going open source is one of the first steps toward being able to get on Linux and away from Windows.

I do really love that it has an integrated RSS feed reader – and that feed reader will actually display full pages in my email program.  That way I don’t have to try to remember to go to the sites I like to read, because they come straight to my email.  And I see their full posts, images and all.

7. PDF-Xchange Viewer

PDF-Xchange Viewer is a PDF reader, like Adobe Acrobat Reader.  I just like it better.

8. AVG

AVG is the only antivirus software I’ve ever used that doesn’t automatically cause problems on my laptop.  Usually antivirus software behaves on my computer pretty much like a virus would – causing lag, running things in the background I never told it to run, etc.  AVG, for the most part, just works, without causing all of those other issues.

9. CutePDF Writer

If you need to create PDFs sometimes, but don’t typically need anything complex – like fillable forms – look into CutePDF Writer.  This little utility installs like a printer.  Then you just create your document in the program of your choice and when you print, select this as the printer instead of your actual printer.  It’s not completely perfect; on occasion with a really complex document I’ve had to find a workaround.  But for the most part, it does a beautiful job, and it’s easy, to boot.

10. e-Sword

We all need the Bible on disk, right?  It’s fast and easy to search, so doing research is quick.  That’s what e-Sword is.  There are lots of modules available, so you can choose a huge variety of translations in numerous languages.  There are also commentaries, dictionaries, etc.  (The Webster’s 1828 dictionary is an option, so I’ve been known to pull the program up simply to look up something in that.)

11. Evernote

I started using Evernote way back, and was, frankly, disappointed when they reworked it into what it is now. The newer versions are good, but they’re very different.  It’s really two different programs from the older version to the newer, and the older version was exactly what I’d been looking for.  So I’m still using 2.1!  (Actually, I’m wondering if they’re sufficiently different to run both simultaneously.)  This is a notes program, but with a lot more functionality than your average note-taking software.

12. Serif software

I’m not currently using anything from Serif, but I would be remiss if I omitted their fabulous free software from this list.  Essentially, Serif’s free software is just older versions of their current software.  They have web-design software, desktop publishing, image-editing…  I’ve used a number of their programs in the past, and found them to be feature-rich and quite high-quality.  (I just happen to have alternatives to most of them at this present moment.)

And A Couple Awesome Web-Based Applications

I’m not exactly counting these as freeware, because there isn’t anything to install; they’re purely web-based applications.  But they’re pretty awesome!

Canva

Canva is a fairly new online image editor.  It’s kind of along the lines of PicMonkey.  (But Flash gives me issues, so I can never seem to run PicMonkey; Canva doesn’t have that problem.)  They also have some amazing (quick) design tutorials they’ll start emailing you as a series shortly after you sign up.  These tutorials are well worth signing up for a free account!

Workflowy

This is one of those simply brilliant productivity apps.  In a somewhat literal sense – it’s brilliant in its simplicity!  Workflowy is, essentially, a list-making tool.  Sort of a brain dump.  Everything goes onto one list – it’s all one file.  But each item is a bullet point, and you have the ability to add sub-lists to any one of them.  You can search it.  You can tag it.  You can mark an item as completed (and choose to hide/unhide completed items).  It’s just a great way to keep track of all that stuff you have to do, while having lots of flexibility and no unnecessary complexity.

Because it’s a computer program, you can use links and such, too.  It’s completely web-based, although I believe there’s a desktop version available now.  And mobile apps are in the works.  (They haven’t been one of the top development priorities so far because there’s no reason not to use the web-based original on a mobile device, and they take lots of resources to develop.)

This is the one thing on my list that’s “crippled” in the free version – but only sort of.  The full breadth of functionality is available with a free account.  However, the number of items on your list is limited unless you upgrade to a paid version.

Do you have a favorite freeware program that’s not on my list?  Share it in the comments!