Irfanview

I’ve not mentioned free photo editing software on the show before but I want to draw your attention to one in particular - and it is thanks to a guy called Irfan from Austria.

IrfanView is one of the most popular graphic and photo editing suites on the web and it has just had an upgrade. Check out www.irfanview.com

At 1MB it is a tiny download which is both powerful and efficient so it runs smoothly on older or slower machines too.

As well as the usual cropping, rotation and colour correction - IrfanView sorts out red eye and offers a variety of creative effects. A couple of features caught my eye. Load an image and press enter - the programme's screen furniture disappears to offer a full screen display. Now left click to go back and right click to go forward - an easy way to show off your photos at your own pace. There is a slideshow option too.

Another great feature is the ability to create a panoramic photo by stitching your snaps together. Many cameras are now sold with this sort of software but if you do not have it yet this is an easy way to make great vistas quickly.

Although IrfanView only works on PCs and not Macs at the moment, it does support a wide range of file formats. And this is where it performs another great trick! If you want to change a whole folder of pictures - say from Tiff to Jpeg - you can batch convert them all in one go.