Some helpful photo tools

Fix blurred photographs with free software, Unshake. It really does work, and it's great for those cellphone pics that don't quite cut it, although it takes a bit of experimentation to get best results.
Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. Given a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location, the application creates a high-resolution panorama that seamlessly combines the original images. This is nice.

Another arrow in your image-editing quiver

I've extolled the virtues of Irfanview for photo editing several times, and use it regularly myself. But it does have real limitations, particularly in its colour-correcting abilities. So I was pleased to come across what we might call a companion program, Fotografix, which makes up for much of what Irfanview lacks. The first big virtue of Fotografix is that it is tiny, and it runs without needing to be installed, so you can carry it on a memory stick. Although it's a no-frills program, it has many of the functions of PhotoShop, such as brush shapes, layers and masking. Its interface is pretty basic, but used in conjunction with Irfanview, I would say the pair would do 90 percent of your normal imaging tasks, and at a very reasonably price (like, free).

Have a Picnik with your pics

It must be photography week! While we're on the topic of photos, I have just discovered the photo editing website, Picnik. At this site, you can upload photos and give them the sort of treatment you would otherwise have to use a program like Photoshop Elements to achieve. You can do just about all the basics there, from colour correction to fancy effects, and it is very fast. The main omission from the arsenal of tools that I use a great deal is layers and masking, but for home use this is a great service - and it's free.

Doing it for free

One of the great things about the internet is that for almost every high-priced piece of commercial software, there is a free alternative available. In fact, some of the free offerings beat the pants off the commercial, particularly at the price! Here are some of my "can't do without" favourites:
Irfanview - an image editor (think Photoshop lite), that also doubles as a photo organiser. Has amazing capabilities for such a small footprint. Can also play many video files (eg, the movies you take on your digital camera).
Audacity - a sound editor I use all the time. You can also stretch or condense sounds (including songs) without changing pitch, move songs up or down a key, and much more.
OpenOffice.org - equivalent to Microsoft Office. Has all the bells and whistles, without the awful "ribbon" introduced by Office 2007 (and which I loathe). Has modules equivalent to Excel, PowerPoint and Access, as well as a drawing module, but the PowerPoint module is not well implemented and probably is better avoided.
EditPad Lite - a general-purpose text editor (a replacement for the Windows Notepad, but can do much more), small and compact with lots of functions.
Copernic Destop Search - I have posted separately on this.
VLC Media Player - can play all those videos and movies that Windows Media Player won't touch. Don't be fooled by its utterly basic interface.
CDex - a CD ripper (ie, copies music tracks from your CDs to your computer).
PdfEdit995 - Can create pdf files from any programme that has a print function. Can also convert pdf documents to Word format files, and much more.
Feel free to share your top favourites.