Essential toolkit for Windows 10
PHOTOSCAPE X | IMAGE EDITOR
PhotoScape X is an image-editor that boasts of quite a few extra features when
compared to MS Paint that you get with Windows 10. It sports
an intuitive interface that comprises nine tabs for easy navigation: Its Viewer
tab allows you to browse through all the images on your computer; the Editor
tab is where you will find over 60 tools to fine tune your photos, apply
filters and transformations. You get a tab each to create image cut-outs, for
batch processing, to make collages, to combine multiple images, create GIFs,
set print settings, and a Tools tab for screen capture, to rename your files,
and a colour picker to create palettes.
All of PhotoScape X’s
tools are easy to use, and you don’t even need to be a photo-editing expert to
carry out tasks like colour correction, blemish and red-eye removal, adjust
contrast/white balance, and more.
When you’re done, you get the
option to save your files in the JPEG, PNG and TIFF formats on your PC, or post
them directly to your social networks.
x.photoscape.org | 230MB
VIDEOPAD | VIDEO EDITOR
V ideo-editing software can be
quite daunting for newbies, but VideoPad—with support for
multiple audio and video file formats: AVI, MPEG, WMV, MP4, MKV, MP3, WAV, WMA
and FLAC—simplifies quite a few tasks. It lets you easily combine clips, insert
transitions, add text overlays and subtitles, adjust playback speed, record a voiceover,
and even use its green-screen feature to replace the background for special
effects.
The entire process of editing is
sequentially arranged in the form of tabs so you can seamlessly import a clip,
splice and join multiple files, add an overdub, apply effects, and finally
export your final production to a format of your choice, whether it is to
create a DVD, or a file that can be uploaded directly to YouTube, Facebook, Google
Drive and Dropbox.
Besides, the website’s support
page has an excellent collection of video tutorials for first timers.
www.nchsoftware.com | 5.6MB
WAVEPAD | AUDIO EDITOR
If you have audio recordings that
you want to edit, then check out WavePad. It lets you trim, split,
cut-paste portions, and even mix a second track. You can also tweak the output
to amplify it, normalise audio levels, introduce crossfade or silence into a
track, and even make the audio pan across both channels. Plus, you can add
sound effects like reverb, echo, distortion, and even supress, change the speed
and pitch of vocals in the audio.
WavePad supports multiple formats—MP3, WAV, WMA, AMR, FLAC—and also
includes a Sound Library with over a hundred audio samples. You will, however,
need an active internet connection to access this repository.
www.nchsoftware.com | 1.2MB
FRANZ | MULTI-MESSENGER
This software lets you access
messaging services like Whats-App, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Telegram, Pocket and Tweetdeck,
as well as Gmail, Office 365, LinkedIn, Skype, Slack and Trello under
a single interface.
All you have to do is give Franz access
rights to each of these logins (this tool does not save any personal
information, passwords and message records). You can then start messaging,
check emails and updates via a single login in Franz.
The software even allows you to
configure discreet notifications for updates and messages.
meetfranz.com | 76MB
GLASSWIRE | BANDWIDTH
MONITOR
Windows 10 comes with a built-in
“Data Usage” monitor (under Settings > Network & Internet)
that provides you with a list of how much data has been downloaded by each app
or software. However, this feature lacks the ability to show usage (downloads
and uploads) in real-time. Try GlassWire instead. It is light
on system resources and allows you to drill down by “apps” to see what is
consuming the most data.
You can scroll through the
timeline—by day, week and month—to view usage, analyse spikes and even set
alerts for when you exceed your monthly limit. If you enable its “Mini Viewer”,
it will sit atop your taskbar showing live internet speed. A snooze and
incognito mode lets you temporarily disable monitoring and stop recording
network activity on its graph.
www.glasswire.com | 33.5MB
ASHAMPOO ANTISPY | PRIVACY
TOOL
By default, Windows 10 runs many
services in the background. These are designed to provide a better user
experience: Typing history for predictive text, diagnostic data for bug fixes,
and more. To disable these, you can go to Settings, click Privacy to
stop these tools from running in the background.
However, if you’re extremely
privacy conscious, install Ashampoo AntiSpy. This software provides
you with greater control over the services running on your PC. For instance,
you can turn off Wi-Fi Sense (this allows users to connect to wireless hotspots
without sharing the password); biometric data; One-Drive, Xbox and
advertising-related information.
Each setting is accompanied with a
detailed explanation, along with the option to use Ashampoo’s recommendations,
or disable the services manually.
www.ashampoo.com | 411KB
SHADE SANDBOX | SECURITY
Shade Sandbox places internet-facing applications like web browsers and instant
messengers in an isolated environment or “sandbox”. This prevents malicious
content and unsafe websites from modifying the system files on your computer.
To place a software in a sandbox,
right click on its shortcut and select “Put into Shade”. After that, its icon
will show an “S”, and every time you launch the software, it will open in a
sandboxed environment.
Shade Sandbox does not affect your user experience; the only noticeable
difference is that ‘shaded’ software take a few seconds longer to open. All
downloaded files and browsing activities are stored in its container and can be
deleted after closing the program.
www.shadesandbox.com | 14.4MB
SPACESNIFFER | STORAGE
ANALYSER
SpaceSniffer helps you figure out what is hogging disk space on your computer.
It scans your hard drive and give you a bird’s eye view of the data on it. The
software displays files and folders as coloured blocks: The largest rectangles
are the ones that should be trimmed or transferred to an external drive.
Click on a rectangle and SpaceSniffer will
take you one level deeper to show the contents—more boxes, again—within that
folder. You can launch Windows Explorer from within the software
to open to the file’s location, or send it to the Recycle Bin.
You can view scans of multiple
disk drives side-by-side and even save a snapshot of the folders to a text file
for later reference.
www.uderzo.it | 1.58MB
AOMEI BACKUPPER STANDARD |
BACKUP UTILITY
If you haven’t created a backup of
your computer data, then you should do it now. Windows 10 has a built-in backup
utility known as File History, and while this is a good archival
tool, it needs an external drive to work. AOMEI, on the other hand,
will let you take back-ups on another hard-drive partition and it even offers
you granular control on what you want to save.
You can create a back up of the
entire system, clone a hard drive, a partition, or individual folders to an
image file. It also lets you sync specific folders to another partition and set
up a schedule, so you don’t have to copy-paste content every time.
All backups are listed on the
dashboard with options to restore, sync or browse. Its utilities section lets
you view your backups and even create a bootable rescue disc or USB drive.
www.backup-utility.com | 86.7MB
Ashutosh.Desai@timesgroup.com
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