The advances in technology in recent years means we don''t have to pay thousands in hard earned cash to buy a recording studio, or slave away multi tracking with reel-to-reel tape decks to make music. Most modern computers and laptops give you all you need at your finger tips. Yes, you can pay for top of the range software and a collection of VST plugins, hardware interfaces, studio monitoring, mixing desks and spend hours learning to play the instruments, but you might just want to dip your toe into the water first and have some fun.

With this selection of FREE audio software, let the fun begin!

Audicity - Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.

WavePad - This sound editing software is a full featured professional audio editor for Windows or Mac. It lets you make and edit music, voice and other audio recordings.

Wavosaur - Wavosaur is a free sound editor, audio editor, wav editor software for editing, processing and recording sounds, wav and mp3 files. Wavosaur has all the features to edit audio (cut, copy, paste, etc.) produce music loops, analyze, record, batch convert.Wavosaur supports VST plugins, ASIO driver, multichannel wav files, real time effect processing.

Traverso DAW - Is a GPL licensed, cross platform multitrack audio recording and editing suite, with an innovative and easy to master User Interface. It''s suited for both the professional and home user, who needs a robust and solid DAW.

Ardour - Ardour is a digital audio workstation. You can use it to record, edit and mix multi-track audio. You can produce your own CDs, mix video soundtracks, or just experiment with new ideas about music and sound.

Rosegarden - Rosegarden is a well-rounded audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment. Rosegarden is an easy-to-learn, attractive application that runs on Linux, ideal for composers, musicians, music students, and small studio or home recording environments.

Kangas Sound Editor - Fun Kangaroo-themed program that allows the user to create music and sound effects. It uses a system of frequency ratios for pitch control, rather than conventional music notation and equal temperament. It allows instruments, both musical and percussion, to be created. Of course you''ll need some samples to play with if you can''t play any instruments.

SampleNet- Free loops, samples and sounds.

Freesound - Freesound: collaborative database of creative-commons licensed sound for musicians and sound lovers.



Most of us know that Adobe Photoshop is at the top of the tree for image manipulation software, but for those of you who want to play with images taken on your mobile phone or you're possibly not so impressed with the software that came with your digital camera or you just want to have a go at creating some digital art, here are some digital imaging software packages that don't break the bank.
If you try any of them, we'd love to see the results and maybe we can do a review of the software using your images as examples in the near future.

PC

Artweaver - Artweaver is a simple Freeware program for creative painting, i.e. Artweaver offers you all artistic effects which you need for your work.

Cinepaint - CinePaint is an open source painting program used by motion picture studios to retouch images in 35mm films. It was formerly called Film Gimp. It has been used in a dozen feature films including Harry Potter, Scooby-Doo, and the Fast & the Furious.

Gimp - GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.

Paint.NET - Paint.NET is free image editing and photo manipulation software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

PhotoFiltre - PhotoFiltre is a free 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.

Lightbox Image Editor - Lightbox Free - It has no adware or spyware of any kind and never expires. We just think you''ll like it so much that you''ll think about LightBox Plus for $19.95.

MAC

Seashore - Seashore is an open source image editor for Mac OS X''s Cocoa framework. It features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. It supports multiple layers and alpha channel editing. It is based around the GIMP''s technology and uses the same native file format.

Gimp on OS X - Photo editing application that rivals Photoshop in features (requires X11).

Inkscape - Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Imagetricks - Image Tricks is a free application for editing and generating images. It uses Mac OS X Core Image filters that transform pictures to unimaginable extent and apply advanced visual effects. The program can create unique artwork you may use as business card backgrounds, for web design, print materials and more.

Teal - Teal is an entry level image editing and painting package. Teal''s features include a variety of brushes (clone brush, smudge, effect brush, etc), non-contiguous constructive selections, and image-wide effects.

With many mobile phones and digtal cameras now having the ability to capture video, anyone can have a go at making a film using a home computer and video editing software.
The video editing software that comes with your computer or digital camera may be all you need, but here are some more 'free' options for you to choose from.

Avidemux - Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities.

Blender - Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.

Jahshaka - Designed for editors and other professionals involved in digital content creation, Jahshaka is a post production suite that will ultimately include modules for video and audio editing, compositing, animation, visual effects, graphics and paint. Hardware accelerated using OpenGL and built using cross-platform technology, the software runs equally well on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. Under development since January 2000, the project has had more than 500,000 downloads to date.

SolveigMM AVI Trimmer - SolveigMM AVI Trimmer is a free video editor to allow you to AVI movie cut extremely fast and lossless. This freeware AVI editor software is small, smart, easy to use and involves no encoding/decoding processes. Video enthusiasts use AVI Trimmer to cut commercials, cut video files or edit video for YouTube. AVI Trimmer solves annoying out of sync problem. It operates with all known types of AVI including DV AVI type 1 and 2.

Videopad - Video Editor Software

Virtual Dub - A powerful freeware video editor with lots of features, including a choice of compression codecs, splitting, addition of audio tracks

Wax - Wax is a high performance and flexible video compositing and special effects software. The idea for Wax is to be very general purpose and flexible in video compositing and effects, so that you can compose your dream video sequence with ease everytime.

Zwei-Stein - Zwei-Stein 3.01 is a freeware non-linear, non-destructive video compositing and editing system which offers many advanced features unavailable elsewhere.\r\n\r\nWith Zwei-Stein you can edit up to 256 video, audio and still image clips, each with up to 64 effects chained serially. Cropping, panning and custom effects are easy with automatic key frames.

When setting out to write your first best selling novel or the oscar winning script for the blockbuster movie of the century, you don't really need much more than some paper, an old manual typewriter and heaps of inspiration.
Most probably the typewriter and paper will be replaced with a computer and printer and a word processing software package.Luckily there are some word processing applications that don't cost a fortune and there is even free scriptwriting software that you can choose from and free desk top publishing software should you wish to write a travel guide or start a magazine.

Desk Top Publishing

Serif PagePlus - PagePlus is the award-winning desktop publishing software that enables you to create stunning documents for your home, school, business or club - no experience required.

Scribus - Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/UNIX, Mac OS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK colour, separations, ICC colour management and versatile PDF creation.

Word Processing

Lotus Symphony - Office productivity software that is intuitive, easy to use and provided at no charge. Lotus Symphony was voted office productivity office software product of the year for 2008 by Datamation Magazine readers. In what can only be described as an upset, newcomer, Lotus Symphony, beat out Microsoft Office, OpenOffice2.3.1,ThinkFree Office and other nominees.

Open Office - Open Office is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

Scriptwriting software

Roughdraft - RoughDraft is a freeware word processor for Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP. Although suitable for general use, it has features specifically designed for creative writing: novels, short stories, articles, plays and screenplays. It's designed to be as practical as possible, offering all the features you need, but without being complicated or awkward to use.

Screenforge - ScreenForge v1.1a is a combination of three MS Word templates that work together to create a Script Cover page, Title/Fly page, and the Screenplay itself. It has been designed with the formatting rules outlined in the book, The Complete Guide To Standard Script Formats Part I: The Screenplay, by Hillis R. Cole, Jr., and Judith H. Haag.The Screenwriter''s Bible, by David Trottier, also contributed some useful screenwriting elements. ScreenForge provides the means to easily write a screenplay in the accepted Hollywood format. It frees the writer to concentrate on the expressive craft of writing rather than the rigid rules of formatting, while maintaining the familiar interface and functionality of MS Word.

Scriptmaker - ScriptMaker is screenwriting software which formats your screenplay to professional standards. Freeware and trialware versions are now available.