Metadata, pertinent bits of info that are recorded by your camera when you press the shutter button, can be invaluable to the budding or seasoned photographer. Exifer lets you easily restore EXIF data from an original image and even add tags and other information that will then be embedded into the EXIF. Data like shutter speed and aperture, date, resolution, focal length and a ton of other useful tidbits are there, along with your own categorization tags for easy indexing.

The team here at butterscotch recently compiled the

Top 100 Freeware programs for Windows, Mac and Linux

. This list is ranked according to the download popularity of the apps in the list. This week, Doc kicks off part two of this two-part series on his ten favorite Windows programs in the list.

Andy and Sean talk about etiquette tips for using your technology in the modern age, including tips for email, mobile and social networking. There are no hard and fast rules for

proper tech etiquette

, but the guys have some solid real-world tips to ensure your online interactions are more genteel.

When you install Windows, it comes with the basics to get online, chat online, send and receive email and more. However, you'll soon find that specialized applications do the job better. For everyone who loves free software, Michael "Doc" Callahan chats up his top 10 must have free Windows applications. He's going to cover a range of tools for browsing, instant messaging and much more. Part one covers the first five of his

top 10 free Windows apps

.

Images can really add to the impact of your Website. You can include pictures of products, family, friends, gadgets or just about anything else you want. When using images on a Website, however, you want to follow certain guidelines so as not to get stuck with a

slow web page load

for your visitors.

This week Doc Callahan takes a look at

free image viewing and editing software for Windows

. These five suites they all have slightly different features, they're all good and they're all

free

.
The Sweet Stuff Software for this week includes

Photo Gadget Viewer, FastStone Image Viewer, Image Viewer, DIMIN Image Viewer and IrfanView

.

Cheryl Poirier goes looking for a quick and easy image editor and finds IrfanView. This incredibly popular image editor has all of the basic functions you want in an image editor, and adds in some pretty advanced features too. Pretty good, especially considering the price tag!

In this butterscotch.com special 10-part tutorial series, we get the

complete beginner's guide

to working with

free image editing utility IrfanView

. We'll look at everything from working with images in batches and setting up a slideshow to enhancing and altering images.

Want to join several pictures of a landscape together to create one amazing panoramic photo? How about joining pictures that are related into a banner? It's easy to do with IrfanView.

You might be amazed at the number of options available to choose from when using IrfanView. Hang on and we'll finish going through them in this segment. We'll get in to the rest of them. These advanced options may seem intimidating at first, but they let you tell IrfanView how you want it to behave... and you certainly won't be wanting for options.

You might be amazed at the number of options you have to choose from when using IrfanView. Buckle your seat belt and we'll get in to just some of them. These advanced options may seem intimidating at first, but they let you tell IrfanView how you want it to behave... and you certainly won't be wanting for options.

Want to dazzle family and friends with your vacation pictures? Then do a slideshow in IrfanView and then make it into your own personalized screen saver. You can even share the result with friends and family so they can have your favorite pics running as their screen saver.

Have graphics or photos you'd like to alter? Then take a good look at IrfanView. It's got all the tools most of us need. In this second part of Altering images in IrfanView, we'll look at more image editing options including converting images to black and white, turning pictures into negative images, adjusting the colors for a more pleasant (or amusing) result.

Have graphics or photos you'd like to alter? Then take a good look at IrfanView. It's got all the tools that most of us will need. It allows you to rotate, flip, change the background, resize, resample you images and more. And it's free to boot!

When you're working on images there are times when you want to do a little touch-up. Add some color, an arrow, erase something and so on. IrfanView has a built-in paint function you can use for these and other digital darkroom tasks.

Need a quick and easy way to grab a screen shot. Look no further than IrfanView. The built in screen capturing in IrfanView will is a lot more powerful than the native screen capturing options in Windows. Also, it allows for instant editing of screen captures, all within IrfanView.

Tired of the same, old photos. Want to add a little spice to your pictures? Create a jazzy album cover or holiday card? IrfanView gives you a cool (and free) way to do all this and more.

Have you got hundreds of JPG files that you'd like to have as PNG format files? Or EPS files you'd like to convert to JPG? IrfanView is a great and free solution with its batch conversion and batch rename function.
Batch conversion is perfect for, say, sizing down a series of images to post them to an online service like Facebook.

If you like working with graphics you can't beat IrfanView. Being able to send graphics to the program makes using it even easier. This way, you can quickly open files in IrfanView without having to go through the file > open dialogues.

For basic image editing, you may not need to shell out for commercial image editing software. The open source (read: free to use) image editor IrfanView can take care of many of the standard image edits. Here, we'll look at resizing pictures with IrfanView. Later on, we'll get more in-depth with this powerful piece of software.

In this butterscotch.com special 10-part tutorial series, we get the complete beginner's guide to working with free image editing utility IrfanView. We'll look at everything from working with images in batches and setting up a slideshow to enhancing and altering images.