Nobody can turn back time. That's why memories are so precious. Along the centuries, humans have invented various ways to capture the moments and preserve those memories; from stories, poems, paintings to photos and videos. In the digital era, it's only natural that we manage our "captured memories" digitally. For most people, photo and video are the more popular choices because they are quick and easy to produce. But in terms of size, photos have an advantage over videos. That's why there is more photo management software available out there.

If you still looking for the perfect photo manager, maybe you should try Zoner Photo Studio. This one will help you to manage, edit, and share your photos.

A Quick Start

Zoner Photo Studio is available to download for free. But please note that the free version is not the latest version of the software, because it's based on v. 12, while the latest version is v. 13. Still, this is a very capable photo manager. After the installation process, there's the First Run Wizard that will take you through a lengthy configuration process.

At the end, the app offers for you to visit the Tutorials page and/or check the Updates page. First time users might want to check the available tutorials. You'll get many tips and tricks on utilizing the various features of the app.

Exploring The App

• The first time you open the app, you will be greeted by the photo manager. You can see all the quick tools available at the top right corner of the window, under "Settings".

• The photo manager will let you browse pictures on your storage and view the thumbnails. It's more or less like Explorer, but for pictures. It provides users with photo-specific tools like Rotate, Panes and Filter.

• Click on one of the thumbnails and it will be opened in a separate tab, and the menu will change from "Manager" to "Viewer".

• To manipulate the image, switch from "Viewer" to "Editor" by clicking on the "Editor" tab at the upper right corner.

• Aside from the quick tools, you'll also get other usual image editing tools like Crop, Resize and Text.

• The "Settings" give you several options to customize the app, save and load customizations, calibrate the monitor, and access the Preferences.

• If you need a bigger working area, you can hide the Title Bar, Menu and Tabs, and Toolbars.

Several Examples Of Usage

There are lots of things you can do with the app so it's impossible to list them all here. The best way to understand the tools is to try them all yourself. As a quick start, here are a few examples of some nice things you could do with Zoner Photo Studio.

• When you are in the "Manager" view, you can see the "Publish" menu. You will see several tools that you can use, such as: Slideshow, Wallpaper, Contact Sheets, and Calendars.

• The "Publish" menu is also the place to access the "Upload to Facebook" and "Publish to Flickr" tools.
• Sometimes the images that you shot will contain too much noise which you would like to crop out. To access the cropping tool, switch to "Editor" mode. But Zoner's "Crop" tool is no ordinary crop tool. When you activate it, you can use several add-ons to help you get the best composition out of your cropped image. There's the "Golden Ratio" and "Thirds" grid that you can select under the "View - Crop Marks" menu.

• I won't go on too much about the concept of golden ratio or the rule of thirds, but what the crop marks do is add imaginary lines based on one of those concepts to help you position the focus of the image.

• Another fun thing to do with your photos is to add effects to them. Zoner's "Effects" menu contains several fun tools that you can play with. One of them is the "Pencil Drawing" tool that will transform your photos to pencil drawing lines.

• After activating the tool, you can choose the thickness of the pencil. Then if you like the result, you can save the settings so that you can use it again later without the trouble of readjusting.

I think Zoner Photo Studio Free is a good photo manager and editor, and it deserves more exploration beyond this short article. So try it yourself, and share your thoughts and opinions using the comments below.

Image credit: Gamma-Ray Productions