The Good
* Has many, many effects.
* Users can use as many effects for one image as they like.
* Supports all major image formats.
* Supports drag + drop.
* Allows users to print or e-mail images after they have been edited.
* Has built-in undo/redo/revert to original functions to help users avoid mistakes.
* Supports drag + drop.

The Bad
* Fairly cumbersome method of selecting effects.
* No hotkey support for undo or redo.
* Pixo kills the copy + paste functions while running (it is a bug - not intended).

Free Alternatives
Your local image editor

For final verdict, recommendations, and full review please click here.

Pros:
* Smooth download, installation, activation on Vista x32 OS.
* Automatic Registration - no need to enter codes into fields.
* Simple, pleasant, clear, easy-to-navigate User Interface.
* Easy to use and operate program - i.e., low learning curve.
* Supports drag & drop feature.
* allows resizing of images bigger than: 2048 x 1536.
* Supports printing of edited photo via: Pixo's own internal email system, google mail, 3rd-party email program such as Outlook.
* Supports printing of images to user's printer.
* Supports image input-formats: bmp, gif, jpg, jpeg, png, tif, pcs, psd (single-layered), tga
* Supports image output formats: bmp, gif, jpg, jpeg, png, pdf.
* Supports implementation of security settings via: user-designated username & password protocols.
*Supports masking of user-designated password setting.
* Quality of edited image is equal to quality of original image.
* Provides Image-Editing viewing area, where user can see entire picture in real-time, as edits are being applied to the image.
Cons:

* Norton Internet Security Suite red-flagged "setup.exe" file as "having suspicious behavior," which I ignored, as GOTD thoroughly tests all offered giveaways before releasing them for download and installation. This was probably a "false-positive."
* Copy & Paste function does not work properly when using program.
* Though program is easy to use, Help File could be beefed up a bit, to give useful help to first-time users not familiar with paint-brush image-editing techniques.
* No technical-support contact information located in Help File.

Summary: - Program is easy to use and does as it says, so two-thumbs up for today's giveaway. Thanks, GOTD & Bendigo Design.

Freeware Option

Paint.Net - CNET User Rating 4/5

This program is both intriguing and frustrating. In some ways it's remarkably easy to use, and it's definitely good fun, but it's also very clumsy. It's not immediately obvious that there is a miniscule arrow allowing you to scroll through the special effects menu. It took me a while to figure out that if I hovered over a special effects image for an unnecessarily long period, a tooltip is displayed. I didn't find the menu images entirely intuitive. I'd much prefer to have the option to display the special effects menu in text format. I'd also have preferred a dropdown menu to the scrollable one which I find cumbersome to navigate. The effects are not configurable in any way, which renders many of them pretty well useless from my point of view because they're too coarse, whereas if they could be tuned, they'd be brilliant. I think the paintbrush metaphor is great but I'd like the option to apply some effects to the whole image in one click.

I can't understand why Bendigo went to the effort of developing email integration (including internal email!), which is completely unnecessary, rather than improving the core functionality. The Windows interface is a bit clumsy too. There's no context menu available on the Windows toolbar allowing you to close the program when it is minimised.

Those are the quibbles. What's much worse is that the program is unstable and buggy. It crashed twice with run time errors while I was playing with it. It also simply stops working after an indeterminate number of effects have been applied, and owing to the lack of a context menu, once it has become unresponsive, it needs to be terminated with Windows Task Manager.

I quite like this program, but it's not ready for market. It needs testing and further development. If it was debugged and improved, with configuration options, it would be worth more than $13 to me. Thanks GOTD and Bendigo. This was an interesting one.

Unfortunately there is no Game giveaway again this weekend so I've gathered together some excellent Freeware games, the first of which I've just posted over in the forums called Danger from the Deep, an open source submarine sim with excellent visuals and only 60Mb download

I've got a few more decent games which I'll be posting over the course of the net two days so please do keep your eyes on the forums.

I also posted a decent turn based strategy game called Samurai Blades: On Deadly Ground (6.51), and a couple of light games called Codename Countdown (23.7Mb), Sensor (1.4Mb), Star Badminton. reverseOrder posted a collection of games (all under 2Mb in size) that include Bullet Philharmonic Orchestra, Shump 1, and Rainbow Wars


You can find then all in the Game discussion forums under week 85.

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/7419

There's also some amazing Steam deals this week. Rockstar the developers of the Grand Theft Auto Franchise have an amazing sale of all their products and Codemasters are selling their racing pack for an amazingly low price (£12.50 for Grid, Fuel, Colin McRae Dirt and Dirt 2 and ToCA Race Driver 3) You can buy them separately for 75% off, but the deal is even better if you buy the whle package. Check out the videos and screen captures by following the link above and selecting the Steam Deals Thread.

Have a fantastic weekend folks and Game on...... :)

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I installed today's giveaway Easy to install) and although there are loads of freebie tools similar to this around I found it very useful (and easy to use). The use of a paint brush to apply the effects to specific areas of the image rather than using other tools simplifies the task and is much less time consuming than using such tools as a lasso. I think I'll be using this little package for some time to come.

Needs a zoom for photo size so that you can finely apply effects to various parts of the image.
Also, does not add more of effect if you go over an area more than once with the brush.
With some of these changes to the interface, would be much more valuable for artistic manipulation of images.