It never ceases to amaze me how hard it is to find a programme, other than the overpriced PaintShop, to do everything I want in graphics. I'm a pretty basic user but sometimes I want to be able to use layers. Enter the free Artweaver.

Artweaver is now my replacement for Arcsoft's Photostudio which came with some hardware I bought many years ago. The main reason for this is there is a portable version of Artweaver and since the last time I formatted my pc I am trying to use mostly portable programmes. Almost as important is that Artweaver can work with .gif files and Photostudio didn't.

In brief, I don't think Artweaver is quite as good as Photofiltre in some areas but better in others. There are less filters available in Artweaver and I haven't discovered a clone tool yet but you have all the regular stuff such as crop, resize, rotate, magic wand, transparency, brushes, text and much more. It's slow to start but so are most programmes that do layers. I am not a graphics guru and I'm not really interested in being able to do all the things this programme can do so here are some screenshots that might help you decide if this one is for you.