Photosynth, a Microsoft Live Labs project previously available as a view-only tech preview, now lets those signed up with Windows Live upload and create their own multi-photo walk-through panoramas. The webapp, which requires an 8MB software installation on the user's side, can stitch together dozens or hundreds of photos and then let viewers "walk" through them, altering perspective and creating entirely new views from the details of all those shots. That means you not only can show off your new workshop shed in your backyard garden, you can let viewers actually step into it and look around. Pretty cool stuff, although those uploads, and the software itself, can take up a bit of bandwidth and memory. Photosynth requires a free download and a Windows Live ID to use.

Flickr has launched a new and improved version of their slideshow tool. Most notably, the new slideshow seamlessly transitions between photos and video in the same set of slides. Thanks Sonny!

The Wanokoto Labs web site converts any image into a super old-timey pic in one quick and simple step. You can either upload an image to the site from your computer or point it to an image URL online, then just click Convert. A few seconds later, you've got an ancient looking version of that image. Applied to print, the results (as you can see) look like a weathered newspaper, but browsing through the gallery on the site's front page shows impressive results with every image. Looks like you don't need Photoshop to age images digitally, and it's a lot quicker than tea and matches .

Windows/Mac/Linux (Adobe AIR): Free Adobe AIR application Flump downloads all the photos from a user-specified Flickr account to your hard drive. It's a simple one-use application: You provide it with a Flickr ID or username, tell it where to save the photos, and click Start Flump. We've highlighted similar tools before, namely FlickrDown and Flickr AutoDownloadr, but Flump is the only cross-platform offering, and it's also the most no-nonsense app of the bunch—perfect for backing up all your Flickr pics on a new computer. Flump is free, works wherever Adobe AIR does.

Windows only: Free application XnView Shell Extension adds several image tools to your right-click menu so you can preview, resize, edit, upload, and convert images in just a couple of clicks. Made by the same people who brought your previously mentioned XnView—the lightning fast image editor and viewer—XnView Shell Extension brings many of the same great tools of XnView to your right-click menu. If you do a lot of work with photos but don't want to fire up a full-fledged editor for some quick resizing or converting, this context menu add-on looks like a winner. XnView Shell Extension is freeware, Windows only.

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Got yourself (or a friend) one of those shiny new digital, wireless-capable picture frames? Windows Live FrameIt combines multiple RSS feeds, along with the pictures from any web site, into a single, frame-friendly feed. As the Digital Inspiration blog points out, however, the resulting output also lets you check to see when images on a certain page—like the Google homepage, or a big "Sale" button on a discount dealer—have changed. In general, FrameIt is a pretty nice aggregator of both RSS-capable and standard web pages. The service is free to use, but requires a Windows Live sign-up.

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Windows only: Free image utility VJPEG is a tool that could be a serious time saver for anyone who regularly views or compare digital images from their desktop. The tiny application installs itself as the default handler for JPG, BMP, and other common image files (and that's kind of annoying), so when a file is double-clicked, it opens super-fast in a frame-less desktop windows. There are shortcuts to resize, rotate, and even email a picture, but the concept is quickly checking out photos without waiting for Windows' viewer, or even something as light as IrfanView to load. My recommendation? Set up VJPEG as a send to item menu, and feed batches of pictures to it for quick selection. VJPEG is a free download for Windows systems only.

Webapp Blow Up displays Flickr photos in a full-screen slideshow for closeup browsing. When you want to show off your vacation photos from this summer that you uploaded to Flickr, head over to Blow Up Your Flickr and enter your username. Blow Up will pull down your photos and display them full screen, with a hideaway thumbnail navigation. Web site owners, you can even download the Blow Up app and install it on your own site.

Blogger Tom Hole details an image editing technique for turning a digital photo landscape into a tiny planet. To start off you'll need to create a 360-degree panoramic photo. The author uses a shareware app called PTGui to create the panorama, but we've covered how to create panoramic photos with free software already. Once you're there, the author describes how to process the panoramic pic with either GIMP (the free, open-source photo editor) or Photoshop (the not free one) to end up with the very cool small planet effect. If you've made your own little planet in the past, let's see how it worked out for you in the comments.

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Windows only: Although the quality of camera phone pictures has increased over time, many camera phones still leave a lot to be desired. If you have a bunch of camera phone pictures you'd really like to keep but the quality seems a bit off, a run through the free Mobile Photo Enhancer might be your saving grace. With single and batch processing, Mobile Photo Enhancer has a host of tweaks to correct problems like low contrast, vignetting at the edges, poor sharpness and artifacts. While it won't make your photos of Mardi Gras revelry look like they were taken with a medium format camera, it will put a little sparkle back in your beads. The Mobile Photo Enhancer is a free download for Windows only.