Help friends and family make the most of digital photos, videos and music this holiday season with software, peripherals and stocking stuffers that will help get their creative juices flowing.

Software suites that include tools for enhancing, editing and sharing photos and videos are more powerful and easier to use than ever this year. Microsoft Digital Image Suite Plus and Adobe Photoshop/Premiere Elements are our two favorite bundles this year.

Digital Image Suite Plus (www.microsoft.com/products/imaging/products.aspx , Windows, $130) is ideal for casual users because it provides a guided, task-oriented approach to working with digital camera snapshots and movie clips. Digital Image Suite Plus' photo tools make quick work of adding photos to your computer, removing red-eye, enhancing color, sizing images for printing or posting to the Web, and burning slide shows onto CDs. Hundreds of project templates and thousands of pieces of clip art also make it easy to print greeting cards, calendars and albums from your images.

When you're ready to try your hand at making movies, Pinnacle Studio 10, which is included in the suite, provides easy-to-learn tools and shortcuts, such as SmartMovie and SmartSound, quickly build movies from your raw footage by choosing from a selection of preset styles. Share your video creations by creating custom DVDs with Pinnacle Studio's built-in creation tools. You also can use Pinnacle Studio to publish videos on the Web, for mobile phones or hand-held devices.

Adobe's Photoshop Elements 4.0/Premiere Elements 2.0 bundle (www.adobe.com , Windows, $150) is an ideal gift for more experienced enthusiasts who crave more creative freedom. While it includes a few of the hand-holding features of Microsoft's suite, more experienced users will find more powerful tools in Photoshop Elements, such as the Healing Brush for erasing flaws in images and advanced tools for creating collages from individual images and improving skin tones. Premiere Elements lets you add sophisticated special effects to your video clips and produce Hollywood-style DVDs, complete with animated menus.

Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Epson and others all sell inexpensive printers that let you quickly print 4-by-6 photo snapshots from the comfort of the home office or den, but HP gets a leg up on the competition this year with a new model that lets you print larger, 5-by-7 prints just as easily.

The HP PhotoSmart 475 GoGo Photo Printer (www.hpshopping.com , Windows/Macintosh, $280) delivers prints in as little as a minute. It includes a built-in card reader to print directly from camera memory cards or you can send images to the printer via a USB connection. The 2.5-inch screen guides you through the process and includes simple menus for adjusting your photos before you print them. The printer even includes enough built-in memory to store 1,000 images so your favorites are always available when you need to make prints. You can even burn images in the printer's memory to CDs without having to use your computer.

3M, the Post-It note people, have come up with a useful and fun stocking stuffer for sharing digital prints during the holidays. It's Post-It Sticky Picture Paper. It's glossy like the photo paper you traditionally load into inkjet printers (matte finish also available), and it includes the adhesive backing of Post-It notes, letting you stick images on just about any surface without damaging it or leaving residue. The Sticky Picture Paper comes in a variety of popular snapshot sizes up to 8-by-10 and is available through office supply stores such as Office Depot or Staples. Prices vary, but you can generally buy a pack letting you print more than 100 4-by-6 prints for $15 to $20.

You probably haven't heard of APTE Education Technology, but this software maker sells a program that's a smart way for elementary school kids to learn about digital photo editing and desktop publishing. Classroom Photo Publisher (www.apte.com/products/cpp/index.cfm , Windows/Macintosh, $39) includes simple photo-editing tools, plus desktop publishing capabilities so kids can print their own photo publications, such as newsletters, certificates, stickers and calendars. This software is only available online so order well enough in advance so it arrives in time for your holiday celebration.

Young artists or adults with a passion for the creative can turn digital photos into digital masterpieces with a software and hardware combination from Corel and Wacom.

Corel's Painter Essentials 3 (www.corel.com , Windows/Macintosh, $79 for a limited time) lets you create digital paintings from your snapshots in three quick steps, or you can use the program's wide selection of natural media painting tools, such as electronic oils and digital watercolors to create your own artwork. A series of tutorials act like a built-in art instructor to help beginners get started quickly.

Add Wacom's Graphire tablet and wireless pen (www.wacom.com/graphire/index.cfm , Windows/Macintosh, $100) to make digital painting more realistic. Insert a photo beneath the Graphire's pressure-sensitive surface and then trace or paint over it with the wireless pen. Flip the pen around and erase with its built-in eraser. The Graphire works with all of Painter Essentials artistic tools and by adjusting pressure sensitivity, it's easy to create dazzling special effects.

Cell phone-addicted teens can save a bundle on downloadable ringtones by creating their own with some inexpensive software. Xingtone Ringtone Creator (www.xingtone.com , Windows/Macintosh, $20) makes it easy to convert MP3 tunes into ringtones that are compatible with hundreds of cell phones for all of the top U.S. carriers. Sold in computer and electronics stores by Roxio, the software is also available as an online download. In addition to helping teens add some bling to their mobiles, Xingtone's tools for editing and manipulating music also provide a great introduction to working with digital audio. At $20, it's stocking-stuffer friendly.

Planetwide Comics Comic Book Creator (www.planetwidegames.com , Windows, $20) is targeted at video game fans. It allows them to take snapshots from their game play and turn them into comic strips or comic book pages using more than 500 templates, thought bubbles, word graphics and story boxes. Not buying for a gaming fan? No worries because this software also imports images from digital cameras and camcorders that can be used as the foundation for comic creations. When kids have tweaked their masterpiece, they can print it, post it to a Web site or save it to CD. Look for this software at stores such as EB Games and GameStop.

Plasq's Comic Life (http://plasq.com/comiclife , Macintosh, $25) provides similar and more powerful capabilities for Mac fans. It includes an impressive selection of templates and word balloons, but also adds features such as gradients and shadows, filters to give comics a hand-drawn or painted look, and the ability to capture images from webcams. Comic Life integrates seamlessly with Apple's iPhoto software (included on most Macs sold in the past few years) so incorporating images is a snap. You can share complete comic books or individual pages by printing them, posting them to the Web or even turning them into simple QuickTime movies. You can buy Comic Life at Apple's retail stores or online.

The holidays are a great time to capture digital memories. And software to help you showcase them makes a great gift. Many scrapbooking programs have hit the market in recent years. Most mimic traditional techniques for building a scrapbook with virtual paper styles, stickers, borders and clip art, in addition to hundreds of templates that help you organize and stylishly place images on pages. Digital scrapbooks also can save you time, money and hassle. You don't need scissors and glue to create electronic scrapbooks, and you don't need to buy supplies such as stickers and other embellishments. Plus, digital scrapbooking software keeps all of your supplies organized in your computer instead of arranged haphazardly on the dining room or coffee table.

A few of our favorites this season include Ulead's Photo Express My Scrapbook (www.ulead.com/mse/runme.htm , Windows, $30), HP's Creative Scrapbook Assistant (www.hpshopping.com , Windows, $30), Broderbund's Creating Keepsakes Scrapbook Designer Deluxe (www.broderbund.com , Windows, $20) and iRemember Digital Scrapbook (www.macscrapbook.com , Macintosh, $50).

All these programs include similar features so check each out online to see which best matches your recipient's interests and needs. And with prices starting at $20, these programs also make affordable stocking stuffers.

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