Picasa 3 Beta Unleashed

I know from the countless emails I receive that most of you really like Picasa, the free photo manager and editor from Google. Well, stand by for Picasa 3. The beta version is now available and it has some really useful  new features. These include basic movie editing, improved web album syncing, photo retouch tools, a new ‘quick view’ facility, five new collage styles, a new text in photo ‘watermark’ utility, updated import from memory card facility, a screen new capture option, and there’s a newly designed toolbar. As usual you install beta software at your own risk, and you should back up any essential data beforehand, but it seems very stable and well worth a test run.

13/10/08

Versatile Viewer

You can never have too many picture viewer programs on your PC. If you are into digital imaging then you have to stay ahead of the game and have up to date software that can handle new and old file formats, as well as all the variations in between; then there are the apparently intact image files that stubbornly refuse to open in normal file viewers. You also need to be able to convert from one format to another, singly or in batches, read hidden EXIF data and fiddle around with the image. If your image viewer can do all that then fine, if not you should definitely have a look at XnView, and if the name sounds familiar, it comes from the people who brought us the handy XnView Shell Extension that we featured a few weeks ago.

XnView can read around 400 graphic file formats and export in 50, there’s a good range of tools, it reads EXIF data, it has a slideshow facility, many printing options, including contact sheet, there’s TWAIN support, and I could go on, but don’t just take my word for it, check out the feature list for yourself.

09/10/08

Make YouTube YourTube

YouTube is great, well, some of it anyway, and even occasional visitors will see a video that they would like to download to watch again or send to someone else. There are lots of recording utilities on the web but this one, called Better YouTube has to be one of the easiest to use. It’s a Firefox add-on and it only takes a few seconds to install. Thereafter, if you see something you fancy simply click the ‘download this video’ link that appears just below the player screen and the download of the chosen video, as an .flv file, starts automatically. Incidentally, if you haven’t got a .flv player on your PC then I can thoroughly recommend the subject of a previous Top Tip, called VLC, which plays just about anything. There’s a link to the download on the PCTopTIps Software page.

01/09/08

Picture This, Easily!

As you may know you can make icons manually out of ordinary JPEG and bitmap images, by fiddling around with the size and format. It’s easy enough, just a bit time-consuming but why bother? Here’s a simple one-click solution, called Easy PictureIcon. Just select your image and it is automatically converted to the three commonest sizes (16 x 16, 32 x 32 and 48 x 48 pixels). All you have to do is decide if you want to compress trim or fit, select background transparency, and where to save it. Go on, give your desktop a makeover, and don’t forget, you can change the icons in most applications simply by replacing them with one of your choosing, providing it’s the same size and has the same filename.

21/08/08

Right-Click Photo Utilities

Here’s an ingenious little program, or more correctly, a Shell Extension, called appropriately enough XnView Shell Extension that adds extra functionality to your right-click menus. Simply download and install the program and when you next open Windows Explorer, or My Computer, navigate your way to a folder containing image files. Right click on one of them and you’ll see a whole load of new options appear, including info about the file, the option to convert the file into .gif, .bmp, .jpeg, .pcx, .png. .tiff or .tga format, set as wallpaper, view as a variable sized thumbnail, and much more. Give it a whirl, I think you will be impressed!

14/08/08

Jing’s The Thing…

You probably can’t see it in the photograph but at the top of the screen there’s a yellow dot. That’s Jing, an ingenious ‘always-on’ capture program that does just that. Click the dot and Jing starts to record anything you can see on the screen, be it a still image or a video, and if there is any sound that goes with it, it’ll capture that as well. It’s optimised for uploading to the web but you decide where your capture files go and the options include a local folder on your hard drive, a network folder, the clipboard or sharing sites such as Screencast.com and Flikr. Images are stored in .png format whilst videos are .swf files. Needless to say it’s free, but the authors clearly have their eyes on turning it into a commercial product, and if this introductory version is anything to go by that may not be too far off, so get it while you can.

11/08/08

Fast Batch Resize Crop and Watermark

Here’s a solution looking for a problem. Let’s suppose you have a quantity of images that you want to crop and resize in a hurry, and at the same time, convert them from one image file format to another (jpeg, png, gif or tiff), and while you are at it, you also want to add a time/date stamp and a copyright watermark.

We’ve all been there and usually the only way to do it is one at a time, using an image editing program, well not any more! All you need is iKnow Batch Crop, and that’s really all you need to know. It’s incredibly easy; there are just three simple steps. Step One asks you to create a folder to store your modified pix in. In Step Two you select the picture you want to process and in Step Three you decide the shape, picture format, time/date and watermark, click OK and it’s done!

16/06/08

Free Tourist Terminator

We’ve all been there… You find yourself at some exotic location, trying to take a once in a lifetime picture of a famous landmark or some picturesque scenery when a gormless tourist, car or bus wanders into the frame. There’s nothing like an articulated lorry or daft-looking stranger to spoil a classic, potentially award-winning photograph, but what can you do?

The answer is simple, keep still and shooting. Take as many pictures as you can then when you get home run the images through a piece of software called Tourist Remover. It’s ingenious, it checks the images, finds all of the bits without moving objects, tourists and so on, then stitches them together and hey presto, a clean photo with no hideous holidaymakers spoiling the view.

13/12/07

No More Hiding Behind Pixels?

You may recall the recent case where a paedophile was identified from pictures he had posted on the web, even though his image had been scrambled, so how was it done? That particular case wasn’t terribly difficult because he had chosen to ‘swirl’ his picture, which left most of the detail intact, albeit twisted around in circles. Several readily available programs can undo swirls but even if he had used that old favourite – pixellation – it might still have been possible for the authorities to come up with a useable picture. You can try it for yourself, on the Vectormagic website. Just upload a pixellated image and let it get to work on the blocks and see what is revealed; anyone trying to hide behind pixellated pictures consider yourself duly warned!

03/12/07

Screen Capture is a Snap

If you ever need to take a snapshot of what you are seeing on the screen then you’ll know Windows has a couple of features that puts an image of what you’re looking at into the Clipboard (PrtScn for the whole screen and Alt + PrtScn for the Active Windows or dialogue box) but it’s not very convenient. Here’s a much better way, it’s called MWSnap and this excellent little freeware program lets you take a ‘snap’ of any part of the screen. You get to see instantly what you’ve captured, there’s a resizable ruler (horizontal or vertical) so you can accurately measure your image area, you can save the captured image in any of the popular file formats, set up hot keys and much more besides.

15/10/07

DVD to Just About Anything Converter

It’s all very well having one of those multimedia gizmos, PSP, iPod and so on, that play videos, but if you can’t convert your DVD to the format it requires you are stuck. Worse still, you could be corralled into paying for a download, quite possibly for movies that you already own on DVD or tape.  What you need is a DVD ripper, and there are a few to choose from, but this one, called Handbrake, has something for everyone. To begin with it’s a multi-platform, freeware open source program, which basically means that in addition to the Windows versions, there are variants for Mac and Linux users as well, and it’s versatile. It will convert almost any DVD, be it PAL or NTSC, into an MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM file, which covers most of the popular players. It supports Chapter selection and there’s basic subtitling (they’re burned into the picture if required).

05/10/07

Build Your Own Camcorder for £15!

I know the holidays have begun, so I hope I’m not too late, but if you, or anyone you know is visiting the USA this summer ask them to pop into their nearest CVS Pharmacy and buy up a couple of ‘One Time Use’ camcorders. They cost around $30 ($25 if you can find one with a discount tag) and the idea is you can shoot around 20 minutes of video, then you return it to CVS for processing and you get back a DVD of your movies.

Here’s a clever bit, the camcorders were designed for single use, but there’s a way of hacking them, to make them re-useable, and it really works – here’s one I made earlier. The first thing to do is add a USB cable, it’s not too difficult but it helps to have some soldering skills. After that you all you have to do is download a piece of free software called Saturn, and you can copy your movies from the camcorder to your PC, wipe the memory and use it again. You can even change settings, like resolution and frame rate.. The actual camcorder is small, very easy to use and although not as sophisticated as proper digicams, I have to say the picture quality isn’t half bad. There’s an easy to follow guide, showing how to dismantle the camcorder and fit the cable, plus links to the software download at: Bigfatgeek.net

06/08/07

Perk Up Those Pix

If, like me, you have been playing around with digital photography for a while you probably have some old pix taken back in the day before megapixel image sensors. I actually have some files taken on prototype and first generation digicams from the mid eighties with a then show-stopping 640 x 480 pixel resolution, and at the time few ever thought it would catch on, but I digress…

If you have some old whiskery jpegs lurking on your drive then you might like to try running them through a freeware program called JPEG Enhancer.  It really works, as these shots of my daughter, taken in 1998, just about show. In actuality the improvements are much more impressive. You can adjust the degree of enhancement and you can easily judge the effect in the before and after windows.

04/07/07

Picture This -- ASCI Art Returns

I’m afraid showing my age again and I well remember, back in the sixties, seeing computer generated images of well-known personalities made up of alphanumeric characters. It seemed pretty impressive back then but as computers got smarter and better able to display real images the technique virtually disappeared. Now it’s back, and if you pop along to Photo2Text.com you can have all sorts of fun uploading your own images and converting them into text. Watch out, there is a 200kb size limit, but you can easily resize your pix using a freeware editor like Photofiltre.

13/06/07

It’s Raining On Your JPEGS

If you have a digital camera you have got to try this one! Sqirlz is an ingenious little freeware program that lets you add pools of water, oceans, lakes or ponds even rain or snow to your pictures. It automatically creates realistic looking reflections but here’s the good bit, you can animate it, with ripples or wave effects and add perspective. Afterwards you can save the file as an animated GIF, Macromedia Flash file or AVI, or you can save it as a JPEG or TIFF. It’s brilliant, and great fun to play around with!

0806

Wipe Out Those Obstructions

Here’s a clever little freeware photo editing tool, called PhotoWipe, that lets you erase obstructions and remove things in your pictures that you would rather not be there, the bars in front of this goat, for example. It could just as easily be used to remove objects and people and all you have to do is ‘paint’ the item black, with a selection of brushes and tools. The program looks at the surrounding unpainted area then takes a stab at guessing what should be there and fills in the gap. It’s not perfect and the results can be a bit variable, but on images where there isn’t too much obscured detail or the background where the erased object would be are plain or textured it can do a pretty good job.

18/05/07

Protect Your Pix With Branding

If you upload your photographs to websites, or ebay, for example, what’s to stop someone pinching them? The short answer is not a lot, but if they are marked with a copyright symbol or some other trademark that you will be able to positively identify them if they turn up elsewhere. The process of visibly tagging an image with a symbol or logo is called watermarking and you can do it with most image editing programs but it can be a palaver, especially if you want to watermark more than a handful of pictures. The solution is a simple little freeware utility called Image Brander. It’s really easy to use and lets you add your own copyright mark, custom logo or indeed anything you like to your photographs, either singly or in batches.

11/05/07

Colour me Moody

The colours in a photograph can have as much, if not more impact on the mood than the actual detail. So what happens when you take the colours or palette from a cold, sunny or vibrant picture and use them in a graphic?

It’s an interesting exercise for designers and normally you would need some fancy image editing software to do this sort of thing, but now you can do it online, by visiting the Pic2Color website. It couldn’t be simpler, just enter in the URL of the photo who’s colour you want to use (right click on the picture in your web browser and select Properties and copy link, or in Firefox just right-click and select Copy Image Location). Do the same with your graphic then click the pic2color it now button in the third window and your graphic is automatically recoloured using the photograph’s colour palette.

04/04/07

Print Anywhere, From Anywhere

Has your printer ever packed up or run out of ink at an unfortunate moment? Maybe you’ve been on the road and needed to print out something important but have no printer to hand. A freeware utility called PrinterAnywhere could get you out of a tight spot. It lets you use a printer on any XP or 2k PC that has a network or Internet connection, in exactly the same way as you would if the printer was connected to your own PC and the printer in question could be in the next room, or on the other side of the world. All you need to do is download PrinterAnywhere on your PC and the computer with the Printer, set up a simple password and away you go. It works with any Windows application that uses a printer, including of course Word, Outlook Express and so on, and best of all it’s really easy to set up and use.

26/03/07

What Microsoft Left Out of Vista

Whatever else you may think about Windows Vista you’ll have to agree that many of the included wallpaper images are stunning and several of them were shot by 24 year old Kuwait-based photographer Hamad Darwish. Hamad had only been snapping for 2 years when he was ‘discovered’ by Microsoft, after his work had been published on the photo sharing website Flickr. But what’s really interesting are the pictures that didn’t make it into Vista, and some of them are truly breathtaking. You can read the full story here  and if you would like to see more of his image in all of their glory you can download 1820 x 1200 resolution copies from Hamad’s personal website.

14/03/07

Print Pixel Calculator

Confused by digital camera specs? Just how many megapixels do you need to take decent photographs? The pixel count baffles a lot of people newcomers to digital photography, and when asked most experts glibly answer, ‘the more the merrier’ but if all you want is to take some decent looking holiday snaps that you can print out or view on a PC screen then you could be hustled into paying over the odds for a camera with features you’ll never use.

That’s where the design215  Megapixel and Maximum Print Size Charts come in. They show, at a glance, how many pixels you need for a given size of print or resolution. For example, you can get good looking 8 x 10-inch prints from a 6 or 8 megapixel camera, but if you want to go large, up to 16 x 20 inches, and achieve true photo quality, then you need to be thinking in terms of a 24 megapixel model.

12/03/07

Ultra Simple Free PDF Creator

PDFs or Portable Document Format files, in case you didn’t know, are the most convenient way to send illustrated documents, instruction manuals and so on by email or over the Internet. It’s the closest thing we have to a universal format and PDFs can be read on just about any PC (Windows, Mac, Linux etc), all you need is the free Adobe Reader program to display the file.

Making your own PDFs is another matter, though. Until fairly recently the only way to do it properly was to buy a copy of Adobe Acrobat but there are alternatives, and this one, called doPDF is one of the best I’ve seen. It’s free and very simple to install and use. In fact all you have to do is download the file and it installs itself as a ‘virtual’ printer.

You can create a PDF from any Windows program with a print facility. Simply open the document, image or file you want to convert to a PDF then go Print on the File menu, select doPDF from the printer selection drop-down menu (unless you have chosen to install it as the default printer). Click OK and it creates a PDF file in the location of you choice, and that’s all there is to it!

07/03/07

Poster Printing Made Easy

Fancy yourself as a bit of a snapper? Got any pictures that you think deserve to be blown up to fill a wall? Well, here’s the easy way to do it. Upload your image to website called Blockposters (max file size 1Mb), tell it how big you want it to be, in terms of A4 sheets, click a button and moments later a PDF file, containing all of the components of your poster is ready for you to download from the website (no email addresses are needed) and it’s ready for you to print. No fuss, no mess.

05/03/07

DIY 3D Laser Scanner

If you enjoy experimenting with your PC here’s something a bit out of the ordinary. It’s called DAVID. Basically it’s a freeware program, developed y two German computer scientists at the Institute for Robotics and Process Control at the University of Braunschweig, and it lets you scan objects in 3D, using an ordinary webcam and a simple hand-held laser pointer. The idea is you place the object to be scanned in the corner of a room, or between two flat surfaces at right angles to one another, point the webcam at it then ‘brush’ the surfaces with your laser pointer. As you do so the PC calculates the 3D coordinates and builds up a 3D model; software to create a complete 360 degree image is now being developed, however, the lively forum on the site has several suggestions as to how this could be accomplished using a ‘Lazy Susan’ turntable. It’s all very cutting edge and perfect for dabblers, who enjoy finding interesting new applications for their PCs.

02/03/07

Compact Multi Format Media Player

Media players have got completely out of hand. There are so many different audio and video formats these days it sometimes seems you need at least half a dozen different programs to play them all. Windows Media Player does a fair job but it’s pretty intrusive, WinAmp is worth having too, if you have good eyesight and don’t mind fiddling around but what you really want is a media player that’s small, easy to use and plays just about everything, including popular streaming formats.

Say hello to VLC Media Player, a free Open Source player. The list of compatible formats and codecs it supports is a long one but it includes most flavours of MPEG (1, 2, DVD, VCD, SVCD etc.)  Audio CD, AVI, ASF, WMV, WMA, MP3, MP4, MOV, 3GP, OGG, WAV, FLAC, FLV, DivX, XviD, Cinepac, MJPEG, Indeo, Real Audio (partial), and so on. It’s not much to look at but it does the job, and at only 9Mb or thereabouts it’s small enough to fit on a pen drive or memory-strapped laptop. It’s multi platform with versions available for Windows, Mac and many types of Linux

12/02/07

Snippy Snatcher Web Page Catcher

Let’s suppose that you see something on a web page that you just know a friend/relative/colleague will be interested in, so what do you do. You have several choices; you can email the page address or a link, or how about this, with just a single mouse click ‘grab’ the item and send it to the Windows Clipboard. All you have to do now is open an email message window, paste the item and send the message. It’s that easy with a little freeware utility called Snippy. It waits patiently in your System Tray until needed and when you see something you want just click on the icon and make your selection.

05/01/07

Video DVD Maker Free

Creating a DVD from your home movies normally involves several some fairly expensive software and a lot of faffing around but here’s a freebie application that does it all for you, in just three clicks. What’s more Video DVD Maker Free can handle video and clips in most popular formats, including AVI, DIVX, XVID, MP4, MPG, WMV, ASF and MOV and it will burn to just about any recordable media : CD R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD DL, Video CD, Super Video CD. It’s fairly basic, there are no editing facilities as such so what you record is what you get but if all you want is to see your video on the big screen then it really doesn’t get any easier and quicker than this.

01/12/06

Photobie Freebie PhotoShop Clone

Okay so it’s not really a Photoshop clone but Photobie has to be one of the most well-specified image editing programs you can get your mitts on, without flashing the plastic! It’s Open Source freeware and users are encouraged to help improve the program, and they have! It can do just about everything its over-the-counter-cousins can do, including using a Layer manager for advanced editing. There’s a very useful assortment of painting tools and it supports PhotoShop filter plugins. For more mundane day to day use it has a handy screen capture tool, gif animation utility, photo framing options, image directory browser, plus lots of useful extras like batch resize and rotate and slide show. Definitely worth a try! 

17/11/06

Smarter Paint

Windows Paint is usually the first and sometimes the only graphics program many PC owners ever use and to be fair it does the job, but it is incredibly basic and really not much use for anything other than very simple editing. Well if you like Paint but you hanker after something a bit more sophisticated then have a look at a free Open Source picture editor called Paint.net. All of the familiar elements from Paint are there but it adds a whole load of new features, including a very good assortment of special effects, it supports layers, and if you get it wrong there’s an unlimited undo facility. It could be the only picture editor you’ll ever need.

27/10/06

Desktop Snapper

Here’s an interesting little utility. It’s called TimeSnapper and it takes a snapshot of your desktop at preset intervals, from once a second to every few minutes or hours.

The obvious question is why would you want to do such a thing? Well, how about creating an animated graphic tutorial? You can set the snap interval down to once a second, so you can show all of  the steps in a given procedure simply by recording your actions. Maybe you are suspicious that someone is using your PC without your permission? TimeSnapper will gather the evidence for you.

How about keeping an eye on what junior is up to? You shouldn’t use it to spy on people but if you are concerned about the web sites your kids may be visiting then TimeSnapper, set at 60-second intervals, will keep an eye on what they are doing. Better yet, tell them you’ve installed it on their PC and hopefully they won’t go looking for trouble. It comes with a built-in browser for replaying images, which are time-stamped and there’s a simple to use timeline navigation bar, so you can quickly find what you are looking for.

18/10/06

Headers and Footers on Printed Web Pages

If you print web pages then you may be irritated by all the extra guff that appears at the top and bottom of the page -- web page address, page number, time and date and so on. There’s so much of it you can end up with your printer spitting out extra sheets if the web page won’t fit on the paper.

If you are using Firefox it’s easy to put a stop to this wasteful practice, just go to File > Page Setup, select the Margins & Header/Footer tab and under Headers & Footers at the bottom use the drop-downs to add or remove information. In other words if you want nothing set them all to ‘Blank’.

In Internet Explorer go to File > Page Setup and in the Header and Footer boxes you’ll see a couple of lines of gobbledegook. These are codes that determine what IE prints, so if you want blank space at the top and bottom of the page zap the lot. For the record, or if you want to retain or modify the information here’s what the codes mean: &u (URL, web page address), &d (short format date), &D (long date format), &t (time 12hr format) &T (time 24hr format), &w (window title), &p (page number) &P (total number of pages) &b(centre text), &b&b (right justify text).

17/10/06

Photo Retouching Freeware

You’ve probably got at least one photo editing program on your PC but here’s one you should definitely try. It’s called PhotoFiltre and from that you may rightly assume it’s French in origin, but don’t let that put you off, an English language version is available. What makes PhotoFiltre different is the superb range of adjustments, filters, touch-ups and effects, which are all instantly accessible from the desktop -- no messing around with menus -- and how easy it is to use. Give it a whirl, you will be impressed!

12/10/06

SECOND PRINTER INSTALL FOR WEB PAGES

This tip is actually an extension of one we published a while back, namely installing your printer twice, to trick Windows into thinking you have two separate printers. The ‘second’ printer can then be configured for a specific job, in this case black and white printing web pages. The reason you would want to do that is simple, colour printing costs between 10 and 20 times as much as black and white, and when all you want is the text content of a web page, why pay, and wait, for all of the fancy graphics and backgrounds?

To add a second printer in XP go to Start > Control Panel > Printers & Faxes, click the Add a Printer link or right click into the right hand pane and select Add A Printer then follow the prompts, giving your second printer installation a suitably recognisable name. Now you can go into the second printer’s Properties, by right-clicking on the icon, and on the Preferences menu set it up to print only in Black and White. When you want to print a web page simply go to Print on the File menu and select your Black and White printer install from the drop-down menu.

12/06/06

STOP SCANNER CURL

If you’ve got a scanner I'm willing to bet that you have had trouble keeping curly photos and documents with a fold or crease flat on the glass and aligned with the edges. When you make the scan the image is usually off-bonk so you have to waste time smoothing it out and lining it up again. Here’s a quick and simple tip to keep your material flat and square and that’s to keep it in place with a thin sheet of glass from a photo frame. Keep it by your scanner; you’ll wonder how you ever got on without it.

THINK PRINT

If your inkjet printer sits idle for more than a week or two at a time then you run a very real risk of the cartridge or print head drying out or clogging, particularly in warm weather or if it’s used in an office with a dry atmosphere. When that happens the cartridge could become unusable, even after cleaning and on some models, with a separate print head, the printer could be permanently ruined. This is easily avoided, just remember to print at least one document every couple of weeks, a web page or the Test Document in your printer’s Properties box (right click the printer icon) are as good as anything but make sure there’s some colour content to keep the colour inks flowing freely.

PRINTER TROUBLE SHOOTER

Having problems with your printer?  You may be surprised to know Windows 95 comes with a sophisticated printer troubleshooting program. It's on the CD-ROM, you can find it with Windows Explorer, click on the D: drive icon, then open the Other folder and inside you'll find a folder called Misc, open that and then the Epts (enhanced printer troubleshooter). Click on epts.exe and the program starts, first analysing your printer set-up, it then asks a series of questions and suggests remedies to help you solve the problem. The troubleshooter is built into Windows 98, just open Windows Help and type Troubleshooting into the Index Windows and select Printers from the list.

IN A JAM

If you have a paper jam do not force it. Always try to remove the blockage in the normal direction of travel, if it tears make sure all of the fragments are removed. If you can't clear the paper path refer to the manual. Store paper flat in the original packaging, always fan it before loading t