Review: Customize and alter your photos with PC Image Editor

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It’s a common misconception that you need Photoshop to get really good looking photos. The truth is that there are many excellent image editors out there on the Internet that allow you to make changes to your photos which are as good as anything Photoshop could do. PC Image Editor is one such app, free for personal use ($24 for business use), which allows you to make changes to your images.

Installation is extremely easy and extremely fast, with no hidden spyware surprises trying to sneak in, such as toolbars. When starting it up for the first time, you will be told that the software is free for personal use, while commercial users need to purchase a license. This becomes one of the main irritants of the entire software app – every time you open up the app to use it for free, that same nag screen is going to keep coming up because you haven’t entered a license code yet. I really hope the developer provides some way in a future release for free users to disable that screen as it gets really annoying after a while.

PC Image Editor provides you with lots of options to customize your images. The photo updates in real time as you tweak each option.

Once you’ve zapped the nag screen, click “open” and navigate to the image you want to make adjustments to. Then on the right hand side, you will see all of the tools  open to you. For example, you can resize the photo to either a size that you specify or one of the predefined sizes that the app offers. You can also rotate to various angles, zoom, sharpen, as well as change the color and contrast .
There are also numerous effects on offer which takes a page out of Photoshop's book. PC Image Editor offers a wide range of filters and effects such as blurring, twirling (turning the picture into a round shape) and changing the angle of the picture. If you would like to achieve a unique effect to the picture, then the filters include embossing, halftone (which pretty much turns the color picture black and white), and changing the RGB values of the colors.

Each adjustment can easily be made by moving the slider back and forth.

Every change is made in real time so you can see how each step of the affects the image. If you realize you’re making a right dog’s dinner of the image, you can click the “undo” button to roll back the last change you made. Once everything is to your satisfaction, you can save or print the new image . Formats which you can save in include all the usual suspects such as JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP and TIFF.

There is also the option to scan an image directly into PC Image Editor using a scanner, but every time I clicked on the “scan” button, PC Image Editor crashed and closed. I don’t know if this is a Windows 8 issue or an issue with PC Image Editor. So it may work for you. Let us know in the comments below if this is a problem you encounter.

These days, with ready access to image editors, there is no excuse for bad photos. If you find that your images need a bit of jazzing up,PC Image Editor offers a basic selection of  editing tools that provide the most-used features of more expensive applications. Although it’s not the best image editing program ever, it’s worth a try if you need a few basic tweaks.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

Expatriate Scotsman now living in Wurzburg, Germany, freelance writer, frustrated future bestselling author, obsessed bibliophile. Other interests include trying to understand The Architect in the Matrix movies, decrypting codes and ciphers, and trying to persuade my landlord and my wife to let me have a Highland Cow for a pet.
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ios – Custom Icon and Image Creation Guidelines

ios – Custom Icon and Image Creation Guidelines « dustWorld function clearSearch() {document.search_form.s.value = "";} adobe.com      dustWorld / ios – Custom Icon and Image Creation Guidelinesby Yao Zhang  

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Differences Between PDF and JPG/PNG Image Format for DPS

Differences Between PDF and JPG/PNG Image Format for DPS « InDesign Docs function clearSearch() {document.search_form.s.value = "";} .recentcomments a{display:inline !important;padding:0 !important;margin:0 !important;}adobe.com      InDesign Docs / Differences Between PDF and JPG/PNG Image Format for DPSby Bob Bringhurst  

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Let the image dance for your tunes… Image Slideshows with audio using Adobe Captivate 5.5

February 11, 2012

One of my favorite feature in Audio Editing dialog is, starting the next slide at a specific location at the audio waveform… just have to click ‘Select next slide at the cursor position’ button or simply press Ctrl+S or Cmd+S. Are you wondering what’s the fun? The fun begins when you want to play the pictures of an Image Slideshow according to the beats of an audio. What am I talking about? Watch the video below and see how the images change according to the music.

How did I achieve this?

The logic behind is simple… whenever we press Cmd+S or Ctrl+S when we are in Audio dialog the next slide starts at the cursor position. What you need to do is, play the audio, press the key whenever you feel the next slide needs to appear. Watch the demo below which explains step-by-step how to achieve this.

Hope you enjoyed this… please let me know your thoughts!

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GIMP - Developer Web image editor

GIMP is a program that runs on Windows, Linux and OS X for free image editing systems. It is a set of well designed software which is in competition with major commercial software for manipulation of the image in a web development environment. If you need to create graphics for your web page, GIMP is an attractive and effective option.

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program - which essentially means that it is a graphical software open source.

GIMP has received much criticism from people who complain about lack of features in Photoshop, the industry-leading software graphics handling. GIMP lack some CMYK printing support as Photoshop, but for most developers web that works very well - and since it costs nothing, it is a very attractive option for the 699 USD price tag that comes with Photoshop.

If you are ready to look at alternatives to Photoshop, GIMP is an excellent place to watch. It has a very familiar appearance, with two main columns holding many of the features you need when you edit images.

Your basic Toolkit is exposed as soon as you open your image. Here you have a rectangular and circular selection tool. A web developer, you will use these many cultures images and make the selections so that you can edit the sections of an image without bringing it to another section. There is also a free selection tool called the lasso, that you can use to create selections of free-form more. A "magic wand"tool makes selections based on the function of rows already in the image, and there is also a color selection tool to select areas of similar color.

Beyond these basic tools there is much more - you will find the standard lens, the eyedropper tool to select the colours, the paint bucket to fill large areas, a pencil, a Brush tool and one gum among others.

GIMP fully supports the addition of brushes, which can be used with the pencil, Brush tool tool and Eraser tool. I love the brushes that you can easily add effects to the images, the images of the banner. You can find many brushes - waves, plants, the stars, the clocks - the list is long and and. It is easy to add new brushes to GIMP.

GIMP supports gradients. It is loaded with many gradients, and you can easily add custom gradients. If you do much work making buttons and other "web 2.0" you'll love the gradients.

There is a text tool to allow you to create layers of text on your image. As with the brushes and degraded you can quickly and easily add fonts to your GIMP program, and it comes preloaded with many fonts open source.

GIMP is for the serious image manipulation and provides complete support for layers. Native extension of GIMP is the ".xcf" extension, which allows to save your image with full layers intact. It also supports the extension of layers Photoshop ".psd".

GIMP offers many options image and layer, including resizing, rotating and flipping. There is a menu full of color, expanded to its own autonomous menu dans dans recent versions of GIMP.

There are many standard filters included with GIMP - some more famous as shadowed. You could spend weeks playing with each of them, and as with other parts of the GIMP you can add your own filters, including some popular Photoshop filters (such as colouring).

GIMP is a robust and fully equipped. It is perfect for the web developer who is in need of crop and resize images and occasionally wants to create banners and buttons. You will find lots of tutorials online to any effect or graphic you would like to create with GIMP. It is an incredible, versatile program with a perfect price - free.

Kristen is an avid writer, constantly working on new ideas for articles and sites. Visit his site on Nutiva coconut oil and learn more about coconut hair oil.

How to create an Image of paperback for your EBook

Improvement of simple Image correction using Photoshop

Today, the improvement of the Image is very popular. It is most probably one of the most popular applications of Adobe Photoshop. With photoshop, you can make the improvement of simple images such as optimize body proportions and focus on the beautiful details.

There is no need to hurry and learn the entire development tool in photoshop. With this tutorial, we will focus only on the use of the healing brush to correct the imperfections of the image more specifically in the skin.

Before you begin, we should know what is the healing brush. The healing brush is a smart paint which is similar to the clone tool only on the plan that you sample an area of the image by option. By pressing Alt + click the source box, and then you can cover the damage in the image as the spots, wrinkles and etc.

To start with, open your photoshop. Click file, and then select open and select the image you want to edit.

Now, you need to duplicate your photo so that you can protect the original. To duplicate:
Drag your photo to the icon to create new photos .
Make sure that you selected the duplicate layer and then double-click on and name it whatever you want you can determine which is the original.
After you create a duplicate layer, identify the area that you think is necessary to be fixed. Then select the tool, Healing Brush, located in the menu on the left side tool. After that, select the source area by holding down the ALT key. There, you'll see the crosshair.
Just hold down Alt + click on the clear section, and then click on the area you wanted to correct.

Now, you healed just imperfect away. If you make a mistake just he cancel or go to the history window. If you want to see the difference, click on the icon of the eye on the healing layer in the layer window and then see the original. Now you can see the difference!

The healing brush is really a powerful method to help people to look their best in images without surgery.

How to Soft proof an Image with Adobe Photoshop

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Today I will show you how to soft proof your images using Adobe Photoshop. Why is soft proofing important? Simply put, soft proofing your images before having them printed is a great way to simulate how they will appear based on the specific printer and paper combination. In the long run it will save you both time and money.

This tutorial is designed to give you a crash course in the process of soft proofing, but remember, soft proofing is done using a computer monitor which has a much wider color gamut than do printers. Soft proofing can never guarantee your print will be exactly like the image your looking at on screen, but it can help you come as close to it as possible.

But before getting started, it is important that you do two things:

The first is to make sure your monitor is calibrated. Once you initially calibrate, be prepared to re - calibrate at least once a month. My experience with The Spyder Series by Datacolor has been excellent, but there are plenty of others to choose from. Just remember, in order to achieve proper calibration, an application like adobe gamma is not good enough. You need a tool that will allow you to measure things like ambient light in addition to monitor color settings.

The second thing you need is to obtain the correct ICC profile. Every device that captures or displays color has its own profile. And the different papers, pigments and inks which are used by many printers make it difficult to determine how exactly your print will look unless you have a preset that allows you to simulate these things. Finding the correct profile is as easy as contacting your print maker. You should be able to download the profile you need directly from their website.

OK now that your monitor is calibrated, and you have the profile you are intending on using, you can finally start soft proofing.

At first glance, my image looks great. The colors are vibrant, nothing looks off. Because I am so happy with the image as it is, I am going to skip adjusting at this point and just duplicate it. purpose first I am going to bring its size in the preview up to 100%. I will explain why this is important a little later. Now that I have duplicated the image I have one for both the soft proof and one to to refer to in case I need to adjust my soft proofed image once I have added my icc profile. You will see exactly what I mean in a few minutes.

Duplicate your image.

Give it a name so that it's easy to decipher from the original. This duplicate image is the one we will be working on. But I want to show you something before we apply our ICC profile. Remember when I told you that our monitors are able to use a wider gamut to display colors than printers do? From View, go to Gamut Warning, and record how much of our image is lost.

Now before you go through all your images turning on the gamut warning, it's important for you to understand that a gamut warning serves as an extremely lenient warning. In English, that basically means to take the gamut warning with a grain of salt. That's not to say the gamut warning is a useless tool. It actually serves it's purpose quite well. What it's telling us is that the missing colors may be difficult for a printer to simulate exactly. You can expect these areas will appear similar in color once printed, but an exact match won't be guaranteed. So the deep reds we see here, and the midnight blue background are likely going to be a bit off.

Just remember, once we've soft proofed our image, we wont be able to turn this warning back on since it will be profiled specifically to the printer's color gamut.

Apply the profile.

Debate the above illustration gave you a better understanding of how important soft proofing really is. So let's go back up to View and then to Proof Setup. This is where we apply the ICC profile.

Because I obtained one this from the print maker it is considered a custom set up. Select Custom at the top and a new window will open up. From this window I will select the ICC profile. Purpose this window serves two purposes. This is also where I will be simulating how my print will look based on the profile I have chosen.

Currency to Simulate is how Photoshop asks for your preferred ICC profile. I am going to click the drop arrow, and select my preferred profile from the list, and then I am going to leave Preserve RGB Numbers unchecked and move right down to Rendering Intent. Perceptual is what I recommend using purpose if you prefer relative colorimetric, feel free to use that instead.

I also recommend checking Black Point Compensation. If you have not got a full understanding of black points, think of it as this: The black in your image may have a brown tone to it, whereas the printer gives black a bluish tone. Black point compensation will find a happy medium for both image and the printer it is being printed with your.

There is one last thing we need to do before clicking OK. We need to choose our On Screen Display Options. Let me warn you ahead of time, this is a hard step to get through. This is also the reason I suggested bringing the image up to 100%. When we click this box, our image will be transformed rapidement. Colors will appear washed out and dingy. Believe it or not, 75% of that is optical illusion. Our eyes have grown accustomed to seeing white a certain way for so long that seeing it any other way just seems wrong.

This is interesting also. As I check Simulate Paper Color, Simulate Black Ink selects itself by default. These two go hand in hand when simulating paper color. Keep in mind that this step does nothing to change my image, it simply simulates how it will appear on paper. And depending on the ICC profile assigned to different paper types, simulating paper color may not always have the same effect. The best advice I can give about On screen display options is the same advice I gave you about gamut warnings. Take it with a grain of salt. Now, I'm going to click OK so that I can compare my two images, and see if I need to make any adjustments. Some people actually prefer to leave off this, and if you are one who tends to overcompensate when applying adjustments to images, you may want to leave it unchecked as well.

Make your final adjustments

Comparing these two images, I definitely want to make some adjustments. Of course I can not instruct you on this last step, since every image is different. But if you really liked the look of the original, just try to bring your soft proofed image as close to your original image as necessary to achieve the look you want.

Note: Please keep in mind that soft proofed images should NEVER be saved with the ICC profile embedded. Make sure to save soft proofed images in sRGB mode.

The Author

Noelle Hines has been working with digital images and the photographers they belong to since 2005. A video version of this tutorial can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z9r7ClKKsI. EZ Canvas specializes in photo to canvas printing services, serving Professionals and enthusiasts across the country. If you are a professional photographer and would like to find out more about EZ Canvas Pro, visit [http://ezcanvas.com/pros.asp] today!

Resize an Image using Photoshop

Photoshop is a wonderful tool for graphic design, web development, and any other form of digital media creation. In this article, we discuss resizing of an image using the program.

Photoshop has many uses and is a very powerful program with many different capabilities and functions. Photoshop can have a high learning curve and can be a little overwhelming at first because of all the various tools and options available to use, but I am sure that you thought the same thing to learn to read. Now look at you, you're a pro.

As with anything in life is the key to become better things you know or think are too difficult. Try not to be intimidated and don't be afraid to try new things and to experiment. A famous person said after learning of the failure is the key to success.

Photoshop can be much more program that you need to resize an image, it is an important function to learn because it is a common technique in the development of digital media. Why would you resize an image in the first place? There are many reasons, but the most common is to make photos fit on web pages or printing equipment.

OK, as for the actual steps to resize an image here they are:

1. Open Adobe Photoshop and the photo you want to resize.

2. Once you have your photo open navigate your mouse to the toolbar along the top of the screen and click on "Image".

3. Once you click on "Image" from the toolbar, a menu drop-down will appear. Select "Image size" of the menu drop down. A window should popup with the properties of images.

4 Originally, for our intents and purposes, we only pay ionattempts to"Pixel Dimensions" in the popup window. You will see that you can control the values of width and height of the image in the popup window. You should also see a drop-down menu selection of "pixels" or "%". Make sure that the pixel is the unit selected in the fields of the width and height. Pixels are small dots of color that make up the photo. If you never look printed under a magnifying glass, you will notice that the image is composed of small dots of colour. These small dots of color are similar to the what are the pixels in a digital image.

5 Okay. Imagine that the image that opens at the beginning of this tutorial is very large, something like the width in pixels, 2000 by 1500 pixels in height and we want to resize the image to fit on a web page. Most of the web pages which are about 800 pixels wide by some arbitrary height. The reason for which the height is arbitrary is because it is determined by how many conattempts appears on the page. Let's say that we want the image to take approximately half of the width of the web page. To do this we would change the value of the width of the pixel in 2000 to 400 pixels (which is half of the 800 pixels, the width of the web page). Make sure that the option "Option constrain Proportions" is checked so that the ratio between the width and the height is preserved and the image does not deform.

6. Click "OK" and save the newly resized your image version. YOU'RE DONE!

You resized just your first photo using Photoshop and are now 100 times more advanced. Congratulations, you're on your way to become a master of Photoshop.

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Add subtitles and subtitle of the image with a new free add - in for PowerPoint

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STAMP (the Subtitling Text Add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint 2010) is a new, free public beta that increases the accessibility of your presentations by adding closed captions to video and audio files. STAMP lets you create captions within PowerPoint or import existing industry standard Timed Text Mark-up Language (TTML) files. Head over to Holly Thomas' post for details about STAMP and another accessibility-oriented beta add-in for Word 2010 called Save as DAISY.

STAMP is available for download now and works in all the languages Office currently supports around the world. 

In this post, we'll take a look at how to install it and how to use it. You can find full details in the article Sub-titling text add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint (STAMP), and also find download files and documentation at SourceForge.

And for more helpful, chock-full-of-links information, see Mary Sobczyk's excellent recent accessibility post, Are your presentations accessible?

Download and install STAMP

The add-in is designed for PowerPoint 2010. Be sure to install the correct add-in for your version of Office (32-bit or 64-bit).

To check which version of Office you are using, and which installer you should download, do the following:

In PowerPoint, click the File tab.Click Help.Under About Microsoft PowerPoint is information about the version of Office that you have installed, including whether it is 32-bit or 64-bit.

After you are sure of the version you need, download the add-in by doing the following:

Go to Subtitling Text Add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint (STAMP).Choose the correct version for your computer and save the .zip file to your computer.Extract the files to a folder on your computer.

After you have downloaded the appropriate STAMP file, install it by doing the following:

Go to the folder where you extracted the installation files, and run Setup.exe.Follow the steps in the installation wizard.

To verify that the add-in installed correctly, do the following:

Open PowerPoint 2010.Click the File tab, and then click Options.Click Add-ins, and verify that Sub-titling Text Add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint is listed under Active Application Add-ins.

After you install the STAMP add-in, you will see new options on the Playback tab in the Audio Tools or Video Tools group when you have an audio or video item selected in your presentation. The ribbon commands are enabled or disabled based on the media item selected and the captions already attached to it.

Create new captions using the Caption Editor

 Play Set Start Time and Set End Time Caption Text field Add and Delete Caption Create Captions

To add new captions to an audio or video in your presentation, do the following:

On the Insert tab, click the Video or Audio menu and then select the media type and location that you want to insert into your presentation.    Note    See Add and play sounds in a presentation or Embed a video in your presentation for more information.

In Audio Tools or Video Tools, click the Playback tab, and then click the Add Caption menu.Click Create Captions.
In the Caption Editor, click the Play button to start playback of the audio or video.With the media playing, listen for the dialog that you want to caption, and click Add Caption. The caption will be created with the current media playback time as the Start Time of the caption.

Note    Clicking Start Time will reset the starting point of the active caption.

You can then do one of the following:

Click in the Caption Text field and type the text to appear in the caption; orClick Set End Time to set the caption end time to match the current media playback position. You can also manually enter the end of each caption.

Repeat steps 4 and 5 to create additional captions.

Note    You don’t have to create captions in order. To add a new caption between two existing captions, click Sort to put them into time sequence order.

Import captions as a TTML file

If captions for your media have already been created and saved as a TTML file, you can import them into PowerPoint by doing the following:

On the Insert tab, in the Media group, click the Video or Audio menu and then select the media type and location that you want to insert into your presentation. Note    See Add and play sounds in a presentation or Embed a video in your presentation for more information.

In Audio Tools or Video Tools, click the Playback tab, and then click the Add Captions menu.Click Captions From File.
Browse to the TTML file location, select the file you want to import, and then click Open.If you want to edit the captions after they have been imported into your presentation, select the Edit Captions check box.Click OK.

For more - including keyboard shortcuts, editing or deleting captions in the Caption Editor, and how to align, show, hide, or remove captions - take a look at the article Sub-titling text add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint (STAMP).

We want to hear from you, so leave us a comment and let us know what you think.

-- Erik Jensen

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