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Posts with tag ImageEditing

Filed under: Design, Photo, Productivity, Open Source, Web

Pixlr: slick new online image editor

There are plenty of online image editors out there, but it can be tough to find the right one. If you're looking for a few filters, a bit of layer support, and a decent range of tools, Pixlr might be the one you want. You'll be familiar with its tools from using desktop apps like Photoshop and The Gimp, but it's rare to see so many advances options in a web app.

Some of the Pixlr perks that surprised me: opacity sliders! Layers and transparency! The collection of filters includes halftones, scanlines and pixelation. Common (but useful) features like hue/saturation, resizing, and brightness/contrast are also intact. Next time you find yourself on a computer without Photoshop, you might also find you don't need it.

Filed under: Design, Internet, Utilities, Productivity, Web services

Take one guess what RoundMyCorners does



If you need a quick way to round the corners of an image but hate messing with a full-blown image editor, then make sure you bookmark RoundMyCorners. Similar to other apps like this we've covered before, it's a very basic online tool but it works exactly as promised.

Simply select an image from your computer then choose your options. Corners can be rounded from 1 to 10 pixels and customized with just about any color you can think of. Decide if you want a reflection included, what format you want the image saved as (PNG, JPEG, or GIF), then let RoundMyCorners do its thing. The final image will download automatically to your desktop, with "rounded" thoughtfully provided in the file name.

This is a fantastically handy tool, but there are a couple of small improvements I'd like to see. A preview function would be terrific, as would the ability to name the file before it's downloaded. The developer says additional functionality is on the way, so let's hope these are two features that make the cut.

There's nothing flashy or fancy about this Web site, but RoundMyCorners a great tool to get the job done.

Filed under: Windows, Freeware

XnView Shell Extension Adds Right-Click Image Muscle

XnViewLaunching a full-blown application to perform quick image manipulation tasks - like format conversion and scaling - can be a time consuming pain in the butt. The XnView shell extension makes short work of those chores, adding graphical manipulation goodness to your Windows explorer right-click menu.

As pictured, the shell extension appears in your context menu, though you can choose to have it displayed as a sub-menu. It'll give you a brief heads up about your image, including a thumbnail, dimensions, and file size.

Single click conversion supports most common image types, including PNG, JPG, GIF, TIF, BMP, PCX, and TGA. Execute "convert into" and your new image appears almost instantly.

Using the "Convert..." option gives you more complete control, offering just about any graphic format you'd ever want to use, quality tuning, resizing, and the ability to choose a destination folder.

Read more →

Filed under: Design, Photo, Web services

Speechable enters the speech bubble wars

Speechable image

Speechable understands that a picture is worth a thousand words, and thus a picture with words must be worth exponentially more.

Speechable provides a simple method to adding speech bubbles to your photos. Just upload a photo, select one or more speech bubbles, and place them wherever you like. You can resize both the text and the bubble to better fit the picture. When you are done adding bubbles, you are given links to add the photo to your blog, website, or email it to a friend.

We could find few differences between Speechable and Kyolo: a similar service that we recently reviewed. Most notably the use of rectangular bubbles instead of elliptical. We can't help but think that the first service to add multiple bubble shapes will win the war.

Filed under: Photo, Web services, web 2.0

Picjuice - another online imaging software

Web based image editors have been popping up for some time now. Even the de facto image editor Photoshop couldn't resist setting up shop. But sometimes you just want to simply resize or crop a photo and not be inadated with a multitude of tools and swatches. Enter picjuice, an online image editor with simplicity in mind.

As soon as you pull up the site it's clear that "ease of use" was the main objective here. The only tools available are Crop, Resize, Flip, Rotate and Adjust.

The controls for each tools are simple as well, depending on the tool selected you either get an A or B option, a slider or in the case of the Crop tool, a cross hair to select the area you want to use. These simple controls will aid in a shorter learning curve over the more feature rich sites.

In our testing we actually found the resizing tool here better than the one available from Photoshop Express. In Express, the resized image looked jagged but not in picjuice . However, the site seemed to be only compatible with JPG or PNG files as when we tried a GIF file picjuice would hang when we tried to edit the image.

Currently in beta, picjuice joins the already crowded online imaging arena. Hopefully, its limited get down to business attitude will help to differentiate itself from the competition.

Filed under: Design, Internet, Web services, Adobe, web 2.0

Adobe previews online version of Photoshop

Photoshop Express
Adobe is showing off a sneak peek of its upcoming Photoshop Express online image editing application. There's not a lot of information available, but with a new online image editing site popping up nearly every other day, it makes a lot of sense for Adobe to get into this space.

Photoshop Express won't be a Photoshop replacement, or even clone. Rather, it will have some of the basic functionality of Adobe's flagship image editor in an accessible online package.

Details, and this screenshot came out of this week's Photoshop World expo. There's also a higher resolution version available

Filed under: Design, Adobe

Adobe hires image resizing pioneer

There's a really cool video that's been making the rounds on the interwebs for the past week or so. It shows a next generation image resizing method that lets you stretch or shrink a picture without greatly altering its composition.



One of the guys behind this technology is Shai Avidan, a former staff member of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories. Adobe's John Nack writes that the company has hired Avidan, which we hope means we'll be seeing this sort of image resizing in Photoshop and other consumer applications soon.

We're pretty certain that if Adobe hadn't snatched up Avidan, Match.com would have done so. Just imagine the potential for tweaking profile pictures in personal ads. A little too short, or a little too round in the belly? Go ahead and make yourself thinner and taller with just a click of the mouse.

[via TechCrunch]

Filed under: Design, Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Crop multiple images with JPEGCrops

JpegCrops
Got a few hundred digital photos lying in a folder on your desktop because you haven't had time to crop, resize, and sort them? JPEGCrops make tackling that job a little less daunting.

As you can probably guess from the title, JPEGCrops lets you crop images. JPEG imags to be specific. Who would have thunk?

You can open a bunch of pictures at once, set a directory to save the files, and enter names for each image. Then you can select the portion of the picture that you want to keep. JPEGCrops will create a lossless copy of the cropped image in your folder of choice.

The author has pretty much abandoned the program in favor of a new Java-based version called RoboCrop, but JPEGCrops should still meet most of your basic image cropping needs.

[via Brent Evans]

Filed under: Design, Web services

PikiFX is yet another online photo editor

PikiFX
PikiFX is the latest in a long line of online image editors. We're not sure why so many companies are producing online image editing applications instead of downloadable versions, but it probably has something to do with the fact that users are looking for ways to share their images online. When you're done editing an image in PikiFX you can download it or use a code to to embed the image on a blog or website, even if you haven't signed up for a free account.

PikiFX has all the basic tools you would expect. You can crop, resize, or add borders to your picture. You can also use a variety of effects to alter colors, make an image blurry, or add text. If PikiFX were the only such app on the market, it'd be a great tool. But it has some serious competition from services like Picnik, SnipShot and Fixr.

[via Mashable]

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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