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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.

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Filed under: Photo, Windows, Macintosh, Linux

XnView: Multiplatform freeware photo viewer

xnView

Haul me out back and hang me by my kneecaps, but I've never cared for the freeware photo viewer IrfanView. It's free ... and it's free. Those are the good words I have for a program that has what I consider an unintuitive interface (but, I understand, plenty of features). When I first saw it, I wondered what the heck to do with it.

Instead, I use ACDSee 6 (never got around to upgrading to version 7, as there weren't enough new features for me). It shows my photos and I can manage them, bulk rename them and do other similar things. But it does cost $50. So if there's a freeware version of ACDSee, let's hear about it!

Well, now you have. It's called XnView, and it looks a lot like ACDSee, but, of course, being freeware, it's free. It also can view and convert 400 graphics formats. You can use it to crop, resize, adjust brightness and contrast, and modify the number of a file's colors. XnView also can do batch conversions, create thumbnails, capture screens and create contact sheets. If you absolutely must spend some money, a Deluxe version that includes more editing functions, EXIF and IPTC searching and a host of output features is €39.

The program is not just for Windows, either. It also runs on MacOS X (with X11), Linux x86, Linux ppc, FreeBSD x86, OpenBSD x86, NetBSD x86, Solaris sparc, Solaris x86, Irix mips, HP-UX and AIX. Hey, where's BeOS? (Just kidding.)

After plopping down $40-50 for ACDSee, I'm not sure I'll switch to XnView for my primary photo viewing and management chores. But it's nice to have a backup to any favorite program just in case.

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With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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