10 great free digital photography downloads
- — 23 February, 2010 16:18
Photo utilities
Want to eliminate duplicate images to free up hard-disk space? Or quickly resize a batch of photos? We've found photo utilities that can handle those tasks and more.
Image Resizer Powertoy Clone for Windows
The Image Resizer PowerToy from Microsoft is a boon for XP users who want a quick-and-dirty way to resize a single photograph or a group of photos.
There's just one problem: It won't work on Vista or on Windows 7. That's where the Image Resizer Powertoy Clone for Windows comes in.
As the name suggests, this download is an exact copy of the older utility, except that it's compatible with the newer OS'.
It works the same way as the original does. Just right-click one or more photographs and then select 'Resize Pictures'.
The resulting dialog box allows you to select one of four new sizes: Small (640 by 480 pixels), Medium (800 by 600 pixels), Large (1024 by 768 pixels), or Handheld PC (240 by 320 pixels).
When you make your selection and click OK, the utility creates copies of your pictures in the new size but leaves the originals intact; if you click the Advanced button before you click OK, you can choose to resize the original pictures instead of making a copy.
Note that the utility limits you to making pictures smaller, not larger--if you choose a size larger than the original size, the program won't make any changes.
36-Image Converter
Have a photo that you'd like to convert to another graphics format?
Give 36-Image Converter a try: It can read and convert photos to many different types of formats, and not just the usual suspects such as .jpg, .gif, .png, .tif, and .bmp.
It can even convert pictures to .ico and .cur formats, which allows you to turn your pictures into icons and cursors. The application also has some very nice photo editing features, such as tools for resizing, rotating, cropping, setting transparency, darkening, and adding special effects.
Though it isn't nearly as powerful as the image editors discussed earlier, it is very easy to use.
PhotoScape is also better for editing, but if you're interested in a file converter that happens to have capable editing tools, 36-Image Converter is still a good bet.
