GRAPHICS: 4 Essential Utilities - Free for ALL!

There have been many changes in the way information is presented. Graphics, as simple as clip art or as complex as high dynamic range photographs are now absolutely essential to every website, e commerce location, and social networking destination. Video images, once shunned because of the hardware and bandwidth overhead they required, are now very common and part of most websites.

Over the last 20 years, there has been so many advances in graphics technology, hundreds of applications for creating, editing, and improving images have been introduced to the market. A few, such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw, PaintShop Pro, and Aperature have survived and prospered. In the case of Photoshop, it has become the predominant force in graphics related software.

The recent trends in graphics software has to become specialized and much more simplistic. Spearheaded by small, independent software publishers, the new applications are much easier to use. The new programs that have been released do only a few things but do them very, very well. For instance, Media Chance, a Canadian publisher, has introduced an application called Dynamic Photo - HDR 4.0.  This slick photo editor produces images that generally have extended dynamic range - more contrast and striking, vivid colors, way beyond the capabilities of today's digital cameras.

There are so many digital cameras, tablets, and drawing tools in use, we tried to find utilities that were not only without cost, but were also easy to use and very functional. In this collection, we suggest a file conversion tool, a photo editing tool, a drawing tool, and a entry level photo manipulation tool.

We suggest that you download and install each tool. Then play with them. If, after an hour or so, you are still pulling your hair out as you try to figure out what is going on, it is probably time to review or try another application. If you understand how a program works, especially with an image creation or editing tool, then work with it for a few hours and see how your projects look. If you like the results, then you have a new tool!

The best advise I can give you is to try as many similar programs as you can until you find the one that is right for you.

The Serif Photo Plus SE photo editor has got to be one of the best deals on the planet! PhotoPlus SE is a commercial grade product that offers a plethora of functions that will give you good results even the first time you use it. For a mere $10, you can get an upgrade to Serif PhotoPlus 9 FULL VERSION, industrial strength photo editing.

PhotoPlus is a commercial product. It has been made and supported by Serif software for over 10 years. This amazing photo editing software from Serif enables you to enhance your digital photos and images, create stunning bitmap graphics and even web animations. The small fee covers the inclusion of some pretty impressive tools such as the chart below illustrates.

Feature                   V9                      SE

Smart Resizing       YES                      No

Image Extraction     YES                     No

Instant Artist           YES                      No

Picture Brushes      YES                     No

3D Effects               YES                     No

Background Eraser YES                     No

           Your Price!   $9.99!              FREE!

The evolution of the PhotoPlus product has continued. The new version retails for over $90.00 and includes 2 or 3 times as many features. Most reviews rate the product at 4 or 5 stars.

Remember, you can have an older version of this product for absolutely free. This product has a nice user interface and is easy to learn and use. It will get you started in photo editing today.

If you spend any time dealing with graphic images, there will be occasions that you will need to change or modify an image to meet your needs. From time to time, you are going to need to create an image or two from scratch. For these tasks, you are going to need a graphics creation program. And one of the very best is a neat application called PIXIA!

Pixia is the English version of a popular free painting and retouching software that originated in Japan. It features custom brush tips, multiple layers, masking, vector- and bitmap-based drawing tools, color, tone, and lighting adjustments, and multiple undo/redo. Curiously, it does not support saving GIF images.

Some of the features of Pixia are:

Pixia is a painting tool made exclusively for full color graphics.

Maximum graphic size: 10240 x 10240 dots (Note: this depends on RAM capacity.)

Number of Layers: As many as memory will support.

Peripheral devices applicable: TWAIN32 devices(eg. Scanner or Digital Camera and Digitizer). Color inkjet and laser printers made for use with Microsoft Windows.

Support for graphicTablets (Wacom, Oce-Japan)

Pixia has been around for many years and has been continuously upgraded and supported by the author/publisher and the user community. It was originally envisioned as a major tool for anime and manga artists. Pixia's publisher is the first to admit that this product is only one of several tools that a complete graphics studio uses. "Pixia is not capable of doing everything you need." That is about the bluntest disclaimer you'll ever see.

There are probably over a hundred different file formats that are used in multimedia applications. Some, such as JPEG files, are pretty well known. These files are supported by almost every general graphics program ever written.

Other file types are not so well known. The ORF format represents a raw image file that is proprietary to Olympus cameras.

Working with graphics files requires a tool that can read, display, save, and convert different formats, IrfanView is just such a tool. IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE graphic viewer for Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 , 2008, Vista, Windows Seven. But IrfanView offers many more features and capabilities. Consider this long list that is not even complete:

• Many supported file formats (about 75 when this was written)
• Multi language support
• Thumbnail/preview option
• Paint option - to draw lines, circles, arrows, straighten image etc.
• Toolbar skins option
• Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
• Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text in Slideshow/Fullscreen etc.
• Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
• Fast directory view (moving through directory)
• Batch conversion (with image processing)
• Multipage TIF editing
• File search
• Email option
• Multimedia player
• Print option
• Support for embedded color profiles in JPG/TIF
• Change color depth
• Scan (batch scan) support
• Cut/crop
• IPTC editing
• Image Effect Filter Compatibility (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
• Image Capture
• Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs
• Loss-less JPG rotation
• Unicode support
• Many command line options
• Plug-Ins
• Only one EXE-File, no DLLs, no Shareware messages like "I Agree" or "Evaluation expired"
• No system registry changes without user action/permission!

IrfanView is a 10 year old application written and supported by a development team from Bosnia.  There are no real commercial equivalents available. Implementation of IrfanView will make the user more productive and save considerable amounts of time when working with graphic files. 

There is plenty of support for the product.  It is downloaded over ONE MILLION TIMES EACH MONTH.

For lots of casual photographers, post-processing digital photos has an intimidation factor somewhere between public speaking and a trip to the dentist: it may not be the scariest thing you’ve done this year, but you don’t exactly look forward to it either.

Even with a potential daunting task before you, there are solutions available that make the job a lot easier. Some are best in class. Some are absolutely without any cost!

My personal choice as the best available is Google's Picasa.  Available as a free download, Picasa currently only works with the Windows operating system. This software, just like all the Google applications, is extremely easy and convenient for users. Picasa allows users to edit and manage all your photos with effective tools that include cropping, special effects, brightness adjustments and many more interesting features. The best part about using Picasa is that after editing your photographs you can instantly create and share your photographs with an online album. Many file formats are supported.

Picasa is truly point and click. Review your photos, look at the possible effect that the various tools will make, and click - revisions are made instantly. Couldn't be any easier than that.

We have presented four different graphic applications that should solve many problems for those who have limited backgrounds in graphic processing.  There are literally hundreds.

One choice was Serif Photo Plus SE.  Call the application by a different name, let's say Serif Draw Plus, use a very similar user interface, and you are on your way to solving many, many graphic problems.  Like its' photo editing cousin, Draw Plus SE is free and was formerly a version of a commercially released package.  Learn how to use Photo Plus and you will very quickly learn how to use Draw Plus, they are that similar.

Picasa is a great choice for the complete novice.  Pixia and Draw Plus are complementary applications.  Used together, there is little that you will not be able to do.  Tie all these tools together with the file wizardry of IrfanView, and you have a real decent graphic studio, with many professional tools and capabilities, that is available for almost no cost.