PrtScr: stylish, “cool” screen capture program

FreewareGenius has a post about PrtScr, a stylish, “cool” screen capture program.

• Capture modes: capture full screen (click “PrintScrn” twice), rectangular region, or freehand region of any shape. [Update Sep 14, 09] also supports capture topmost through Alt+PrntScrn hotkey.
• Hotkey: program is activated by clicking “PrintScrn”; you can optionally change it to any other hotkey combination.
• “Annotation”: will let you perform drawings with the mouse on screen right before you capture, which sounds like a great thing but in practice is of little use.
• Delays before capture: right click the PrtScr icon in the system tray to request delays of 5 or 30 seconds (not changeable).
• Editing: there is no internal editor; however, click “edit” and your captured image is opened using your PC’s default image editor. To find a good editing/annotation app and change the default image editor on your PC see this post.
• Multiple monitors: supported.
• Rescaling: (i.e.resizing the image) is possible before saving.
• Title and comment: you can add a title and/or a comment on-the-fly as you capture a screenshot

Go2Convert: Universal Image Conversion Tool

Go2Convert: Universal Image Conversion Tool is a post on MakeUseOf for changing the format (and the size, if you like) of a photo or image.

Features:

• Universal image converter.
• Convert an image into more than 100 different image formats including DPX, EXR, GIF, JPEG,  PDF, PhotoCD, PNG, Postscript, SVG and others.
• Convert images up to 5 MB in size.
• Resize the output image for use as an avatar, as a thumbnail, for messages boards or other bigger sizes.
• Free, no need to sign up or enter your email.

How to recover deleted photos from your SD card

ZDNet has a post on How to recover deleted photos from your SD card.

Making big posters

Sometimes you just have to say it big… on a big poster.  But who has a giant printer to make them?

Who needs a giant printer?  All you need is a way to blow up whatever you want on the poster, and print it in blocks that fit the paper for the printer you already have.

Examples:

Posteriza is a FREE online service that features:

• No installation required. No weird files on your system
• Use any Windows printer
• Use any paper supported by your printer. Any size. (A4, A3, Folio, Letter, etc)
• Posters can be any size you want. Using this program you can ever cover an entire whole wall of of your house!
• Use any font installed in your system for text
• Use any photograph as background. Supported formats are BMP, JPEG, PNG, EMF and GIF. Uou can even use just part of a photo!
• Choose predefined type and color for the frame

==========

An old friend of this blogger is shareware (try before you pay) “for making BIG posters, signs, banners, certificates, and murals, printing them up to 100×100 feet. POSTER combines the best features of graphics, word processing and desktop publishing packages together with special features for printing large posters or banners. All text and graphics are enlarged and printed over multiple pages.”

POSTER is distributed as shareware: you can download it and try it for free, but you are limited to printing 10 posters or banners. POSTER registration costs only $18 , and removes the 10 poster/banner limit, provides support and upgrades for a year, and gets you a disk with the latest version of Poster and a set of 100 fancy borders.

WaterMark.ws: Add Watermarks To Photos

MakeUseOf has a post on WaterMark.ws which lets you Add Watermarks To Photos Online.

AvatarPhoto: Create Your Own Animated Avatar Online

MakeUseOf has a post on AvatarPhoto which lets you Create Your Own Animated Avatar Online.

“Avatar Photo is a site with which you can create your own animated avatars for your social networking profiles, blog and forums. You just need to upload a picture from your computer or the web and choose a desired effect for the avatar. You could choose from a large number of special effects such as emotions, collages and many more. When all set generate your new avatar and download it to your computer.”

AvatarsDB: Free Avatar Directory

MakeUseOf has a post on AvatarsDB, the Free Avatar Directory.

Features:

• Large free avatar database.
• Over 34,000 avatars in 545 categories.
• Download an avatar or use the provided code to embed it on any website.
• Sign up to upload your own avatar and leave comments.

Avatar Creation

MakeUseOf has a post on creating Avatars.

This is a list of links to sites where you can create your own avatar.

CoverCreator: CD & DVD Cover Maker

MakeUseOf has a post about CoverCreator which is a CD & DVD Cover Maker.

“CoverCreator is an online CD & DVD cover maker that lets you type and illustrate your own CD/DVD covers or booklets and then print them out. It allows you to customize almost any part of the cover, you can create multiple pages, select variety of layout templates, apply different background colors, add text and draw.”

10 Websites To Learn Photoshop Online

10 Websites To Learn Photoshop Online is a MakeUseOf post for Adobe Photoshop users.

Learn and improve using:

• You Suck at Photoshop
• Tutorial9
• PSDTUTS
• Good-Tutorials
• The Photoshop Lady
• Photoshop Tutorials
• Luxa
• Photoshop Contest
• PSHero
• PSDTop

Vunky Search for Photoshop tutorials

Vunky Search is a search engine for Adobe Photoshop tutorials.

If you want to use Photoshop effectively, use Vunky Search to find tutorials on how to improve.

Vunky Search for GIMP

(That may well be the most bizarre title for a post on Computer Helpers!)

Vunky Search is a search engine for GIMP tutorials.

GIMP is the open-source freeware graphics creation/editing software, often compared to Adobe Photoshop.

To learn to use GIMP effectively, use Vunky Search.

FreeCAD drafting

FreeCAD is an open source freeware “CAD/CAE, based on OpenCasCade, QT and Python. It features some key concepts like Macro recording, Workbenches, ability to run as a server and dynamically loadable Application extensions and is designed to be platform independent.”

Free Printables dress up your letters, cards, more

Free Printables has colorful and useful templates for business cards, stationery, time sheets, and many more.

Free Windows Vista Icons by VisualPharm

Free Windows Vista Icons made by VisualPharm are available.

They are free for personal use and also free for commercial use, but require linking to the VisualPharm website.  They also have pay versions, no linking required.

If you use these, give them a little credit link for their use, please — fair is fair.

Yawcam – Yet Another Webcam Software

Yawcam is Yet Another Webcam Software.

Freeware for:

.: Video streaming
.: Image snapshots
.: Built-in webserver
.: Motion detection
.: Ftp-upload
.: Text and image overlays
.: Password protection
.: Online announcements for communities
.: Scheduler for online time
.: Multi languages

100 (Legal) Sources for Free Stock Images

Virtual Hosting Blog suggests 100 (Legal) Sources for Free Stock Images.

It helps to be able to illustrate your documents/web pages/presentations with photos and graphics.  Here are sources of material you can legally use in all sorts of categories.

Vue 7 for 3-D graphics

Vue 7 is a 3-D graphics creation program with some impressive artwork shown as the result.

The real site covers the free and pay versions.  The “Pioneer” free version gets you started, and if you like it, you can pay for a more powerful version, specialized to your style of artwork.

GIF.com for free graphics

GIF.com is an organized site for free .gif format graphics (some animated, some still).

Doink: Create Fun Animated Drawings Online

MakeUseOf has a post on Doink which lets you Create Fun Animated Drawings Online.

Doink “is the intuitive animation editor provided by Doink. It lets anyone easily create fancy animated drawings online and then share them with others. The site lets you create drawing from scratch or re-use the works of other site members.”