Watermark your graphics

Like putting pictures or graphics online, but afraid they’ll be stolen and credited to somebody else?

Now you can try putting a digital watermark on them to show whose property they really are, at PicMarkr.  Recommended by Lifehacker : “Webapp PicMarkr watermarks any selected Flickr pic or any image you upload from your desktop quickly and relatively painlessly, then lets you choose between uploading the results to Flickr or saving them to your computer. You’ll have to authorize the app with Flickr, and once you do you can browse Flickr sets, select pics to watermark, and choose from several different watermarking methods. Once you’re finished, you can upload the watermarked image to your Flickr account or save it to your computer.”

Scribus - freeware for desktop publishing

CNet’s featured freeware includes Scribus, a desktop publishing program.

” Despite occasional oddities and a distinct lack of polish, Scribus offers up an open-source freeware desktop publisher robust with a full complement of useful features. Available for Windows, in a portable edition, and for Macs, too, they compare very favorably against more expensive competition.”

“Scribus’ quirks are mostly related to the scaling of imported images, but there’s something else about it that’s far more interesting: It painlessly brings in documents from the OpenOffice.org suite and it uses The GIMP for image editing. By taking advantage of these other freeware apps to boost its own productivity, Scribus enhances its appeal by forming a virtual freeware suite.”

Artweaver, I believe you can get me through the art

Artweaver is a freeware program for creating graphic art.

• Support of many different digital brushes e.g. chalk, charcoal, pencils…
• Standard image editing tools like gradient, crop, fill and selection tools.
• Transparency and Layers support.
• Effect filters like sharpen, blur, emboss and mosaic.
• Support for the most common file formats like AWD (Artweaver), BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, TGA, TIFF, PNG, and PSD (no layer support).
• Pen Tablet support for a realistic feeling.
• Support for many languages through language files (Columbian Spanish, Danish, Hungarian, Swedish, …).
• Artweaver is Freeware.
• Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista.
• Pentium compatible processor, 600 MHz or greater (1000 MHz recommended).
• 128 MB RAM (256 MB recommended).
• 30 MB of available hard disk space.
• 800*600 pixels or greater monitor resolution (1024*768 pixels recommended).
• 15-bit color display (24-bit recommended).
• A Pen Tablet is recommended.

Blender for 3D art

ZDNet has a post on Blender, a “3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback” program.

It is available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.Mostly a bug-fixing release, but it also adds a few new features like subsurface scattering (SSS) support and two new composite nodes. Version 2.46 includes cloth and fur simulation, physics caching and baking, shading, glossy reflection and refraction, raytraced soft shadows, improved rendering features, and more.

For Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista.  Freeware, registration required.

Icons from Crystal Clear

Crystal Clear is a good source of modern icons.

Clip2Net for screen capture

MakeUseOf has a post about Clip2Net, a freeware screen capture program.

“Take screenshots, add notes and arrows, and upload them online.
File Sharing: Upload and share files online straight from the desktop screen.”

Desktop Client Features

* Capture, annotate, and share screenshots online or save them to your PC.
* Upload and store PC files online by simply dragging them on top of the Clip2net drop box.
* Upload images and files that are stored in the Windows Clipboard.
* Get embed codes at the end of each upload session.
* View upload progress via status bar.
* Windows PCs only.

Web-based Features

* Upload, store, manage and share your files online.
* Download and stream (ex. music / video) files from any other PC.
* Add password protection to shared files.
* Embed files on your blog or online profile.
* 500 Mb of online storage space.
* 500 Mb daily bandwidth limit.
* Note: Non-registered users will be limited to a max. of 5 days storage period.

Sp-Studio creates your own South Park-style avatar

Any “South Park” fans out there?

Create your own South Park avatar in the classic style of Stan, Kenny, and all the gang, using Sp-Studio.  Customize it, and save it for your own use.  Mr. Mackey would, m’kay?

Recommended by MakeUseOf.

beFunky animates your photos, videos

Anybody see the movie “A Scanner Darkly”? Where everybody was turned into a realistic animated version of themselves (well, except during the hallucinations…)?

Try it yourself with beFunky and ‘cartoonize’ your photo or video.

• Turn your photos into digital paintings and comic style animated cartoons.
• Convert videos into cartoons.
• Create and enhance cartoonized avatars: Choose between different background scenes, clothes and accessories, hairstyles, etc.
• Warp tool: push and pull any area of an image (enlarge lips, reduce nose size, etc.).
• Get a black and white pencil drawing of any photo.
• Embed your beFunky stuff on your blog or profile pages.

Recommended by MakeUseOf.

WARNING: read the user agreement.  Using this site gives them the right to use your image and information for their own purposes (promotion of their service, for example).  If you are not comfortable with that, don’t use it.

Logo Ease makes it easy to create a logo, insignia, graphic

Logoease is an online graphic design site that lets you design a logo, an insignia, a graphic for your own use.

It’s a free service (donations accepted) and you get your results in several graphic formats: EPS, JPG, TIFF, and PNG.

Description by publisher

The free logo design tool is extremely powerful at designing business grade logos and outputs file formats that can be used in web design, print design and office applications. There is no other tool on the internet that we know of that does this for free. Even the paid for alternatives do not have the same power and flexibility of Logo Ease. Using just one of the hundreds of cool and sophisticated images available can create an infinite number of logo design layouts.

Users can ask a friend which design they prefer too and get an overall consensus if they ask several people. This helps the designer (user) make the right choice when it comes to the overall appeal of the logo designs they have made using Logo Ease.
If the user wants to customize the design further or have business collateral designed like business cards, brochures, flyers, postcards etc then they are directed to the award winning design team at The Logo Company (http://thelogocompany.net) where they can get a completely unique logo design custom made for just $149. They get a minimum of three design choices (often more) with unlimited revision rounds. There is also a 100% money back guarantee with the service so it means the team at The Logo Company take all the risk. The Logo Company recently won a “best in test” review of online logo design studios conducted by the famous Wired magazine. Because Logo Ease is “Best in Class” it has aligned itself with a partner that is also “Best in Class”.

From photograph to art in one program

Fotosketcher is freeware that “can help you create images that look like they have been hand drawn by an artist. If you want to turn a portrait, the photograph of your house or even the picture of your pet into a black & white or colour drawing or painting, then look no further, FotoSketcher will do the job in just a few seconds.”

It’s certified free of malware, and boasts high ratings and awards.

Photoshop alternatives

Adobe Photoshop is the professional standard at present for many professional graphic artists, as well as a number of other people. But, since it is expensive and proprietary software, students may need to find something more in the price range of freeware, which still has enough features to be useful.

Linux.com has an article with some alternatives, some of which are also available for Windows (and sometimes Macs).

Raster (Pixel by Pixel) image software

For just working with raster images (basically, a grid of pixels), photographs, and the like, the open source GNU Image Manipulation Program (better known as the GIMP).  This is available for Windows and Linux.

However, GIMP is very different from Photoshop, so if you trained on Photoshop, you might have an easier time learning Gimpshop.  Gimpshop is a ‘hack’ built on top of the original Gimp project which changes all menues, dialogs, etc., in order to make them look like Photoshop. Of course, some features of Photoshop are still not available in Gimpshop, if the original GIMP doesn’t have them.

Vector graphics

Vector graphics is a more sophisticated form, and often lends itself better to resizing.

Inkscape is “An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.”

Inkscape is a fork off an earlier open source program called Sodipodi, which is also available.

CoolText for a little logo or button style

MakeUseOf has a review of CoolText, which can produce text in various styles for use as logos or as buttons on your web site. This has been used by the Boreham Library staff and works well. [By the way - use the link here, as the one in the review is incorrect.]

CoolText Features

• Create custom text logos and website navigation buttons.
• Download and save ready logos to your PC. No registration required.
• Customize: logo text color, select font style, background Color, text size, add order outline, glow effect, etc.
• Free font archive: Over 1200 downloadable text fonts for use in Photoshop or Office programs (i.e. Microsoft Word).

GIF animations to go at GIFup

MakeUseOf has a review of GIFup for creating graphics in GIF format.

Make the picture, make it move, create an avatar, or whatever you need.

GIFup Features

• Upload images from PC (up to 1024 Kb), webcam, from Flickr or grab directly from a webpage.
• Compose your animation from as many images (frames) as your want.
• Edit individual frames: crop, rorate right/left, flip horizontal/vertical, add effect, add text etc.
• Drag’n drop images to arrange them in desired order.
• Animation speed settings: fast, normal, slow or super slow.
• Individual frame size: Choose between avatar size (50-150 px), medium (200px) or large (400 px).
• Embed ready GIF animations on your website (see below) or profile page.
• Download and save animations to your computer.
• Store and share animations with others by keeping them on GIFup servers.

Open source clip art library

The Open Clip Art Library aims to create an archive of user contributed clip art that can be freely used. All graphics submitted to the project should be placed into the Public Domain according to the statement by the Creative Commons.

That means that you can use art from here for your web site, documents, etc. without paying a fee.  It would only be polite to credit the artist, however.

MapBuilder lets you publish maps

MapBuilder is a mashup (a combination of web applications) which allows you to create a map of an area and tag it as you like.  Then you can publish it on your website, in email, etc.

You can finally be known as someone who gives really good directions to places!

FixPicture allows you to convert, resize

FixPicture is a free site aimed at digital camera owners who want to resize or convert the file format of their pictures.

Features:

• Resize, edit and convert your images online. No registration required.
• Upload images from a hard drive or import them directly from a url.
• Supports over 400 file format: pictures (jpeg, tiff, png, gif, bmp, tga, …), RAW files (crw, nef, raf, cr2, dng, …)
• Basic functions: Resize, Crop, Rotate, Mirror, Adjust.
• Effects: Auto Level, Auto Contrast, Detail, Focus, Blur+, Sharpen+, Grayscale, Sepia, Maximum, Negative, Emboss, Normalise.
• Download and save ready images as jpeg, tiff, png, gif, bmp, or tga files.
• Multilingual: English, Deutsch, Italiano, Español, Français, Português, and Svenska.

Recommended by MakeUseOf.

Irfanview — odd name, but useful for viewing

Irfanview is a freeware graphics viewer that can also convert graphics from one format to another.

Zamzar goes for the conversion

Zamzar will convert a number of formats to other formats, for free, and email you a link to the new format’s file.

Zamzar does documents, images (graphics), music (audio/sound), video, and compressed formats — far too many to list. Check the list for all the current files.

While you do have to wait for the email to get the link to your converted file, it’s free and will convert things like Real Player files to mp3, and Windows .wma to mp3, and so on.

It will also convert YouTube videos to formats that work in PowerPoint.

Recommended by Tech Support Alert newsletter.

Rounding off pictures

Rounding numbers is easy, but rounding the corners of pictures can be harder.

Roundpic is a free online service that lets you round off the corners of pictures and select backgrounds.  Recommended by MakeUseOf.

Touch and Feel the web with Toufee freeware

Create your own flash movies for use on websites and elsewhere with the free service at Toufee.  This is a flash movie uploading and editing site (registration required) which is intended for amateur creation of flash movies.  Recommended by MakeUseOf.