Considered by many to be among the premier photo editing and organizing packages, ACDSee Pro is a worthy tool when it comes to what photographers really need. Version 8 of this software has some additional useful new editing features and a subscription purchase option, as well as some online storage, even though that last option may be a tad expensive.

The basic functions of this software fulfills some basics, the organization of images, non-destructive editing with filters (called “Developing” in this program) as well as the usual “destructive” editing (which changes the original image) which is “destructive” only when the file is saved, when it overwrites the original file (you’re of course free to undo modifications up until then). It has a vast amount of filters in both Develop and Edit modes, these include split-tone editing, lens distortion and perspective correction, as well as other modern techniques.

The edit tools are similar to Photoshop, but much easier to find  (unlike in Photoshop) being nicely labeled on a pane on the left side. All things relating to file export or import are dealt with as plug-ins, this is useful should new standards or cameras come on the scene in the future. One thing that makes this particular program so popular is its ability to make it very easy to view and organize large groups of images, and also the editing of metadata such as date, location, and camera settings.

New in this version is the ability to scan in the background to add files while your computer is otherwise idle. Other new features are pixel targeting, which lets you edit only pixels of a certain color, also a new fill too that operates in the same manner. New too is an edit history window for keeping track of your changes.

As mentioned earlier, it is now also integrated with online storage, but this comes at a not-so-cheap price ($109/ 20GB, $129/40GB, and $199/100GB per year)

For more details, check out ACDSee Pro 8.

CyPics is a photo album manager and slideshow program. It contains many useful features besides the standard ability to browse folders of pictures as thumbnails. The inbuilt photo viewer is instantly usable via right click menu for easy use at any time. It also has a digital photo album database which can categorize your pictures with descriptions, keywords and various attributes such as size, date, etc.

Find your photos fast with its inbuilt search feature with some advanced search options such as “and” “or” and “not” to help you find photos fast, very handy if you have a large collection. It can also read EXIF viewer (Camera), IPTC viewer (Press) and Photoshop file Info.

You can also easily create slideshows which can be played back in sequential or random order, but also with many more advanced features, including even being able to update incorrect catalog details during slideshow playback.

A useful program worth checking out if you have an extensive photo collection or work with pictures a lot.

More info at the homepage here.

If you have lots of images on your computer but are bored of watching them in the same style then there are chances that you would be looking for a change. To change the look of the pictures and make them look brand new all you need to do is get hold of Decoration 1.0. With its filter option you can select and make the changes to the images as you desire. Make changes to the color border, round corners, gradient frame and apply different effects to the images like drop shadow, mosaic, blur, mirror, tint, etc. You can even perform the functions like rotate, crop, zoom and so on, and adding watermarks to the images. It is even helpful in generating buttons for your website.

The Decoration 1.0 is uncomplicated in usage and does not require any special skill to make the required selections. Easily Load the files from your system or Webpage and you can load multiple files as the software supports batch processing also. You’re also provided with the preview option that makes it easy for you to confirm the selection of the images. Make the selection of the set of filters or create a new set and save it for further use. Make the selections of the changes that you want to be applied to the images like to change the brightness, gamma, glow, and have the image sharpen or use any other one. You can even have the filter parameters changed to suit your requirement like level of color, effect, etc. You can even have the image overwrite or save the output image with another name and select the level of quality for the image. In the same way you can have the button icons changed and edited.

Decoration 1.0 supports batch processing and its simple user interface is good for novice users to work with. It provides various effects that user can play with to modify their images and have fun.

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Want to keep your digital photos safe? Hide Photos provide a secure container which is protected by a password. It is easily accessible with an Explorer-like interface. It displays thumbnail preview of protected photos in full color and it arranges your collection in such a way which facilitates quick search by using tags and comments.

The latest version, Hide Photos 1.3 Build 805 was released on April 21, 2008 and it has the following changes:

• Added: ability to deny access to the storage when some idle time passed
• Added: menu item “Tools-Hide to tray” with the F12 shortcut key to quickly hide program to tray
• Fixed: RAW files adding/viewing/loading accelerated

Want to know more? Visit http://hidephotos.com/

Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced Adobe Photoshop Express public beta, a free Rich Internet Application (RIA) available to anyone who wants to store, sort and show off digital photos with eye-catching effects. During the public beta period, Adobe will solicit Photoshop Express user feedback on product features and functionality, which will continue to evolve over time. As the newest addition to the Photoshop family line, Photoshop Express has taken much of Adobe’s best image editing technology and made it simple and accessible to a new online audience. Photoshop Express allows users to store up to 2 gigabytes of images online for free, make edits to their photos, and share them online in creative ways, including downloading and uploading photos from popular social networking sites like Facebook.

“Photoshop is trusted technology that has changed the visual landscape of our world. Now, Photoshop Express allows anyone who snaps a digital photo to easily achieve the high-impact results for which Adobe is known,” said Doug Mack, vice president of Consumer and Hosted Solutions at Adobe. “Photoshop Express is a convenient, single destination where you can store, edit and share photos whether you’re at home, school or on the road.”

With Photoshop Express, digital photos can be uploaded and sorted anytime, edited non-destructively to always preserve the original image, and shared from anywhere, on any Web browser. In a few easy clicks, Photoshop Express empowers anyone to make standard edits, such as removing blemishes and red-eye, converting to black and white, cropping and resizing, and much more.

No experience is required to add special effects that will impress friends and family. In keeping with its one-click approach, Photoshop Express offers tricks like Pop Color which selects an object in an image, mutes the background color of the photo and allows the user to swap the object’s color so it jumps off the page. Sketch effects help photos look like drawings and the Distort feature allows you to distort facial features or objects within the images for a comical or artistic effect. Even users with limited photo editing knowledge can simply select what looks best from a line-up of sample photos with visual hints showing different variations of the added effect.

Photoshop Express offers a variety of creative sharing options, including uploading and showing off photos and slideshows in your own online “Gallery” hosted by Adobe, or conveniently embedding or linking photos to social networking sites and personal blogs without having to leave the application. Slideshows never looked better with animation that makes photos float and fly across the screen, allowing for viewer interactivity and unique presentation styles.

Adobe Photoshop Express beta is available now for free via any Web browser right here.

You’ve probably seen them before, those pictures that, when you look closer, are made of lots of other much smaller pictures. I’ve always thought these were pretty cool. They’re know as Photo Mosaics and usually there’s a computer program involved in arranging them,due to the precise patterning involved. Andreamosaic is one such program.

To create such a mosaic you’ll need a selection of pictures to use as the tiles of the mosaic and you also need a picture to use as the main picture which you’ll be creating in mosaic form, out of the smaller pictures. You can then set the parameters in the program for creating different kinds of mosaics.

If this sounds a tad hard to follow, its worth spending a couple of minutes to read one of the step-by-step tutorials at the website, they’re very helpful and easy to follow. Theres plenty of options and settings, but the tutorials really simplify everything.

You can download it for free and start making your very own mosaics in a matter of minutes. For very helpful tutorials, examples and the program download, go to the homepage.

Morpheus Photo Morpher lets you change the image of a person or thing into another by slowly transitioning or “morphing” the images, giving the appearance of something slowly transforming into something else.

How it works is, you load your chosen pictures into the program. Now you can add markers to key points in the images, these key points are areas that have similarities such as eyes and facial shape. The more key points you add, the more accurate and smooth your finished morph animation will be. You can then preview the end results and render it in the file format of your choice such as FLV (Flash), AVI video, Animated GIF file, and more.

Morphing is a pretty neat effect when done with the right images and technique, its also a cool way to liven up boring slide shows!

Check out the homepage for some good examples and to download the trial.

PicLens is an add-on for Firefox which improves your online image viewing experience in a really cool way. Once you install it, It can be invoked with one click whenever you visit several of the well-known image sites online including Flickr, Photobucket, Myspace, FaceBook, Fotki, Picasa web albums, Google image search,AOL image search and some others!

You’ll notice that images at these sites now have a small arrow in the bottom left corner. Once you click this, PicLens launches and shows a gallery of all those pictures. This is no ordinary gallery though, its a 3D “wall” of images on a dark background. It looks pretty cool and it just gets cooler, because you can drag your mouse to move along this virtual “wall”. You can even use your scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

Clicking on an image expands it to full screen. There’s also a thumbnails strip at the bottom once in full screen mode. It also adds a small link at the top of your Firefox browser as an alternative way to start it, also you can search these image sites directly from inside PicLens. This enables you to view endless walls of pictures forever if you chose to without ever leaving it!

This is a must have for anyone who views a lot of pictures online, just try it and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Also, if you happen to connect your computer to a large screen TV or monitor, then this program is a must (and I envy you!)

It was very fast on my computer when i tried (and kept) it and doesn’t seem to slow anything down at all. It only needs to be used whenever you feel like it and only takes one click to get in or out of it fast. It’s superbly designed and extremely user friendly.

Download it and see images and more info at the homepage here.

ASP.NET app for editing photos through the web which includes such features as crop, red-eye removal, rotate, auto fix, borders, etc. This can be integrated easily into user applications, source code is provided.

Pros: PhotoEditor is a web based software meant for integration in web sites by users for easy work with photos over the web. A sample application is provided to illustrate the workings of the application.

When integrated with a site, it allows visitors to edit a photo stored there – rotate, crop, remove red eye effect, apply most common artistic effects, etc. It does not require anything other than a regular browser.

Companies providing photo printing or online photo galleries/albums can easily utilize the edit features of this application by simply integrating the code with their own application.

Edit features include crop, red eye removal, rotation and flips. Color adjustments have automatic fix as well as user control of brightness, contrast and color saturation on a continuous basis. Tinting, borders and artistic effects add to edit options. While you can save the changes, it is equally possible the user wants to start over. One can simply revert to the original image.

As is necessary with anything that needs to integrate with other software, this package comes with easy tips on integration, customizable look and feel. The developers have kept the text strings/messages separated so that they can easily be localized. Source code in VB.NET is provided. Built on AJAX technology the package works with most browsers IE, Firefox, Safari etc.

Cons: Even though the sample application works locally the effects are quite slow. As you apply edits, effects, frames or whatever, it takes several seconds to update the sample image. The range of effects and number of frames, the amount of edits one can do on the photos are quite limited.

Overall a good jumping point for anybody implementing a photo based service over the web. Photo printing services is a good example. People would want to do some editing on the photos uploaded for prints and this editor is a very good starting point for that. Since over the web the operation speed is likely to get worse, one needs to worry about that.

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When you place images on your website, etc, you might have often got worried about their protection and their possible theft by copycats. In case you are looking for a solution to avoid such hassles then WinWatermark 2.0.0 is possibly among the best choices available. It aims at protecting your images by using watermarks has support for image files of various formats such as JPEG, BMP, PNG, and many others. It allows you to customize your watermark in an effective manner that protects your images from copying.

WinWatermark 2.0.0 has a neat user interface with fluid contours. You can load the files and folders that you want to place the watermarks on. The right side shows the list of the images where you can add and remove them. The preview of the images is shown on the left panel. You can crop the images by selecting the crop mode that can be applied on all the images. Resize the image by setting the Image size, mode, and settings and does the resizing on batch mode. Rename the image files by changing the settings for the output name. While you put the watermarks you simply need to type the text and them set the font style size, etc for it. If you’re placing image watermarks then you need to select the images, set the rotation, opacity, and alignment, etc. With the options features you can have the image changes saved while switching to another and even have the EXIF info copied to the clip board. Select the quality and smoothness of the output and make the output directory selection. Process the images and get the results easily and fast.

WinWatermark 2.0.0 has the ability to read and write the images in various formats along with being a good utility for inscribing watermarks. Counting all the features and experiencing the functionality, the software has been given the rating of 4 points.

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