One of the most important things in the lives of a lot of people when it comes to activities on their computer is file sharing.   And for people that are not really that computer savvy, the one thing you need to be thinking about is that they are probably into photo sharing. Where other areas of internet activity have really only been popularized by people that are computer savvy, the idea of being able to use digital cameras to take pictures and then upload those pictures into album software packages is something that has really been adopted by almost every household around.

That is why software pieces like MyPhotoIndex are extremely useful in today’s society. It is a free photo organizer that allows you to assign categories to all your photos and sort them in a number of different ways. You can even print them, save them in multiple file formats and attach them to outgoing outlook express packages with extreme ease. While the program is still in its early stages, it is expanding in leaps and bounds and should be very good to use very soon. Oh yeah, and it’s absolutely free!
 
More info available at http://www.myphotoindex.com/ 

It’s not very often that a software program comes along that has the ability to really do something innovative, but that is exactly what the ASCII Generator dotNET Beta 0.8.2 has that ability.

Have you ever gone online to any of the web 2.0 websites and seen some of the very interesting text art? Or better yet, have you ever been part of an online RPG where the only method of communication was through text, forcing the people inside the game to become very innovative in the way they conveyed images?

If you’re like most people that use the internet, chances are that you have indeed some across such things. Whether it is something as simple as a smiley face ‘=)’ emoticon or something far more involved, the concept we are talking about here is known as ASCII art. It is basically art that imitates real life pictures through the use of nothing more than basic ASCII symbols.

And that is exactly what the generator allows you to do. You just upload a picture into the ASCII Generator dotNET and it converts that picture into some sort of high quality ASCII art. It is a fantastic program to use and since it is open source, you can effectively get your hands on it really easy.

For more information, head on over to Jonathan Matthews’ website at http://ascgendotnet.jmsoftware.co.uk/

There are so many different ways for people to chat nowadays and one way that is really starting to pick up steam is video conferencing. Whether it is being done for business reasons or for pure personal reasons, there might be times when editing what is being sent out to the other people in the video conversation would be prudent. For businesses, it might be someone accidentally divulging something and for personal chat it might be something embarrassing action wise such as a burp or a cough. Either way, people will want to edit that annoying stuff out and now with AV Webcam Morpher 1.0 you can do exactly that.

There are so many different ways for a person to use the AV Webcam Morpher that it is really crazy! Not only can you change the tone of your voice to make yourself sound like someone completely different than who you are, but at the same time you can also use hundreds of different video effects in order for people to get things across that are closer to what they want to portray. With all of the neat effects that people have been able to come up with for the AV Webcam Morpher, it is no doubt whatsoever that it is definitely the real deal.

More info can be found at http://www.audio4fun.com/

If you are a web designer looking for creating those stunning animated images for your website then you should definitely try out the Longtion Gif Animator. Loaded with interesting features this piece of creative software allows you create seamless animations for your website with effortless ease. It provides support for multiple file types and achieves a high degree of compression while creating the images; thus reducing files sizes and making your web pages load faster.

The software is a breeze to install and the navigation menu is quite neat. The software has an attractive look and feel.  With easy controls even an average user can create professional looking animations. You can make Slide Show style Gifs or even Text Style Gifs. One just needs to click on the New Gif tab and then select the frame sizes. Next just use the Add frame options to add all the pictures that you wish to put into different frames. In few moments your basic animated Gif file is ready. Now for getting the professional touch, the software has tabs like Frame property and competent image editing tools. You can easily set the frame properties including transparency options. It also has the options for placing time intervals between two successive frames used in the animation. Next with image editing tools you can crop images, draw lines and make host of other changes as required. The tool has decent features that are required for creating good Gif animations. It also comes in handy for novice users who may want to use it for creating animations for their profile homepages.

The software comes with a Help section which though lacks details. Also the software itself could do well with more animation styles and effects. Overall the software is worth a try if wish to quickly create Gif animations.

(More Info and Download)

In need of a free photo and graphic viewer? This tool is really worth checking out.

XnView is a free software to view, organise, convert graphics files. XnView is a group of utilities that features viewing, converting, screen capture, slidshow, and Twain support. These utilities support viewing more than 400 graphic formats and can create 52.

The good thing about XnView is that it has various editions available for different OS, whether you are using Windows, Linux or Mac OS X, there is an XnView for you. XnView for Windows, XnView for Linux, XnView for FreeBSD and XnView for Mac OS X.

The latest changes in the new updated version include:

• Mpeg.dll is back for mpeg2 preview;
• Added jpg as companion file of camera raw;
• Added ‘show recurse files’ in folder context menu;
• TreeBackColor & TreeFontColor added (only for xnview.ini);
• ‘LabelColor_**=fr fg fb, br bg bb’ added;
• Now ‘date taken’ is used for ‘Sort by EXIF date’;
• Some other fixes

Want to check it out? Go to http://www.xnview.com/

So you want your images to look the best they can, but you don’t have money to spend on professional software…Check out FastStone Image Viewer. It does the basics but it does them well!

This freeware program supports all major image formats, such as BMP, GIF, ICO, JPEG, JPEG2000, PCX, PNG, PSD, TAF, TIF, and WMF. It also includes EXIF metadata support. You can crop, resize, flip, rotate, and adjust colors on your images and compare them side by side.

It also lets you convert from one format to another; you can even convert or resize your photos in batches. For a closer look, use the Full Screen image viewer to zoom in and size things up with the clear magnifier. If you wanna liven things up you can apply over 150 transitional effects in a slideshow.

If you don’t yet have a program for fast image viewing and basic editing, or if you’re not completely satisfied with the one you currently use, FastStone Image Viewer is one you should try. It’s free.

More info and download

Here is a cool photo editor worth checking out. It’s called Amazing Photo Editor. It is a powerful, easy to use image processing software used for image processing, viewing and converting. Just like the name suggest amazing effects are available for use in this software!

With Amazing Photo Editor you can enjoy virtually unlimited editing. You will really love the effect this software can produce as Amazing Photo Editor has 33 effect filters (Bleed, Blur, Bump, Curl etc), 10 effects (Noise, Balance etc), and 4 photo Full Size optimization (Auto Smooth, Gussian etc.) that make photos pretty and suitable.

This software is so feature rich that you will have to CLICK HERE to really see what it can do.

CLICK HERE for more info and trial download!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what is a thousand pictures worth, being there? Maybe!

Photosynth is software that’s still in development at the moment but it’s gotta be one of the most interesting things to come out of Microsoft in a long while.

It takes a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-D space. Basically it builds a virtual 3D world out of 2 dimensional photographs by analysing them for similarities. In theory this would make it possible to link the whole worlds photos together and go exploring.

In this case images are much better than words, so check out some videos to get a much better idea of what it actually does. Better yet, you can download the tech preview which enables you to see the interactive demo in your browser (supports all major browsers).

Check it out, it might be something we’ll be hearing a lot more about!

Light Artist is a program that allows you to add realistic lighting effects to your photos. The cool thing about this program is that it allows you to easily make your ordinary and undistinguished photos sunnier, romantic and if it’s gloomy you want, it’s gloomy you’ll get, it’s all up to you.

With this program, you can modify the light color, add multiple light sources, change the surface qualities of the image and add various ambient illumination effects. But that’s not all, using one of the image channels as the texture channel you can add 3D relief to your images. Ain’t that Cool?

The latest version which hit the software market sometime towards the end of last month is Light Artist 1.5. If you’ve been using a previous version go get the new version fast, it’s free, not a trial version, but totally free.

Go to  http://vicman.net/lightartist/ for free download and more info.

In summary here are the features you will enjoy with Light Artist 1.5:

• Load and save jpg, bmp;
• Add multiple light sources to the image;
• Adjust light source type and parameters;
• Add 3d relief to the images.

Once again head on to http://vicman.net/lightartist/ for a free download.

Need good screen capture software? Check out SnagIt.

SnagIt delivers customized screen captures with the press of a hotkey. SnagIt captures images, text, and video from your Windows desktop easily. So if you want go effortlessly produce perfect graphics and video, SnagIt should do the trick. You will enjoy using SnagIt because it allows you to Capture, Edit, and Share easily.

With SnagIt, you can select anything on your screen – an area, image, article, Web page, or error message – and capture it. Then, save the screen capture to a file, send it to SnagIt’s editor to add professional effects, share it by e-mail, or drop it into PowerPoint, Word, or another favorite application.

Visit http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.asp  for more info and trial download.