Tag: animation

Saint Paint Studio: Simple Freeware Image Editor

Saint Paint Studio (Version: 18.0) is a freeware image editor. It offers many features that are comparable paid or shareware image editors. Input formats supported include bmp, jpg, gif, ico, cur, png, pcx, tiff, tga, wbmp, sps (its own native format) and perhaps interestingly avi.

The program toolbars offer the mostly standard like red-eye filter, blur, sharpen, gamma, emboss, dilate and others but with a few additions like the Symmetry Pattern that, for example, applies the Spray tool to symmetrical positions on an image with one click or drag – remember to press the Symmetry Pattern button before applying the Spray (see image)

Paste image from clipboard, gif animation, a color palette that can be navigated through using the keyboard and reordered by RGB values, light to dark and dark to light colors are some of the other features of the program. Various brushes can be constructed freehand and then resized, deformed, continuously applied by single clicks, rotated and converted to frames for animation. It is also possible to grab a whole image to use as a brush to apply on another.

Saint Paint Studio also features layer and print support. It should work on all Windows versions.

February 19, 2013
Switch Banner Maker: Free Online Service
Soon after I wrote about MP3 Toolkit I was contacted by the people behind it, they pointed me to an online service they run and wondered if I would write about it.

It is the Switch Banner Maker and it is a free service that creates rotating or switching banners and generates the code to insert in web pages. It is a simple service that outputs nice and professional looking banners or images (see sample made below.)
The user inputs up to 10 images, these must be hosted by the user. Each image can then be hyperlinked individually. The width and height is also required. For best results these values should be consistent across all images. The user has the option to choose the color for the number button and to position it on the lower right or lower left of the generated banner. Delay between images can be set and the image number's visibility can be toggled off as well.

The output code featuring a hosted javascript is then inserted into any page.
May 27, 2012
Freeware Shorts: Imagine (Image Viewer)

Imagine (Version: 1.0.8 as of this post) is a full featured image viewer and thumbnail browser. It features rotate, flip, negative and other common effects and filters. Support for plugins and command line parameters as well. It also supports animation creation, a feature less common in image viewers.

Via Tools —> Animation Factory one can create animations. It supports setting delays between frames, setting transparency, resizing the animation, fliping frames horizontally or vertically and even manipulating the colors of the images. It is also possible to extract frames from an existing animation.

Another feature often missing or incomplete in many image viewers is to not only be able to open archive files but to be able to get proper thumbnail views of the images inside. Imagine supports this in ZIP, RAR, 7Z, ALZ, HV3, CBZ, CBR and CB7 formats and in my tests supports them well.

Imagine supports EXIF data and their retention when re-saving images. Shell extension support is here too. Via Options —> Shell Extension the preview of an image will be available when right clicking it.

Imagine can create multiple page images, do batch conversions, show slideshows and take screenshots. The latter was a bit different as it somehow proceeded to take many screenshots, not just one, when the trigger method was set to ‘automatically after X seconds’, it thus behaved as ‘automatically after every X seconds’.

Unicode and 64-bit versions are also available, it should run on all Windows versions and doesn’t write to the registry.

Imagine is highly recommended.

October 19, 2011
Freeware Shorts: RealWorld Paint (Image Editor)

Over two years ago I reviewed RealWorld Paint.COM and was impressed. Recently the author released a major update (Version: 2011.1) with a slightly changed name (RealWorld Paint). Once again he sought advice at the DonationCoder forums as well.

This new version has several new features, some of which are listed below that make RealWorld Paint even better and probably even more complete that is required for most users.

The features are: Support layers with styles (individual layers can be filtered with the likes of blur, rotate and more and even worked on with Photoshop tools. This is followed naturally by Photoshop (.psd) format support and a few other formats too. More tools are added that include lasso and liquify. Additional command line support is explained here. An interesting animation tool (Create—>Create Animation) is also new which splits an image into rows and columns which then creates a sort of filmstrip animation with the divided parts of the image.

RealWorld Paint is available in a portable format as well.

October 15, 2011
PhotoScape For All Your Image Editing Needs

PhotoScape is described by its author as

PhotoScape is the fun and easy photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance photos.

The opening screen is an attractive and clear division of functions and features that can also be accessed in tab like fashion on the top of the screen. The program also displays random flickr images but this can be turned off.

The Viewer presents the well known explorer like interface with panes for navigation and preview. From there and via right click images can be set as wallpaper, become part of a slide show, rotated and double clicked to be viewed in full screen mode. In full screen mode a right click presents the aforementioned possibilities plus others like brighten, darken, zoom, and view EXIF info.
The Editor presents an ever growing number of filters. Most filters, and other effects, can accessed either via the accompanying drop down or by clicking on their respective buttons. They include the very impressive ‘Bloom’ and ‘Blacklight’ filters that give life and clarity to images. Here one can also resize an image, frame it, add line, objects and shapes onto it, apply a mosaic effect, apply free and preset crops, reduce red eye, and even reduce the appearance of moles. The Batch Editor can do all of the above on a set of images.
Page includes many templates to group a number of images into a page that can be saved. It is possible to drag and resize images to fit them within many sizes, mixes or shapes available. Frames and filters can be added as well to produce imaginative finished pages.

Combine is another form of the Page funtion described above. Here images can be grouped vertically or horizontally to produce a strip or multipage effect. Again many sizing and framing options are available here.
AniGif creates gif animations of course and with many required controls. Of course the delay between each animated frame can be controlled as well as the background color that fills any emtpy regions when the images are not exactly the same size. Additionally PhotoScape has 7 transition effects and crucially the ability to position images within the frames (center, top-right, etc.). The latter feature is important when the pictures are not the same exact dimensions and, when using some other animators, individual frames can be off relative to the next frame, but not with PhotoScape.
Print is sort of an extension of Page and includes various forms that let the user visualize different layouts and print images with configurable alignment, brightness and dots per inches (dpi). The finished product can also include such things as the file name under each image.
Splitter divides an image into different regions, be they configurable number of equal sized rows and columns or widths and heights.

Screen Capture, captures windows, full screens, rectangular regions and copies them to the clipboard or opens them in the Editor. It is also possible to repeat the last capture.
Color Picker provides the RGB or Hex value of any region via a zoomed and draggable ‘fountainpen’. PhotoScape also keeps a recent history of captured colors.
Raw Convertor, useful for DSLR camera images, converts raw formats (DNG, CRW, TIFF, etc) to the web friendly JPG. And finally Rename batch renames files with several renaming templates such as including the EXIF date, today’s date, numbered increments and others in the output file names.
PhotoScape, currently at v3.3, packs many features in a 14MB download and is one of the most complete freeware of any kind. It does not consume too much resources as it remained well under 40MB of RAM usage throughout extended use. As mentioned it is free, looking for donations, runs under all Windows from 98 to Vista, is actively developed and looking for translators as well.

April 20, 2009