Bordermaker is an interesting program that offers image resizing and manipulation options. Best of all, it is completely free and multi-platform.

The application is offered for the Microsoft Windows operating system, Apple Macintosh OS X, Linux and as a generic Java program.

Images are resized and manipulated in the program in three straightforward steps. It begins with the selection of the root folder. BorderMaker will automatically process all images stored in that folder, and optionally recurse all subfolders to include all supported image formats stored in those folders as well. A preview image is automatically selected during this step, which can be used to preview all changes at anytime with a click on the Preview button. It is possible to select a different preview image manually.

A click on Settings loads the resizing and manipulation options. They are divided into different tabs.

• Image: Here it is possible to define the resize options. Image resize options include selecting a specific width and height for the image, keeping the aspect ratio, cropping the image or squeezing it. The same screen offers options to set the JPEG quality of the resulting image and sharpening settings.

• Text: Text can be added and positioned in this configuration menu. Various font types and settings are available, including color, transparency, font family and shadow effects. The position of each text phrase is controlled in this menu as well.

• Borders: Borders are added in a similar fashion as text. The program opens a new window in which one or multiple borders can be added to the images. Available for selection are border colors, sizes, rounded edges, transparency, a blur effect and the option to let the program pick an appropriate color for the border.

• Watermarks: Bordermaker supports several image formats that can be added as watermarks to each image. It is again possible to select a position and effects like transparency or shadows for each watermark. The images need to be available in the correct dimensions since they are not resized automatically.
• Settings: Bordermaker can save images as png or jpg images. It is furthermore possible to retain existing EXIF information, enable automatic image rotation and allow relative image sizes.

The image file name and destination is selected in the third and final step. Bordermarker supports saving images to a local folder or to a ftp server. Variables like a random number, a counter or the original file name can be added to resulting file names.

A click on the Process button runs all selected image manipulation and resizing operations on all images stored in the selected folder, and – if selected – subfolders of that folder. The images are automatically saved to the selected destination folder on the local drive or ftp server.

BorderMaker may not be the most sophisticated software to resize images, but it is easy to use and offers interesting options that many alternative tools do not offer. Especially the ability to add multiple text phrases and watermarks are noteworthy in this context.

Interested users can download the latest version of the application from the developer homepage

Pictures are added via the Main > Add Images menu which opens the folder browser. All images of the selected folder are automatically added to the program. Images in subdirectories are automatically included as well. The images are then processed and displayed as thumbnails in the interface. Users need to be cautious in this step as the program can run out of memory if to many large sized images are added.

The core features of Image Tools are all available under the Process menu at the top of the application window.

The following options are available:

• Channels filtering
• Convert
• Crop
• Deborder
• Flip / Rotate
• Resize
• Watermark
• To Grayscale / Negative / Sepia

The user begins the process by selecting one, multiple or all images with the mouse or the Select all button. All selected images are then processed by the application after an image manipulation option has been selected from the Process menu. Configuration begins with the selection of the output folder before available options are displayed in an extra window.

Image Tools is a handy tool for users who want to make one change to multiple images.

A few aspects are not perfect on the other hand. The program lacks previews of the selected change and does not contain options to make multiple changes at once. Users who would like to resize and watermark images would have to load the original images, select resize, load the resized images and select watermark from the options to complete the process.

Image Tools is a free image manipulation software for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the windows operating system. The application is portable on systems that have the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 installed.

The process to copy files into another folder for instance is not optimized at all, and users may have to navigate a lot in one explorer window, or use two Windows Explorer instances for the job.

Filer Frog is a free Windows Explorer shell extension that improves the file browser in this regard.

The previously commercial application is now offered for free at the developer site. Both a 32-bit and 64-bit edition are available, which add the same feature set to Windows Explorer.

filerfrog

All new features become available in the right-click context menu after installation.

The new features can be loosely divided into file operations and image manipulations.

File Operations

Filer Frog adds the following file operations to Windows Explorer:

• Extract From Folder: Moves all files of a folder to its parent folder, with options to delete the empty folder afterwards.
• Extract To Folder: Creates a new folder and moves the selected files into it.
• Copy / Move: Like the Copy To, Move To commands. Opens a folder browser after selection where the selected files and folders will be moved or copied to.
• Delete Empty Files and Folders: Empty files and folders that have been selected will be deleted after executing this command.
• Copy Path To Clipboard: copies the path of the current folder to the Windows Clipboard.
• Invert Selection: Inverts the current selection in the folder.
• Split and Join: Option to split large files into smaller ones, and to join them again.
• List of Files: Creates a text or html file that contains a list of all selected files and folders. Option to create a simple or detailed listing.
• Encrypt and Decrypt: Option to encrypt or decrypt files and folders.
• Renaming: Option to rename files and folders in bulk, available are: Find Replace, Auto Numbering, Alphabetize, Append, Auto Numbering with Append (Links to Auto Numbering), Alphabetize with Append (Links to Alphabetize), Make All Same Name, Truncate

Image Manipulation Operations:

Three main features are provided by Filer Frog, they are:

• Image Manipulation – Resize: Option to immediately resize selected images in Windows Explorer. Selection includes custom sizes, presets, and the selection of the image quality.
• Image Manipulation – Put Logo On Image: Adds a logo to all selected images. Option to overwrite the existing images, or add the manipulated images to another folder.
• Image album: Filer Frog can create a basic image album which is saved as a pdf document in the same folder.

Some of the options provided by Filer Frog are already available in some Windows operating systems. Still, several of the file operations can be helpful in speeding up operations in Windows Explorer. The software does not need to run in a background process, which means that it does not put a strain on the system’s resources.

Filer Frog is available for download at the developer website.

Fotowall won’t turn you into a brilliant artist, but it will have you creating new and interesting imagery with your own photos or photos from the web in no time. In this article I will show you how you can create interesting wallpapers with this fun tool.

Installation

Installing Fotowall is simple (thankfully you will find it in the standard repository). Just follow these directions:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software Tool.
2. Search for “fotowall”  (no quotes).
3. Mark Fotowall for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. Once installed you can start up Fotowall by clicking Applications > Graphics > Fotowall. When it first starts you will have a blank “canvas” where you can start adding photos and other elements.

Let’s create something.

Creating a wallpaper

Figure 1

We’ll work up a quick wallpaper. When you first start Fotowall the interface seems rather minimal (see Figure 1). Don’t worry, there are plenty of tools for you to work with. You can start with either a picture on your desktop, or a picture found on the web. Let’s find a picture on the web. You don’t even need to fire up your browser. Click on the “Ballon” icon (with the green arrow) and it will open up a search window. Enter your search parameters and click Search. This will pull down a few images from the web. I searched for the word “tree”.  Once you find an image you click and drag it to the main window.

Figure 2

You will notice, on the edges of the image, a few tools for you to use with the image (see Figure 2).  Those are not the only tools available. But with those tools you can resize, flip, adjust the angle, adjust the shearing, and if you click on the Wrench icon, you can adjust much more. Click on the wrench and then click on the General tab. From that tab you can change the border of the image, alter the stacking of the image, add a reflection to the image, and more.

From the Picture tab you can apply various effects to the images From Invert colors to opacity).

The main window also offers numerous tools you can use.  You can add text, a word cloud (from a text file),  as well as some effects.

Figure 3

In Figure 3 I have changed the background color, changed the perspective (do this by clicking and dragging the 4-way arrows on the bottom right of the image), and added a reflection. Very little work for fairly cool results.

Now let’s say that’s all I want to do for this image. Once completed all you need to do is hit the Export button and walk through the wizard. This wizard is going to ask you what type of image you are saving (Wallpaper, Banner, Image, Print, SVG Vector). Depending on what you choose the wizard will change accordingly. A word of warning, should you choose wallpaper, the image gets saved in your home directory and is automatically set as your desktop wallpaper. You might want, instead, to save the work as an image which can then be set as your wallpaper.

Final thoughts

This only scratches the surface of the power and the fun to be had with Fotowall. It’s a very good application for creating artistic images for various purposes. Give this app a try and you might find you have discovered an app to handle a good amount of your image needs.

Some of these tools you might already know, some of them you may not already know, some of them you will be very glad you now know. So, with that said, let’s get our GIMP on!

Remember the “toolbox”

Figure 1

Before we start with the tools, let me remind you where the toolbox is. When The GIMP opens, three windows should appear:

* The Main Window
* The Dockable Dialog Window
* The Toolbox

The Toolbox (see Figure 1) is the window that allows you to pick your tool of choice. In order to select a tool, you only need to click its button. When you do select a tool, the lower pane will change according to the tool you have chosen. By default, the Paintbrush tool is selected.

Now, let’s take a look at those tools you should know the most.

Move tool

Figure 2

The move tool (see icon in Figure 2) allows you to move your selections around on your image. This is one of the most used tools in The GIMP, but often the most overlooked. Most users assume, once you have placed an element on your image, you can just move it around at will. You can, if the move tool is selected.

Color tool

Figure 3

The color tool (see icon in Figure 3) is one of those tools you will soon wonder how you worked without. With this tool you can select a single color on your entire image. Say, for instance, you have an image with a red background and you want to copy everything but the red background. You can select the Color tool and then click on the red of the background. This action will select everything on your image that is of that exact same color. You can then invert your selection and then copy the contents. You have to be careful using this tool as it does include all of that same color from your image. So if there is red in the portion of the image you want to copy, it will be left out.

Color Picker

Figure 4

The color picker (see icon in Figure 4) is a simple, but very useful tool. When you select a color with the Color Picker it places that color in your color palette. The selected color will be selected as your foreground color. This tool will keep you from having to try to guess the exact colors for your work.

Measure tool

Figure 5

This tool (see icon in Figure 5) is for anyone that has to do exact work. When you use this tool you select two points and at the bottom of the image window and drag the second point to its destination. During the dragging you will see, at the bottom of the image window, the length (in pixels) and angle (relative to horizon).

Scissors selector

Figure 6

There are numerous ways to select a portion of your image. One of those tools is the Scissors select tool (see icon in Figure 6). This tool allows you to place points on your image and the tool will automatically connect those points using intelligent edge fitting. The best way to describe intelligent edge fitting is to show you (see Figure 7).

Figure 7

As you can see, the lines connecting each point attempt to attach themselves to any edge along the path. This is a very handy way to make cut outs of images for illustration purposes.

Final thoughts

And there you have it…five handy GIMP tools that you may not have known about. It is one of my goals to help people see that The GIMP is not as difficult as it would see, nor is the interface as bad as some think. I hope you find these GIMP tools as handy as I do. We’ll revisit this topic and cover five more handy GIMP tools later.

The digital image processing software can be used to load and process multiple images and photos. The images that are loaded into the software are displayed in the left sidebar with the selected image being show in a preview area on the right.

Basic options to process the image are available including rotating or cropping the image. A link to the default image editor on the system can be added to quickly open the image in that editor for advanced image processing.

The lower part of the screen contains two tabs that offer additional options and settings. The save location, file type and quality can be configured in the first tab while the second one contains resizing options. Multiple images can be selected at once to process them together. That’s an interesting option for users who want to rotate, crop or resize several images in short time.

The digital image processing software is semi-automatic. There are tools out there that need to be configured once and will apply the configured settings to all images that have been loaded into the software. This tool gives the user more control over the process.

The Digital Image Tool is compatible with the Windows operating system and can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Smilla Enlarger is a portable software program for the Windows operating system that can be used to enlarge photos. The results depend on the resolution and quality of the source photo and the resolution increase entered by the user. They do look pretty good on average though making Smillar Enlarger one of the few valid one-click solutions to enlarge photos.

The program basically works the following way. The user loads a photo into the software program. The photo will be displayed automatically on the left side of the interface. A suggested new resolution will be automatically selected and a zoomed in area of the source photo will be displayed on the right side. The target resolution of the enlarged photo can be changed by moving the zoom slider or by entering a value for the width and height manually.

It is possible to change the area that is being used for the preview to ensure that the most important areas of the photo display fine in the new resolution.

The controls at the bottom can be used to fine tune the enlarged photo further to increase the overall quality. The following five controls are available as sliders in the program: Sharpness, Flatness, PreSharpen, Dithering, DeNoise.

A click on the calculate button will start the photo conversion. The enlarged photo will be saved in the source directory by default. Smilla Enlarger (via Essential Freebies) is a great software program for users who want to enlarge some of their photos or images.

But how is it done? It takes 6 simple steps to do (there is an optional 7th step I will show you). In this article I am going to show you those steps.

Step 1: Create an empty image

Most likely you already have an empty image ready for your work. If not click on The GIMP main window File menu and select New. You will then have to select the size of the image you want to create. Once this blank image window is open you are ready to begin.

Step 2: Select the color for your circle

Figure 1

In the Toolbox window (see Figure 1) you will see the current colors for both foreground and background. You want to set your foreground color (in Figure 1 it is the black square) by clicking on said black square. When you click on this block it will open up the color palette window. From that new window select the color you want to use for your circle.

Step 3: Create a full circle

The first thing you do for this step is to select the circle tool. This is the tool second from the left in the top row (see Figure 1). Once you have selected that tool go to your new image window and left-click on the upper left corner to start your circle. By holding down the left mouse button and dragging the

Figure 2

mouse to the bottom right of the window you will create a circle. (see Figure 2) You will notice, after you let go of the left mouse button, there are four squares (one in each corner). You can click one of those squares and drag it around to resize your circle. Once you have the exact size you want click inside of the circle. After you click inside the circle the dotted line will become a solid line. You are now ready to move on.

Step 4: Fill in your circle

You now how to fill in your circle with color. Click on the bucket tool (first tool on the right, third row from the top – See Figure 1) and then click inside of your circle. Your circle should now be a large, filled-in circle. Proceed to step 5.

Step 5: Shrink the image

Figure 3

What you have to do now is shrink your circle. Right click anywhere inside of your circle and then click on the Select menu. Within the Select menu you will see the Shrink entry. Click on that entry to open up the Shrink window (see Figure 3). You want to set the amount to shrink to be the width of the line of your circle. This might take a bit of playing around before you get it right. As you can see, in Figure 3, I am shrinking my circle by 10 pixels.

Once you have this set, click OK and the shrinking will happen. Now, on to step 6.

Step 6: Cutting your image

Figure 4

Right click inside of your circle and go to the Edit menu. You will see an entry called “Cut”. Click the “Cut” entry and the center portion of your circle will disappear.

As you can see (in Figure 4) we finally have a circle. You could be finished at this point, however…

Step 7 (optional): Select only the circle

What if you want to lay your circle over another image? If you just copied the circle as-is you would select everything (including the white background). To avoid this you can use the color select tool (see Figure 1, top row 5th from the left). Click the color select tool and then click on the circle you have remaining. What happens then is that every color in your image that matches the color you clicked will be selected. Since there is only one color on your image, your entire circle will be selected. You can now copy that circle to the clipboard and paste it into another image.

Or you can just add to the circle you have created.

Final thoughts

You are probably saying “That’s a lot of work just to create a circle!” It might seem like it at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s always a no brainer. By using this method you will always have unfilled circles exactly the size and thickness you want.

One of the easiest ways to simplify use is the minimize the amount of windows open when working with The GIMP. By default The GIMP 2.4 opens with two windows: Utility Window, and Toolbox. If you are a GIMP power user you know the tools in both windows can be necessary. But it is not necessary to have both windows open in order to take advantage of all of the tools. “How?” You ask? Simple…by docking tabs.

What I am going to show you is how to add utility tabs into the Toolbox window so you can close the Utilities window. This will clean up the user interface as well as keep the user less confused. I am going to be using The GIMP 2.4 because it is more widely used.

Utilities Window

The first thing you should do is check to see what tabs you use in your Utilites window. I almost always use the Layers tab and the Colors tab. As you can see (in the image to the left) the Utilities window is open with the Layers, Channels, Paths, and Undo tabs on top and the Colors, Brushes, Patterns, and Gradients tabs on bottom. Of those tabs the Layers and the Colors tabs are most useful to me. Naturally other tabs will be more or less useful to other users (depending upon your needs).

Once you know the exact tabs you need to use you can close the Utilities window because you are going to add those tabs to the Toolbox window.

Now, move on over to the Toolbox window (see the image to the right).

Toolbox

Near the center of the window you will see a right-pointing arrow. If you click this arrow you will see a sub-menu that offers an Add Tab option. Within the Add Tab sub menu you will find a long list of possible tabs you can add to the window. From that list select the tabs you want to add (one at a time) to the Toolbox window. Once you have configured this window exactly how you want it, it will open up that way every time you start up The Gimp.

Simpler GIMP

As you can see, in the image to the left, The GIMP can be used with only a single window open. In the lower section the utilities I need to work with all appear in their own tabs. Now I can work with The GIMP and only have a single window (outside of the working image window) open.

Final Thoughts

The GIMP (and its interface) has been much maligned over the years for being overly complex and busy. Many of these complains stem from a simple lack of familiarity. But even being unfamiliar with the interface doesn’t make The GIMP’s UI unfriendly. Because the interface can be configured to better suit your needs, I would venture to say it is one of the more user-friendly interfaces available. Some times it is just a matter of taking the time to get to know the UI and customizing it to fit your needs and your style. Once you have done this, you might find The GIMP to be one of the best image applications available.

The user can choose from a selection of more than 100 photo filters like reviving colors, adding a night effect or making it look like it was drawn with a black pencil. Another interesting feature that is selectable is the Photo Mask feature. It basically makes use of preset masks which are nothing more than grayscale images with white being the opacity color while the different shades of gray increase the opacity.

A set of photo masks is available and custom ones can be created easily. Photofiltre can be expanded with so called plugins which add new features to the application. This ranges from red eye removal to removing dead pixels or curling images.

Photofiltre is most likely not the tool that users who own Adobe Photoshop would use but it is quite suitable for anyone who wants to manipulate images by adding filters to them.

Magmypic is sort of a combination of magazinize (is that even a word?) my picture. The site is pretty straightforward. Upload picture = magazine cover. Actually, it’s a bit more than that but it’s still easy to do.

The process begins when you upload a picture, in any of the standard image formats. The next step allows you to select which magazine you want to use. There are magazines like Time, National Geographic, People, Vogue, etc. Once this is done, you can choose the size of your magazine cover.

In the last step, you can download the creation to your computer. In addition, you can also post it on a variety of sites such as Myspace, Facebook, iGoogle, WordPress, etc. To give you an example, here’s a cover I created.

There are a few drawbacks though. For one, the picture you choose for the cover can get resized weirdly. My original picture was of the complete bike, not just the part you see. Secondly, you cannot change any of the text on the cover. Lastly, the cover has a Magmypic watermark on it. However, this is not that big a deal.

I prefer this to U.R.Celeb largely because everything is done via a website so I don’t have to bother about installing anything. What about you? Will you give this website a try? Do you know of any similar websites?

How do you get started? You could open Photoshop and go through some very complicated and time-consuming steps. Alternatively, you could download a software called U.R.Celeb. This program does all the major work for you.

The program has a bunch of ready made magazine templates. Choose the magazine whose cover you want to grace. Then, hit the ‘Picture’ button and navigate to the picture you want to use. You can resize the picture according to your preferences.

The next step is to customize the magazine cover. You can add your own titles and text. You can also add pictures and text for smaller sections of the cover to give it a more ‘authentic’ feel. When you’re done, save your work, as an image file. The program also allows you to send the image as an email or print it.

This is one of those ‘fun’ programs that you can play with. Create covers of magazines featuring you, family members, or friends. Which magazine would you want to grace the cover of? Do you know of other ways to do this?

Update: The service has been discontinued. The project website is showing a file not found error, and it is likely that the project has been abandoned completely by its developers. Alternatives are available. Among them Mag My Pic to create fake magazine covers from a variety of available templates or the Windows software program U R Celeb to design custom magazine covers in minutes.

Vectormagic is a free online script provided by the University of Stanford which is capable of converting raster images to vector images. The interface was designed with usability and ease of use in mind. The user is guided thoroughly through the process, explanations help him understand each step in the process.

The conversion begins by uploading a raster image to the website. If the image is to large it will be automatically reduced to one Megapixel. A first analysis is suggesting an image classification automatically which is spot on most of the times. The user has to select a quality level of the image which is done by comparing the three settings he can choose from with a zoomed in part of the image he uploaded.

After that the amount of colors have to be selected. The choice is either 12 or less colors or more than 12 colors. Once that is done the image will be automatically vectorized and the result will be displayed in a frame next to the original image.

It is possible to adjust all the settings and render the image again if the output is not looking well. Results can also be edited manually to correct segmentation mistakes.

Fixpicture, which seems to be affiliated with the great image viewer XNView, is such a online script that lets you easily convert and resize images in a matter of seconds. The service supports nearly 400 image formats, provides a flash (not working at the time of writing) and html version and translations for several languages.

The size restriction for images is three megabytes which should be enough under most circumstances. I would not be able to download high quality images made with my digital camera Casio Exilim EX-Z700 with 7.2 Megapixel which creates images that have a size of more than four Megabyte.

It is possible to use some of the default resize options or define a custom size. The maximum is 1000 pixels which is not that much either but enough for web publishers for instance.

The only mandatory option is the output quality which can be selected to be good, better or best and the output format with the choice between jpg, png, tiff, pdf, bmp and gif.

Fixpicture homepage

Text on the other hand can be resized quite easily to adapt to certain resolutions. Resizing images can also be problematic because they can easily look distorted or out of proportions when you do so. This new technique uses a system to determine the importance of pixels in an image and remove or resize the least important ones first.

This makes it possible to manipulate images without losing image quality or sharpness at all. Some tools can be used to mark spots on the image as important – faces for instance – or unimportant to further increase the quality of the resized image. Take a look at the demonstration video to get a closer look at this incredible technique.

via: OhGizmo!

I only have paint at work which is a basic image manipulation program that supports only a few image formats. The only way to resize images for a forum for instance would be with an online converter. The second would be for users who have problems using a software that is able to do it. The online method is easy and requires little user input to use.

It takes five steps to resize an image, they are:

1. Browse your computer and select an image
2. Select the maximum image size from predefined formats.
3. Apply special effects (optional)
4. Set Compression level
5. Click Resize

This is very easy even for novice users. If you are looking for something like this bookmark it. Got other nice little sites that do similar things ? Let me know.