gHacks technology news » image manipulation

Digital Image Processing Software

Martin — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 08:58:10 +0000

Digital Image Tool is a free digital image processing software that has been specifically designed to batch process images. The developers state that it is a portable software program although it is only supplied as an installer which is somewhat confusing. It is likely that the software can be copied anywhere after the initial installation but it would probably be better if a portable version of the software program would be offered on the developer’s homepage as well.

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.

Tags: digital image processing, digital image tool, image manipulation, image processing, photos, windows software

Enlarge Photos With Smilla Enlarger

Martin — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:16:51 +0000

Hundreds of different solutions exist to reduce the resolution of photos. These solutions are available as software programs but also online services. Quality is usually not an issue when reducing the resolution of a photo. It does becomes problematic on the other hand to find a solid computer program to enlarge photos. Enlarging photos meaning to increase the resolution of the photo so that it becomes available in a higher resolution. This can be very useful in situations where low resolution photos have been created by a digital camera or cell phone.

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.

Tags: enlarge images, enlarge photos, image manipulation, Open Source, photo manipulation, photos, portable software, smilla Enlarger, windows software

Linux Tips: Create an unfilled circle in The GIMP

Jack Wallen — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:57:25 +0000

I love The GIMP. I use it every day for many different things. I know The GIMP well and have little problem using any aspect of this image manipulation program. There is one task, however, that always throws me for a loop when I have to undertake it: Creating an unfilled circle. You would think it a simple task. Click a tool, drag the tool to create the circle you want, and create the circle. That works well if you are creating a filled circle. But what if the circle you want to create looks more like “O” than a large “.”? Well for that you have to take a few steps to complete your “O”. Oh sure you could just use the text tool and create an unfilled circle using the “O” character – but doing this requires you 1) find the right font and 2) choose the precise size.

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.

Tags: circles, graphics, image manipulation, The GIMP

Using The GIMP With Fewer Windows

Jack Wallen — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:05:31 +0000

After only a couple of articles about The GIMP it is clear there are many users that are still unhappy with the interface. With that in mind I thought I would help users see how simple it is to clean up the interface to make usage even easier.

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.

Tags: GIMP 2.4, graphics, graphics software, image manipulation, Linux, The GIMP, user interface

Photo Filter Software

Martin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:43:27 +0000

Photofiltre is a professional looking image retouching program. It comes with the usual set of photo editing tools but the real strength of the software program lies in its image filtering and image manipulation filters.

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.

Tags: filter images, image manipulation, image-editing, photo filter, photo filters, photofiltre, windows software

Make Your Own Magazine Cover with Magmypic

Cheryl — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 15:40:43 +0000

Yesterday, I posted about the software U.R.Celeb, which allowed people to create personalized covers of popular magazines. Later on, I found a website that can do the same thing.

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?

Tags: image manipulation, internet, magazine cover, magmypic

Put Your Face on the Cover of Time Magazine

Cheryl — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:23:39 +0000

Interesting title isn’t it? What if you could put yourself on the cover of not only TIME but every major magazine in the world? For example, you could grace the cover of People magazine as one of sexiest people alive!

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 readymade 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?

Tags: image manipulation, magazine cover, photoshop

Transform Images into Vector Images

Martin — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:51:23 +0000

Using vector images has many advantages over using raster images. While raster images are based on pixels vector images are based on geometric figures which means that they can be scaled without making the image blurry or pixelated.

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.

Tags: image editor, image manipulation, vector images

Fixpicture Resize and Convert Images Online

Martin — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 14:31:08 +0000

I sometimes try to write articles at work and run into problems when I want to add images to the article and have to resize the images to make them fit into my website. We only have Microsoft Paint at work which is crap if you want to resize images and save them in a compressed format which means that I have to rely on online services to complete the task.

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

Tags: fixpicture, image manipulation, images, online image resize, thumbnail generator, xnview

Smart Image Resizing and Manipulation

Martin — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 11:22:28 +0000

It does not happen very often that I see a demonstration of a new technique and say something like “Wow, give it to me, NOW!” immediately after it finishes. This is one of the times that it actually happened. The real problem with images on websites is that they are more or less static. The webmaster selected a size for the image and this is the size that you see when you visit the page and it does not matter if you have a very small screen or a big one.

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!

Tags: image manipulation, image resizing, images, smart image resize

Resize images online

Martin — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 21:36:08 +0000

Most readers might think that it does not make sense to resize images online if you have a image viewer or image manipulation software installed which is able to perform the same task faster and without privacy concerns. I can only think of two uses where resizing images online would make sense.

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:

Browse your computer and select an image
Select the maximum image size from predefined formats.
Apply special effects (optional)
Set Compression level
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.

Tags: image manipulation, images, resize images

gHacks technology news » image manipulation

Digital Image Processing Software

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