If you are not, you do not really have that much choice at all. Perfect365, a free makeover software for Windows and Apple iOS devices, could be a solution.

You are asked to load a portrait when you first start the application. You can alternatively use one of the sample photos to test the program’s functionality.

The portrait is displayed in the middle of the interface once it has been loaded. It is then possible to use one of the modification profiles or filters on the left, or make changes to particular areas of the face on the right side.

The application ships with 21 instant looks that can be applied with a single click. This ranges from organic, natural and pure looks to a wide variety of looks that are only interesting to modify female portraits as they add eyeliners or lipsticks among other things. If you ever wanted to find out how you look with red lipstick, eyeliners and colored contacts, it is your chance to find out.

The options on the right are very extensive. They are displayed in groups like skin, eyes or mouth. Each group lists multiple modifications that can be made to the portrait. From removing blemishes or circles to whitening the skin or teeth, lifting the cheeks, enhancing the nose or deepening the smile. Most of the options are configured with sliders that range from 0 to 100. checkmarks indicate which modifications are currently active.

If you upload your own photo you should click on Adjust key points first to make sure that the program uses the right proportions. You are basically asked to click on certain locations like the ears, eyes, mouth or nose.

Once you are satisfied with your modifications you can print the photo, share it on social networking sites or save it to the local computer. The free version supports a maximum resolution of 600×600 which should be fine for profile photos or photos on most websites.

Interested users can check out the Perfect365 website for additional information and download options. The program is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.

Photo hosting is one of the most popular online services on today’s Internet. The most popular sites like Flickr, Google Picasa or Photobucket limited the free online space to a few Gigabytes at the most.

With the introduction of Google+ comes a change that could change the photo hosting landscape significantly. Google announced today that Picasa is now offering unlimited photo hosting for all of its users.

Here is how it looks:

• Google+ users: 1 GB of free storage space, photos of a maximum dimension of 2048×2048 do not count against the limit. This basically means that Google+ users can upload as many photos to Picasa as they want, as long as the photos do not exceed that resolution.
• Google users: Users without a Google+ account get the same free storage space but a lower maximum resolution that users can upload for free. The resolution that does not count against their photo hosting space if the maximum resolution is not larger than 800×800 pixels.

All photos that are uploaded to Google+ by the user are automatically resized to 2048×2048 on their longest edge. Both accounts have in common that videos of a playtime of 15 minutes or less do not count against the storage space as well.

Users who reach the storage limitation of their Picasa account will have their photos automatically resized so that they do not count against the storage limit.

Another interesting aspect is that this is not restricted solely to Picasa. All Google products and services that allow you to upload videos and photos benefit from the same rules. This includes blogger or Google Maps for instance.

The big question is this. Is the move towards unlimited photo hosting space a try to get Google account owners to switch to Google+, or is it less related? The thing that speaks against a promotional feature is the fact that users cannot simply sign up for a Google+ account at this point in time, as it is invite only. The thing that speaks for it is the close proximity to the Google+ launch, and the fact that Google needs to make their service attractive as possible to be able to compete with the heavyweight Facebook.

What’s your take on this?

Update: PhotoBucket got rid of photo hosting space restrictions exactly a month ago.

But DigiKam is not just outstanding at managing your photo collections. DigiKam also excels at importing digital photos in from your camera. It has an easy to use Wizard to set up your camera and can auto-detect hundreds of different makes/models of cameras. In this article I will show you how to install DigiKam as well as walk you through the process of importing your photos into DigiKam.

Installation

I am going to show you how to install DigiKam on Ubuntu. The installation will work just fine on other distributions, but I have found the camera detection and interaction to be far superior in Ubuntu (10.04 is the release I am using). In order to install DigiKam on Ubuntu, follow these steps:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install digikam.
3. Type your sudo password and hit Enter.
4. Accept any dependencies necessary.
5. What for the installation to finish.
6. Close out your terminal.

Congratulations, you are now ready to use DigiKam.

First use

When you fire up DigiKam for the first time you will have to walk through a very simple set up wizard. This wizard will have you set such options as: Directory for pictures to be uploaded, If you want raw data to be uploaded, if you want to include metadata assigned by DigiKam, if you want reduced images displayed, etc. These options depend upon your needs, so set them to suit.

Once you have finished the Wizard, you will need to add your camera.

Adding your camera

Figure 1

You can add more than one camera to DigiKam. To add your first camera go ahead and plug the camera in and then click Import > Cameras > Add Camera Manually. When you do this a new window will open where you can either add the camera manually or try to Auto-Detect your camera.

Make sure your camera is on (and in the proper mode for interaction with your PC) and click the Auto-Detect button. DigiKam shouldn’t have any problem detecting your camera. If it does, you will have to add it manually. This is very simple. Just click the Add button and complete the information shown in Figure 2.

As you can see (in Figure 2) DigiKam supports a HUGE number of cameras. You will also need to add a mount point for the camera. On the off-chance you have to add your camera manually you will probably have to check your dmesg output to find out how the camera is recognized so you can manually mount the camera. Fortunately, DigiKam is very good at auto-detecting cameras.

Importing photos

Figure 3

Now that you have your camera added, importing photos is the easy part. Just click Import > Cameras > YOUR CAMERA (Where YOUR CAMERA is the name of the camera you added) and a new window will open displaying all of the images on your camera (see Figure 3).

Go through and select the photos you want to import and then click the Download button. In the next window you will have the opportunity to create a new Album. Depending upon the size (and number) of your photos, this can take some time. Once the import is complete, you will then be able to view, tag, rate, edit, open with, and much more.

Final thoughts

DigiKam is one of the finest photo management tools available for the Linux operating system. If you tend to take a lot of photos and need a simple way to manage them, DigiKam might be your best bet.

Media Cope is a free media converter that supports photo, audio and video conversions and then some. The application uses tabs for the different program options.

free media converter

• Audio / Video Player – it is possible to play audio and video files right into the program’s interface. Supports the most popular file formats and offers several additional features like creating screenshots, changing the ratio or watching a video frame by frame.
• Audio / Video Cutter – Ability to cut audio and video files and save the results in all supported file formats.
• Audio Converter – Convert audio files in batch mode. All popular audio formats including mp3, flac and aac supported.
• Video Converter – Convert videos directly into different formats, popular video formats like avi, mpg, wmv, flv, 3gp and mkv supported
• Photo Cutter – Load a photo into the program interface and draw a rectangle around the area that should be saved as a separate image. Jpg, gif and png supported among other formats.
• Photo Resizer / Converter – Lets the user convert photos in batch mode. The same output formats are available, options to select a specific resolution, custom resolution, and to cut or stretch the photos to make them fit.
• Slide Show – Create a photo slide show, add photos and music, click go to start the slideshow.

Media Cope’s strength is its versatility. It could use advanced quality settings in the video and audio categories, as it is only possible to select a quality level but not the bitrate and other related settings.

The software is a solid free media converter otherwise, download available from the developer’s website, should be compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems. Tested on Windows 7 Pro.

Video playback and conversions did not seem to work in the current version of Media Cope, the error Problem playing the file was displayed trying to play the file while video conversions resulted in a 0-byte file.

This is something that the developer’s should fix immediately.

But there are also extensions that are created by Google and Slideshow is one of them. Slideshow is an excellent extension for viewing image and photo slide shows on the Internet. The extension is currently compatible with the following four popular photo hosting websites: Flickr, Google Picasa, Facebook and Google Images.

The slide show extension will automatically recognize additional photos on pages on the supported websites and display those photos in a thumbnail bar at the bottom of the screen. A click on any of the thumbnails will load the photo in the slideshow view. This recognition process takes a while depending on the number of photos found on the website.

The photo slide show extension will also display a slideshow icon in the Google Chrome address bar that indicates that a slideshow can be opened that displays the photos hosted on that page.

The user viewing the slideshow can load new photos with the mouse by clicking on them in the thumbnail bar at the bottom of the screen. It is furthermore possible to use the left and right cursor keys on the computer keyboard to navigate in the slide show instead.

A click on the x icon next to the image name will close the slideshow and return the user to the page the slideshow was launched on. Slideshow is an interesting extension for the Google Chrome web browser, especially for users who regularly visit at least one of the supported websites. The photo slide show extension is comfortable to work with. Only the lack of supported photo hosting websites and the delay until the slideshow controls are displayed are something that Google should be working on.

Slideshow for Google Chrome is compatible with version 4 of the web browser. The extension can be downloaded from the Google Chrome website.

Update: The Chrome Photo Slide Show extension is no longer available on the official web site. A alternative is the Slideshow for Facebook, Flickr, Google Images extension which is also available at the web store.

All that needs to be done is to open a photo on the Flickr website. You notice the information that are posted on the same page like comments by other Flickr users or groups the photo has been added to. If you scroll down the page you will eventually come to a section called Additional Information in the right sidebar of the website.

This section contains information about the location and date the photo was taken, the number of views and the digital camera. The Taken With A [digital camera model] row will provide the information for registered users and guests alike. This seems actually like a very good way of researching a digital camera before purchasing it. If you got a few models that you would like to compare you can go to Flickr and check out the Camera Finder section of the site.

This section lists the most popular cameras used by Flickr users and provides information about many other digital cameras and brands as well.

Photos can be added by dragging and dropping them into the program interface or by using the file browser which offers a handy option to add all images located in a folder. Each photo is displayed with its name and size in the interface. The photo editing options are located in the right sidebar and allow a user to resize, convert, watermark or rename the photos that have been added.

Several presets are available in the resizing section that allow the user to resize the photos to match devices like iPods or iPhones but also websites like Twitter or Facebook. It is also possible to select a custom size for the images. The photo conversion supports the most common image formats that include jpg and png among others.

A few photo editing options can be changed in the program’s settings. This ranges from the opacity level of the watermarks to the compression level of the jpg images. Image Tuner (via Neowin) is a handy photo editing software that’s especially useful to batch process photos on the local computer system.

The digital photo software will automatically recognize new digital photos that get added to monitored directories on the computer system. This is an excellent way of monitoring the default locations that photos from the digital camera get synced in. All photos will be displayed by default in the interface as thumbnails. It is possible to enter a full screen view mode for images by double-clicking them. Other options that are accessible from the interface are image rotation and deletion.

Two interesting additional features of the photo software are photo groups and the extensive filters that are offered. Photos can be added to groups by the user. Groups can be created freely by the user to add photos to them. Possibilities include parties, holidays and basically anything that the user can think of.

The extensive filter list makes it possible to filter the digital photos in various ways including time, orientation, photo content, dominant colors, textual filters or location based. The detailed view contains some additional features like Flickr, Picasa or SmugMug upload capabilities, setting images as wallpapers or printing photos. All in all a very clever great looking photo software.

The developer website is no longer working, we have taken the liberty to upload the software to our servers from where you can download Photology.

Shape Collage can be used to create various pre-configured sahpes like hearts, rectangles or circles but also custom shapes like text entered by the user or a custom drawing which can be created from within the photo collage software easily. Some of the shapes require do obviously require more photos than others. Take for example a circle and the letters Ghacks.

Additional options include the customization of the background which can be a solid background color, transparent or a selected photo. It is furthermore possible to create a border around the photo collage, select a size for the final image, pick a photo size, select the number of photos that should be used and define the photo spacing.

Shape Collage is a very sophisticated easy to use software program to create photo collages. It comes with all the features expected and provides access to some interesting unique features that most other photo collage applications are not offering.

The software Downloadr is more than just a tool to backup Flickr accounts. It can perform a search for photos on Flickr using fulltext, users, tags, places, sets, dates, groups and favorites. It can display a maximum of 250 photos per page and download all selected photos at once.

Only Creative Commons photos are searched by default but that option can be disabled in the search form. The easiest way to backup Flickr accounts would be to enter the username and download all photos that are found. This is obviously only working if the user has made all photos publicly available. Private photos cannot be downloaded this way.

There is however another option to download all photos of a Flickr account. Downloadr comes with the means to authenticate a user. Once a user has been authenticated by providing his login details the function Complete Backup can be selected.

This option will download all photos from the authenticated Flickr account to the local computer. The pictures will be downloaded in one go and the program handles even large amounts of photos fine.

The download of the software program will download a file called updatr which has to be executed to download the rest of the program files. Downloadr itself is a portable software program requiring the Microsoft .net Framework.

It’s not everyone’s favorite to crawl through source codes and I would like to introduce an easier way to achieve the same effect. I only tested it with Firefox 2 and Firefox 3, can’t really comment about the other browsers.

All you need to do is make use of the Page Info menu that can be accessed by right-clicking on the page with the image. Page Info has a media tab that lists all media files on that page including, yes you guessed that one right, the image that is being displayed on that page.

All that’s left to be done is to find the correct image and click on the Save As button. Now, before someone (again) comes along and tells me that this is stealing I would like to inform him that the image gets downloaded automatically by the browser cache as well and that it therefor already exists on the computer.

If users want to protect their Flickr photos they should either make them private, stop uploading them at all or upload them in a resolution that they are comfortable with that it gets downloaded.

Most users prefer an automatic solution where they only have to select the images that they want to include. The whole coding would be done by the application which has the advantage that it’s faster and more convenient.

Moba Photo provides such a solution for the photo enthusiast. The photo software provides four functions: Batch photo resizing, batch picture editing, batch picture renamer and finally the digital gallery creator. The first three are useful for editing the photos before the gallery is created. Each of the three image manipulation sections provides a user friendly interface.

The image resizer for instance provides four predefined formats for printing, wallpapers, online publishing and CD / DVD publishing next to the option to select custom sizes for the photos.

The image gallery provides a similar easy to use interface. The user needs to pick the images that he wants to add to the gallery. That’s the bare minimum and sufficient to create the gallery. He can change a few optional parameters like page title, include picture names or to provide a download all pictures link. The new gallery can be uploaded right from the application to a ftp server.

A click on an image opens the image in front of the other images on the same website. It looks pretty good for a free gallery, don’t you think ?

The process of creating the photo mosaic could not be easier. Three steps are needed to create it. The user uploads the image that he wants to create a mosaic from in the first step. The second step provides several themed photo galleries like Tokyo, Bikinis and Faces. One photo gallery is selected to create the photo mosaic. The third step finally processes the image and creates the photo mosaic.

The user has to enter his email address because the information about the photo will be send to this email address. The @ sign has to be entered as if your keyboard would be using an English layout, that is Shift 2 for the @ sign.

The server seems to be a bit overrun currently and returns a bad bad message during conversion frequently. The only tip that I have is to either try again at a later time, try another image or reduce the output size of the image.

The next step would be to create an account at mycast.orb.com. When that is done you can start configuring the service at the server. Right-click the icon that should appear in the system tray and select Configuration. Select the media tab and add folders of videos, music, photos and documents that you want to access with another internet device. You may add other users who are allowed to view your media files.

Once everything is setup you simply open the mycast.orb.com website and login. After that you can browse the contents that the server streams and view it on the other device. A real simple but effective system. I was able to view movies using my Wii that way. You can also stream tv if you have a video card that supports it. I don’t think it makes that much sense to stream tv to my wii but it would be nice if you are using a notebook for instance.

Take a look at the following youtube video which demonstrates orb used by a Nintendo Wii.

Please note that you need a broadband connection to do this kind of things. Some folders are automatically added (my documents). If you do not want this make sure to remove them from the configurations menu.

The article looks at web applications that enable you to search the site, at plugins for browsers and at external tools. Web applications and browser plugins clearly make the majority of search possibilities.

Web applications:

flickr.com

This one is the most obvious, flickr has a search option build in their starting page, simply enter a tag you would like to find and it displays the results as thumbnails with suggestions for related keywords. Pretty solid results and fast. They also have a advanced search. and a website that displays popular tags.

Associator

Enter a tag and associated tags are displayed.

Flickr random photo browser

Displays six random images every time the page is reloaded.

Lightweight flickr Viewer

Postcard Browser

From the same website as the related tag browser, makes the images look like postcards.

Related tag browser

They are hosting the flickr related tag browser, you enter a search term, click go and you see a thumbnailed results page with related tags forming a circle around them. Nice flash site.

Plugins, Extensions and Bookmarklets:

Flickrfox

A Firefox extension that lets you browse your photostreams in the firefox sidebar.

Flickr Multi-Tag Search Bookmarklets

Search for any or all of the tags you enter using this fine bookmarklet.

Flickr search plugin for Firefox

This is a simple search plugin for your Firefox browser, that allows you to quickly search the public available Flickr tags.

Greasemonkey scripts

Great comprehensive listing of greasemonkey flickr scripts.

Search Plugin:Flickr

Mozilla Search Plugins for Flickr, find people, find tags, find groups and find help are available.

External Tools:

Flickr Auto Downloader

Download photos from specified user or interesting photos, specify size and location to save them. Neat freeware tool for windows.

FlickrDown

Requires Net 2.0, specify a username, tool displays all images and option to download them.

Flickr Explorer

Sourceforge project, photo mass downloader.

Flickr Screensaver

Requires net 1.1., changes your screensavers image with flickr images every 15 seconds.

Flickr Wallpapers

Changes your wallpaper with photos from the flickr website using tags you specified.