Image Processing Software

TKexe Kalendar enables the creation of photo calendars of any size. Customization is very easy: position the elements by dragging them with the mouse and change the settings of any element by double-clicking it. 20 images can be added to a month. You can rotate the images and add special effects to them. Weeks can start on Sunday or Monday, and you can add your personal events. Each calendar page can be customized separately, but the settings can be applied for all months. Create calendars in any language. Select national holidays from 10 countries. Save your customized calendar to an image file or print it to paper. The software is available in English, German, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Hungarian, Dutch, Polish, Romanian and French.
Here is the Download Link. The official web-site of the program: http://www.tkexe.de/kalender/

After the start of the program there appears a window in which the program asks the user to open an existing calendar file or create a new one. If you can’t name the file directly you can browse files on your PC in search of the needed calendar file. The program always shows in the window the name and full path of the last opened calendar file. If you choose creating a new calendar file the program asks you for name of this file (*.mdb-files) and after that asks to set printing characteristics of the file: print by print store or on local printer, match print size to paper size or use fixed print size, width and height in pixels. There is a button prompting for recommended sizes (for example, A4). Then the program asks you about the period of the calendar. By default it is the current year (months from 0 - at the cover - to 12). This period can be changed later. Then the program offers to use some template for the calendar file out of the list of template files. You are able to use a selected template or not use any of them at all. After that the program opens a calendar file in the main window.
The calendar is shown in the main window as it is ready for printing. You are able to change its appearance and characteristics.
if you double click on the image in the calendar the program opens the window to change it or its characteristics. You are able to replace the current image in the calendar on some other one, apply special effect to the current image (transparency, rounded corners, etc), to set size and position of the image in the calendar. There is a check-box allowing to apply all settings for all months.
By default the the inscription (legend) on the calendar is the prompt “Double click here to insert text”. If you double click on the text there opens a window allowing to change the text of the legend and its characteristics. You are able to print your own text, to set the font for it from the list of system fonts, to select a font script (for example, Western or Cyrillic, etc), to set font size, style and other font characteristics. You can also change the size of the legend and its location. If the legend has more than one line you can choose the type of text alignment in the textbox.
If you double click on the name of the month the program opens a window allowing you to set a month for the calendar (and year). After choosing the month you can change the name of that month period as you wish. By default it is like January 2007, February 2007, etc. For example you can type the name of the month in your native language. The program treats the name of the month like the legend of the calendar so you can set some other textbox characteristics like text alignment, etc.
If you double click on day names there opens a window allowing you to change their characteristics. Especially useful is the checkbox Use user-defined names allowing you to name days of the week as it is accepted in your native language.
If you double click on day numbers the program opens a window allowing you to set calendar characteristics for days. For example, you can mark the selected day as Work day, or Free day, or Special day. You can change day notation and to print special text under the number of the day. And more.

The Main Menu of the program has six options: File, View, Settings, Items, Extras and ?.
The option ? stands for Help popup. It has the option for short on-line Help, the standard option About, as well as options for Internet update and voluntary donation for the developer of the program.

The option File stands for a File Dialog popup. You can open and close calendar files, export them in JPEG format (each month of the calendar period is exported to separate .jpg file), and save the current image of the calendar to file in BMP, JPEG or PNG format. There is an option Print in the popup allowing you to print the selected month of the calendar on paper. And finally there is an option Exit for cancelling the program execution and quitting the program.

The option Settings unites various settings of the program. The most important are Language… (allows to change the language of the program; by default it is English), Public holidays… (it shows a screen form for the public holidays database in Microsoft Access format) and Special days… (for user-defined special days database also in Microsoft Access format).

The option Items stands for the Items popup with options for editing calendar items (the image, legend, name of the month, day numbers). The process of editing is discussed above.

Finally, there is an option Extras . It allows you to copy settings of the current year to another year and use the current calendar file as a template for future use.

    FxFoto from Triscape is a photo finishing program and very enhanced tool to organize, archive, enhance, and create collages with digital photos.
    It can do the following:

• Automatically scans and organizes all your photos.
• Easily transfer photos from your digital camera.
• Fix and improve photos with a variety of simple tools.
• Be creative with frames, text, drawings, effects and more.
• Make multi-photo collages, scrapbook pages and slide shows.
• E-mail, Upload, Print, Burn CD’s, Create Slide Shows.

    FxFoto’s really unique user interface - among other photo finishing tools - allows you to instantly browse and locate ALL your photos. This avoids the tedium of having to open topics to preview and locate photos, as in other photo software. Especially useful when you may have hundreds of topics.

You can:

• Organize your photos by topic.
• View, scroll and size thumbnails in the convenient browser pane.
• Easy Timeline with one-click access to all your photo folders.
• Open and collapse thumbnails to view one topic at a time.
• Search and sort photos by assigned keywords or date taken.
• Move photos between topics or reorder by simply dragging them.
• Combine photos into encapsulated collages and slide shows.
• Archive photo folders to CD-ROM for safe keeping or to save space

Here is a typical view of a picture folder in FxFoto:

    FxFoto automatically imports photos from virtually all digital cameras. Or import from CD-ROM, camera memory cards and other devices.
    Preview and choose the photos to transfer and/or those to erase from camera memory. Apply rotation and keywords to photos.
    Create a new folder for each “roll of film” or merge new photos into an existing folder.

    Automatically improve dark or over-exposed photos. Remove red eye and blemishes with a click of the mouse. Other easy and powerful tools include balance controls (brightness, contrast, gamma, hue, saturation, color balance), clone brush (for editing out unwanted features or duplicating desirable ones), flood color (change background colors and transparency), sharpen or soften filters, texture effects, and white balance.
    There is even a great Improve Image Area tool to touch up just the spots that are too dark or light.

Here is a snapshot of the Improve Image Area tool:

    FxFoto makes it easy to get impressive photo effects. Crop photos with rectangles, ovals, irregular shapes, or choose from a library of fun crop patterns. Crop to fixed aspect ratios. Feather cropped edges for a professional look.
    Choose from a large variety of frame effects including 3D, skins, shadows, oval cutouts, outlines and more. Fit the frame to the photo or adjust the visible photo within realistic frames.
Examples of frame effects:

    Add text around or over your photos with fonts, colors, anti-aliasing, and a number of special effects such as drop shadow, 3D, cutout and outlined text. FxFoto can even automatically create text dialog balloons for your photos!
    Choose from dozens of creative Deluxe Edition Filter Effects such as Oil Painting, Pen & Wash, Sketch, Embossed, Motion, Tilting, Sphere, Swirl, Pixelize, Wash Out, Posterize, Tint, Sepia, Defocus, Spotlighting, Despeckle and much more.
    Add clipart and scrapbook embellishments and backgrounds to your collages. Use partial transparency in overlaid photos and images. Apply shadows under images. Easily move, resize and rotate photos, images and text.
    You even can draw over, under and around your photos with a variety of pens and colors.
    The FxFoto Deluxe Edition makes it easy to combine photographs into memorable collages, scrapbook pages and slide shows.
    Rotate photos to any angle and place them over, under and around each other as you please on any size page. Annotate any or all with frames, text and/or drawing.
    Choose from a library of scalable accent bars and boxes. Create custom buttons with mouse-over effects and a variety of possible actions.
    Layout collage pages for printing in inches or cm. Or create on a photo tour around photos by animating the viewer from place to place.

An example of collage made in the utility:

But you must take into account that some special effects are not available in full in the freeware version of the program! Some effects are available or accessible only in trial mode - i.e. you can see the result on the screen but can’t print, export, upload or save the result image/images to a disk.
If you choose applying such an effect the program brings out a special warning message window.

    FxFoto prints photos, annotated photos, collages and scrapbook pages in a variety of formats and sizes.
    Even make your own greeting cards!
    Email photos and annotated photos. FxFoto automatically deresoves e-mailed photos for fast transfer.
    FxFoto’s Upload Wizard makes it easy to send photos, annotated photos and even multi-photo collages to online photo printing and sharing services. You can optionally deresolve photos for faster uploading.
    Read and save image files in popular formats including JPEG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, and read only GID or WMF.
    FxFoto Deluxe Edition also creates collage slide shows that you can save, e-mail or record to CD-ROM. CD slide shows automatically play on any Windows PC
Here is a snapshot of the FxFoto taskbar:

    The program exists in both freeware and commercial versions.
    You can down load a free version of the program at the Download link. Or you can download only a free FxFoto viewer at the Download Viewer Link.

    The developer supports an official site for FxFoto: www.fxfoto.com There is a link on the developer’s web-site for the purchasing commercial DeLuxe version of the application.
There is also as an example the gallery of images created by FxFoto on the web-site: FxFoto Gallery

    This is paint and animation software from Dan Ritchie. The program is available in two version - freeware and commercial. Downloading of the application is available at the Web-page Download Page. Here is the link for downloading free version. Commercial version of the application can be dowloaded here. Here is The official Web-site of the developer.

    This program is suited for creative individuals with desire to paint - not simply to re-finish pictures
    When you start the application the program opens a window in which you set the size of the buffer size for a picture in pixels - from 160×120 up to 1920×1080. After setting the canvas size the program creates a blank image.

    On the right in the Main window is located the application Toolbar. It contains instruments for painting (Brushes), various selecting tools, color palettes, etc.

    The Main Menu of the application has eight options: File, Buffer, Brush, Filter, Alpha, Animation, Window, Help.
    The option Help opens a small Help popup consisting of only two options: About Project Dogwaffe… (opens the window About) and Keyboard shortcut help…. There are no other on-line help in the application. But if you want help for the program you can receive abundant information at the official site. There are plenty of options for downloading various help files either in HTM-format or in PDF-format. Simply open DogWaffe FAQ. There you can find a PDF help version, an HTM-Help version as a ZIP-file, a Quick Reference Guide in the Windows Help format and much more. There are plenty of links to other sites of the DogWaffe community. Besides that there is a Gallery of DogWaffe images at the official Web-site of the developer. There are a number of forums for DogWaffe users. The links to these forums you can get here. And here is a Message Board for the DogWaffe Yahoo-community in the Web.

    The option File opens File Dialog. This popup has the following options: New - for creating a new image, Open… - for opening an existing image, Import…, Save… - for saving images to a disk, Export…, Print Properties… - allows setting properties for printing, Print… - for printing images through the selected printer, Prefs - for setting preferences working with the application, and Quit - cancelling the program execution and quitting the application.
    The free version of the application (DogWaffe proper) is specifically tailored to work only with two image formats: Targa and Bitmap (BMP). This is a serious shortcoming of the program. Other image formats (especially one of the most popular - JPEG) are supported only in the commersial version of the program (which has the name PD Pro). The options Import… and Export… open windows for executing plugins for the application.

    The option Buffer of the Main Menu opens in essence Edit Dialog. This popup contains standard editing options of undoing/redoing changes (Undo and Redo), clearing the image buffer - i.e. the currently opened image - Clear, temporary storing the image buffer - Store buffer… (generally speaking, the DogWaffe is a dedicated painting program, you work on one image at a time; however, you can store a buffer or a number of buffers to access at any time later). There is a Zoom option with the small submenu for zooming options. There is a group of options dealing with the stored image buffers: Swap buffers, Copy to swap, etc. The are standard options for flipping (Flip) and rotating (Rotate) images, cropping the current image to a selection (Crop to selection). There are some other editing options (Fill, Paint fill, Greyscale, Invert, etc). The option Buffer info… brings out a small information window about the current image buffer (Image width and height in pixels, and buffer memory size).

    The option Brush deals with application brushes. There are three types of brushes in the program: Internal, Custom and the Anti-Aliased Pen. The Anti-Aliased Pen (AA Pen) allows you to get images without undesirable segmentation, always with rounded shapes. An Internal Brush is a small image you get in the Brush panel and use later as a brush There are a number of such images in the application. The images used as internal brushes are limited in size (only 35 x 35 pixels). You can select the needed brush from the Brush panel just right-clicking on the Brush icon in the toolbar. You can create your own Brush sets by creating similar images and placing them in a single directory. Loading new Brush sets is being done by clicking a Load Set button on the bottom of the Brush images panel or by selecting the option Open… in the Brush popup of the Main Menu. Accordingly, the option Save… in the Brush popup allows you to save the current brush set to a disk in the selected directory for a later use. There are usually some 40 images 35 by 35 pixels in size in such directories. The Custom brushes don’t have the limitation of 35 by 35 pixels in size. The options Flip and Rotate in the Brush popup allows flipping and rotating the currently selected brush.
    The option Filter of the Main Menu opens a Filter popup. There are a lot of internal image filters in the application. And besides that there is the Filter plugin… option allowing to execute an external filter plugin. All the internal filters are extensively covered in the application manuals; there you can find appropriate samples, too.
    The option Alpha deal with so-called Alpha-channel. The Alpha-channel is some greyscale image that controls the transparency for painting operations. On screen, the alpha channel is represented by a border which is animated. In other image applications the alpha-channel is usually called ‘a selection’. You can store alpha-channels (i.e. selections) for a later use.
    The option Animation allows you to create animations out of sets of images. You can Load… and Save… animations, Load sequence… of images for creating an animation and Save sequence… of images to a disk for a later use, Free the current animation from memory. In this popup there are also Animation controls… and Stroke player… allowing to play tha animation frame by frame.
    The option Window opens the Window Dialog popup of the application. This Window Manager allows to open and close toolbars, palettes and panels of the program.

Summarizing, the DogWaffe is the program for artistic painting, first of all. The work with the application is extensively covered in the tutorials.

    PhotoMosaique is a small but elegant unitility allowing to create picture mosaiques very quickly and very easily. The final image is
made of a thousand tiny images (thumbails). Unlike other similar softwares PhotoMosaique allows you to obtain a good result using very few thumbnails. However an optimum result requires big pictures and it is rather difficult to visualize the final result on the screen, this software is therefore intended more for printing.
    Downloading of the application is available at the download link for the English version and for the French version.
    The Main menu of the application consists of five options: File, Edit, Action, Options and ?.
    The option File opens a File Dialog popup. It has options Open… for image file opening, Save As… for saving the result image to a disk and Close for closing files. The File popup also supports a list of recently opened files and has the option Exit for canceling the program execution and quitting the application.
    The utility supports a lot of commonly used image formats including Bitmap, JPEG, Paintbrush, Adobe Photoshop, PNG, Windows MetaFile, Targa, GIF, TIFF and ICO, as well as Portable Map (*.pbm, *.pqm, *.ppm), SGI (*.bw, *.rgb, *.rgba, *sgi), Dr.Halo (*.cut), Alias/Wavefront (*.rla, *rpf), Autodesk (*.cel, *.pic), and the native image formats for the creator of the utility - PhotoFiltre Image (*.pfi) and PhotoFiltre Selection (*.pfs).
    The option Edit opens Edit Dialog containing standard editing options Copy, Paste and Cancel (fo cancelling the operation).
    The option Action opens a popup with three options: Create the mosaic, Image size… and Print…. With the option Create the mosaic one can create a mosaic using the original image as a template and thumbnails in the Thumbnails directory of the program as elementary pictures of the mosaic. The resulting image replaces the original image at the Main window of the application. With the option Image size… it is possible to adjust the size of the resulting image in pixels and enable/disable anti-aliasing^* and preserving aspect ratio. After making adjustments you can save them by pushing the button OK or cancel them by pushing the button Annuler (which stands for English Cancel ). The option Print allows to get a hard copy of the image. It opens a window of the Print Manager in which you could set printing options and start the proccess of printing.
    The option Options opens the Options popup containing checkable options Check size and Antialias, the option Thumbnails folder…, allowing to set the Thumbnails folder of the program; and the option Unit, which opens a small sub-popup of image size units (cm or inches).
    You could use your own thumbnail images for creating mosaics. The Thumbnails folder contains 40×40 pixel images in the format JPEG, PNG, BMP or GIF. You can replace these images by your own, you can add or substract images. The size of the thumbnail images can be from 10-15 pixels 40 pixels.
    If you set the option Check size then the program automatically enlarge the resulting image if it is too small in the process of creating the mosaic. This enlargement goes according the following table:

The automatically calculated size is a minimum value, it is often better to enlarge the image
manually for an optimum result.

^* Anti-aliasing (source: en.wikipedia.org)
    In digital signal processing, anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing aliasing (jagged or blocky patterns) when representing a high-resolution signal at a lower resolution.
    In most cases, anti-aliasing means removing data at too high a frequency to represent. When sampling is performed without removing this part of the signal, it causes undesirable artifacts.
    In signal acquisition, this is often done using an analog anti-aliasing filter to remove the out-of-band component of the input signal prior to sampling with an analog-to-digital converter.

    The option ? of the Main menu opens a small popup with three options: Information (opens a simple Help-file in text format), Official web-site, and standard option About with some information about the developer of the program.

    Pixia is a free painting and photo finishing tool originally created in Japan by Isao Maruoka. There it quickly became rather popular and after some time there appeared versions of the program in other languages including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Chinese (simplified form), Polish and Hungarian. Now there is a rather big circle of Pixia fans who help to develop Pixia, create filters and masks for it, as well as plugins.
    This pretty girl mascot represents English version of Pixia

    Here is a link to the web-page for Downloading Pixia. Here you can download Pixia in the desired language version, various plugins for it, and Help-files. It must be noted that the installer for Pixia application doesn’t include Help-files. The installer of Help is separate. Besides Help-system, the Official Web-site of Pixia has a page with links for on-line Tutorials for Pixia created by its users. Moreover, some users created their own web-sites and web-pages dedicated to Pixia; the links to these web-sites and web-pages are also at the web-page of tutorials.
    For better understanding of working with Pixia and promoting it on the official web-site for Pixia there is a Gallery containing pictures created with Pixia as imaginative examples.
    The Main menu of the application consists of only two options if there is no opened image in the utility: File and Help.
    The option File starts File Dialog. The option New… allows creating a new image. When you choose this option there appears a window for selecting properties of the new image (width, height, resolution). The option Open… is for opening an existing image through the system browser. You can open image from the Clipboard with the option Open from Clipboard. If there is a scanner or camera connected to the PC it is possible to acquire picture from it with the option from Camera or Scanner. The option Select TWAIN.. allows selecting a TWAIN source, and after selecting it you can Acquire TWAIN…. There is an option for setting Preferences for working with the application. You can Customize Tool Bar… for work. The option Exit serves for cancelling program execution. At the bottom of the File Dialog there is a list of recently opened files (program history). This list can be cleared with the option Clear History…. If there is an opened image in the application there are additional options for file saving Save and Save As…, and file closing Close.
    Pixia supports a number of image formats including Bitmap, JPEG, PNG, Photoshop, Makintosh PICT, FujiFilm Standard Format RGB, Windows Icon ICO, Adobe EPS, TIFF, Targa TGA, and native PXA. But image information such as transparency and layer information can be saved only in the native format PXA.
    The option Help of the Main menu initiates a popup with only two options: Help… F1 and About. As has been mentioned above the option Help is enabled only if there is a Help-file separately downloaded and installed.
    If there is an opened image in the Main window then the Main menu expands and contains additional options: Edit, Selection, Paint, Image, View and Window.
    The option Edit of the Main menu opens Edit Dialog. It contains standard file editing options such as Copy, Paste, Delete; options of Undo and Redo changes. You can Copy [image] from File… or paste image content to the current image from other image file (Paste from File…). With the option Copy to Partsbox… you can save the selected area of the image or the image as a whole as a new file in the picture gallery of the application. The option Paste from Partsbox… pastes images from this gallery into a new layer in the current image.
    The option Selection of the Main menu contains Selection handling options such as Select All, Select by Layer Size, Deselect, Invert Selection, Convert to New Layer and much more. There are options for saving selections to a file and loading selections from it (Load Selection… and Save Selection…). You can Flatten Selection… (enlarges selection area by a number of pixels), Slim Selection… (shrinks selection by a number of pixels), Blur Outside Selection and Blur Inside Selection, too. With the option Trim Selection you open a new canvas with the picture trimmed by selection.
    The option Paint contains options for painting. The option Fill fills the selected area with the selected color (i.e. the current color). The option Line draws a line along the edge of the selection using the pentip and the color you selected earlier. The option Tone filter… makes filling and pasting in gradation. There are options for flipping and rotating the selection or the whole image. The option Text… allows applying a text to the image using the selected font. The option Magnify magnifies part of the image and allows pixelwise editing.
    The option Image of the Main menu contains various image adjusting options. You can do Color Adjustment…, Color and Contrast…, Color Balance…, Tone Balance…, Merge Layers… and much more. The option Negative makes a negative picture from the current layer. The option Duplicate makes a complete duplicate from the current image. And more.
    The option View allows zooming in and out of the current picture; it also opens and closes windows for filters and Supplementary Settings of the image, enables and disables the grid and the ruler, as well as enables/disables displaying of the mouse pointer position.
    The option Window contains standard options handling windows within the application.
    Here is a snapshot of the Pixia Main Window:

    Under the Main menu there is the taskbar of the application; the main toolbar is located on the right side of the Main window. Parts of the toolbar can be brought out as separate toolbars. For example, you can move out the color toolbar either in the form of the set of color squares or in the form of a color circle with colors fluently turning into each other.
    In the Filters window you can select a filter for applying to the image. The actual applying of the filter is being done by pushing the Execute button in the window; you can undo tha action by pushing the button Undo.
    The toolbar of the application contains an awful lot of instruments. All the instruments can’t be shown at once so similar instruments are grouped together, and such groups can be opened and closed by pushing the button for them. Each pushing of the button changes the group of instruments in the toolbar; the selected group is indicated by its name on the button.
    In the window Supplementary Settings you can change additional settings of the picture which aren’t shown in the main menu such as Anti-Aliasing (the technique of minimizing aliasing (jagged or blocky patterns) when representing a high-resolution signal at a lower resolution) and so on.

    Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing.
    The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a small amount of C++ for installation and shell-integration related functionality.
    It must be noted that although the program itself is FreeWare but Portions Copyright belong to Microsoft Co - because the application has been based on the .NET Framework platform developed and distributed by Microsoft.
    Unlike most other freeware image editors that are, in essence, rather simple tools (simetimes they’re like student works) that mostly ignore layers, Paint.NET is rather advanced and capable to work with multilayer images.

    The Main menu of the application consists of nine options: File, Edit, View, Image, Layers, Effects, Tools, Window and Help.
    The option File opens File Dialog. The first group of options in the File Dialog popup deals with creating a new image/opening an existing image: New… - creates a new image with properties the user defines in the Image Properties window, Open… - opens an existing image file on the disk, Open Recent - allows opening the image from the list of recently opened files, and Acquire - allows acquiring the image from the system Clipboard, or from a scanner or a camera. The next group of options deals with application windows: New Window - it simply creates a new image window in the application, and Open in New Window - allows opening yet another image in a new application window. Then there are options of saving images to disk: Save and Save As. The program supports the native image format Paint.NET (*.pdn) as well as standard image formats - Bitmap, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF and TARGA.
    Then there is the option Print for printing images. The printing process is conducted with the help of the Print wizard.
    The next two options of the File Dialog actually don’t belong to the File Dialog proper. These are: Language, which sets the application interface language, and Updates, which allows checking for program updates in the Web. Basically, the application interface could be set either English or German (Deutsch). It must be noted, however, that changing of the language doesn’t come into force immediately after setting; you must restart the program execution.
    The last option of the File Dialog - Exit - cancels the program execution and quits the application.

    The option Edit of the Main menu starts Edit Dialog. The first group of options in it are options of undoing/redoing changes Undo and Redo. Then there are standard editing options such as Cut, Copy and Paste. The option Paste in to New Layer allows to paste a selection to a new layer in the image. There are options Erase Selection and Invert Selection. There are options of selecting all the content Select All and deselecting Deselect.
    The option View of the Main menu starts View Dialog which serves for changing the image size. There are various options of zooming: Zoom In, Zoom Out, Zoom to Window and Zoom to Selection; the option of restoring the actual size of the image Actual Size; the options Grid and Rulers which can be applied to the image; and the option Units allowing to change the unit of the image size (pixels, centimeters or inches). The currentrly selected and chosen unit applies to the grid and rulers.

The option Image deals with image resizing. In the Image Dialog popup there are options: Crop to Selection (allows cropping the image to the current selection if there is any), Resize… and Canvas Size… (allows to set the size of the image or canvas in current units - pixels, for example). In this popup there are also options of flipping Flip and rotating Rotate the image, and the option Flatten.

    The options Layerof the Main menu handles image layers. It allows Add New Layer, Delete Layer, Duplicate Layer, Import [layer] From File…, various Adjustments of layers, Flip or Rotate/Zoom layers. The option Layer properties… opens a window indicating the layer properties.

    The option Effects allows applying various effects to the current image or layer. Each effect in this popup is described in the application help which features image samples, too.

    The option Tools allows picking for work a needed editing/painting tool. Actually it duplicates the application toolbars.

    The option Window deals with application windows.
    The option Help opens the popup with options of Help Topics, Donate… (a link for donating money to the developers ), Send feedback or bug report and About (opens the window with some information about the program and its developers). The application Help is structured and indexed although that’s not done in Microsoft Help format. One very useful feature of the Help is providing a link to tutorials at the Paint.NET forum in the Web. Here is the link to the Paint.NET forum itself

    Under the Main menu of the application window there are two taskbars. In the application window are located its toolbars (basically these are Colours, Tools, History and Layers). You can select the current colour of the tool either from a palette or directly indicating its RGB characteristics. You can select either the color proper or a shade of grey. Hint: the Colour toolbar selects to selecting a shade of grey if you clicks a geometrical centre of the color palette. The History toolbar maintains a list of actions of the current working session. You can repeat the action once more simply by clicking on its item in the actions list. The Layers toolbar shows all the layers in the current image and allows some actions with them; buttons for actions with layers are located at the bottom of the toolbar. Each such button has on-line tip whic activates if you touches the button with mouse pointer.

    At the bottom of the Main applications window there is a status bar showing some information about current position of the mouse pointer, tips for the currently selected tool and size of the image.

    Downloading of the application is available at the web-page http://www.getpaint.net/index.html. It must be noted that the utility demands prior installing on the user’s PC .NET Framework package from Microsoft. If you don’t sure whether you have the package on your PC there is the link on the web-page for downloading the utility AND the .NET Framework package. The size of the downloadable installer is rather small for such a complex and advanced application - only 3.9 Mb. But it’s only if you’d have .NET Framework already.

    Photobie is a complete image editing software customized for photo retouching. Unlike other commercial and free image editing softwares, Photobie has its unique identity and is more like a homemade cookie. Photobie developers intend to build an easy-to-use and feature-packed tool for graphics amateurs. Although, it is not yet a perfect tool for professionals, it does contain many handy tools to help professional to achieve simple task quickly.

    Photobie is featured with an unique intuitive layer manager, which enable our users to handle multiple layers with ease for advanced image editing. It beholds a wide variety of painting tools that are crucial for photo retouching. Photobie supports Photoshop filter(.8BF) plugins, which means that our users can apply thousands of free filters to their images. Meantime, Photobie provides an advanced screen capture tool, the simpliest gif animation tool, and a photo framing tool. Photobie integrates an image directory browser with batch resize/rotate, full screen slide show features.

    Photobie was initially developed by Cheng (real name: Xuedong Chen, Ph.D. candidate at UMass Boston) as a special gift for his new baby, Cindy, in 2005. Photobie is loaded with full of Cheng’s wishes for his baby. Photobie is more than just a software, it is alive, and it grows fast as a baby. In Photobie, you will find a special flash player for kids, with which you can play a list of flash movies. Photobie developers are also currently working on a simple intuitive flash editor so that our user can create more fancy flash animation other than relatively old GIF animation.

    The Main menu of the application consists of 14 options: File, Edit, Selection, Layer, Filter, Frame, Browser, ScreenCapture, GIF_Animation, Flash, Color_Setup, Output, View and Help.

    The option Help initiates Help popup contaonong options About Fotobie (calls a window containing information about the application and its developer and how to contact him) and Acknowledgement (opens a window in which the author thanks all those who helped him by the developing the program), help links on the web FAQ and Tutorial, Photobie manual, and useful links in the Web for Photobie users (Go to Photobie.com, Go to Photobie forum and Go to Photobie Gallery).
    The options FAQ and Tutorial are Internet links; the option Photobie manual opens a help file in the Microsoft Help format.

    The option File opens a File Dialog popup. It contains options of creating a new image New, opening an existing image or a whole Image Directory Open, saving the currently selected image to a disk Save, printing the selected image Print, and cancelling the program execution and quitting the application Exit.

    The option Edit opens an Edit Dialog popup containing options: undoing/redoing changes Undo and Redo, cropping the current image to the chosen size Crop, Cut and Copy, and pasting Paste as new layer and Paste as new image.

    The option Layer opens a Layer handling popup. You can add a new layer in the image (Add a new blank layer), Make current layer new image, Layer color balance adjust, Layer rotate and much more.

    The option Filter deals with various filters which you can apply to the image and/or the layer of the image. The first option of the Filter popup Apply filters to current layer only is checkable and manages how the filter is applyed. Then there is a sub-popup of available filters in the application Embedded filters and a sub-popup Photoshop 8BF filters. This option allows loading and applying to the image of Photoshop filters (if you have Adobe Photoshop installed) as plugins.

    The option Frame allows handling the current image as a photo frame, and vice versa. The Frame popup has a link Go Photobie free frame Gallery.

    The option Browser opens an image browser embedded in the application. The browser has a taskbar in the lower part of its window with buttons for various file handling actions.

    The option ScreenCapture allows screen capturing with or without the cursor in the ScreenCapture mode of the application.

    The option GIF_Animation allows handling layers in the image as an animation. It calls a special window for animation control. In this window you can see all the frames in the .gif file, set the mode for animation (repeat or additive), set delay for changing frames in milliseconds, etc. In the animation control window you can test-mode the animation, too.

    The option Flash is rather unique for image editing software. It calls an embedded flash player designed especially for kids fun. This flash player has been a special gift of the author to his daughter

    The option Color_Setup manages color handling in the application. You can Set Current Panel Color as Global Transparent Color or Set Current Panel Color as Layer Transparent Color. You can Set the selection mask color, too.

    The option Output manages output in the GIF-format or icon-format. It calls a window in which you can set some characteristics of the output.

    The option View of the Main menu opens/closes the Layer manager and Flat toolbar view.

    In the Main window of the application there is a window of the Layer manager (if enabled in the option View of the Main menu). It allowse to see image layers and handle them. In the Layer manager window there are a taskbar with layer handling buttons, a Transparency bar control, and a table for setting layer properties. You can also enable or disable automatic layer generation.

    Under the Main menu of the application and at the left edge of it there are two taskbars of the application. The one under the Main menu contains buttons for more or less standard file handling actions and zooming, while the one on the left edge deals with specifically image editing (mainly for the choice of an editing tool).

    Downloading Photobie is available at the download link at the web-site
Download.com or directly from the site Photobie.com. But you must take into account that a photobie is not a standalone application. It is a .NET windows application, so it requires installing a .NET Framework package. You can also download it directly here. However, if you’re a Windows XP user, most likely you’ve already had .NET Framework 1.1 installed through live Windows updates. You can check it in the Windows Control Panel.

    Reflet is rather small and compact utility. It serves for one purpose only: allows to generate an animation simulating ripple effect and a reflection of the image in the water, and makes it in a simple and elegant way. It can be useful for logo animating, to decorate Web pages or just for fun. Of course, it can be used for images of stretches of water but in essence you can use any image including portraits, momuments, etc.
    Downloading of the application is avaliable at Download link. (This is an English version of the program; there is also a French version at the French version link).
    The application is downloaded in the form of the .ZIP-archive file containing the application .EXE file proper, two sample images, a simple .htm help-file, and a license .txt file. No installation as such is required. The program is ready for execution immediately after downloading.
    The Main menu of the application contains only three options: File, Options and ?.
    The option File opens File Dialog and has also only three options: Open, Export and Exit. The option Open serves for image file opening; The program works with a number of image file formats including JPEG, GIF, Windows MetaFile, TIFF, Adobe Photoshop, Bitmap, Icon files, etc. Selecting and choosing an image file for opening is being done through the Windows browser. Right after the opening the image is already reflected. The option Export allows exporting the result image in another file. If you activate this option there opens a window in which you can select an animation format, the number of used colors, what to export (an image AND a reflection, or a reflection only). There is a warning in this window that for animating Web-pages only animated GIF-format is appropriate. The standard option Exit is for cancelling the program execution and quitting the application.
    The option Options allows starting the animation (simulating rippling effect) proper and setting its characteristics. The process of animation begins after choosing the option Enter. After that this option is checked. The second activating the option Enter stops the animation;the option becomes unchecked. With the option Speed you can change the speed of the animation; with the option Type of waves you can select short, medium or long simulated waves.
    The option ? opens a Help popup containing three options. The option Information (with the F1 hotkey) opens the simple .htm help-file containing some explanation of the parameters of images available for adjustment. The option Official Web site contains a link to the Web-site of the developer. And the option About Reflet calls the standard About window containing information about the developer (Antonio Da Cruz) and links to his Web-sites.
    Under the Main menu there is a taskbar of the application. It contains three buttons for Open, Export and Start Animation actions (there are on-line tips for the buttons), as well as spinners Images and Height(%), and an option group Perspective/Regular. The option group allows to change the type of the simulation varying its appearance (it defines the movement of the waves). The Image spinner defines how many images are used for the animation (by default 5 frames). And the Height(%) spinner defines the height of the reflection in percentage to the original image (by default 90%).

This is a full-featured 32-bit Windows graphics program for image creation, viewing and manipulation. You can download different versions - commercial or trial, or freeware; see what extras UP gives you compared to other paint programs, take a look at its cool plug-in effects, register the trial version and browse the tutorials.

UP supports JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PCX, AVI (reading only), TGA, WMF/EMF, ICO (reading only), IFF/LBM and WAP BMP image formats and Twain compatible scanners. You can easily print your image, setting its size, position and orientation.

It has a flexible brush handling method which encourages creative drawing. It’s similar to what good old Deluxe Paint had, so if you’re familiar with DP, you will love Ultimate Paint. You can also retouch and enhance photos using a comprehensive set of built-in tools and plug-ins. Features include resizing, rotating, flood filling, text operations and a lot more. Comes with dozens (more than a hundred!) of cool plug-in filters, and Adobe plug-ins are also supported. All pictures are handled 24 bit.
The user interface is adjustable to the user’s experience level, thus both novice users and experts can use it conveniently.

The icons of drawing functions and the color selector can be found left to the main window. To the right there’s a fast palette for quick color storing and retrieval.
One of the unique features is that you can apply different skins to the program, even easily design your own.

There are several special tools that can only be found in high priced packages. One of them is an image optimizer. It helps you to find the best image settings for saving a particular image with the smallest possible size retaining best quality. You can compare results on-the-fly, zoom in/out particular areas to see the difference.

The navigation panel shows the image around the cursor at 100% magnification ratio which is handy if you’re working in a higher zoom and would still like to see the modifications at the original zoom factor. It also displays the entire image and the color parameters of the pixel currently under the cursor.

The Color Selection dialog is easy to use, allows both fast, intuitive and precise setting of a color. A color can be chosen by setting its RGB components (sliders) or by setting its Hue (color circle) and pointing on a color in the Saturation-Value space (color field). For HTML design the color is also represented in hexadecimal format.

The Image Browser dialog allows you to browse through the images on your hard disk. One of the unique features of Ultimate Paint is the ability to browse effects, too: you can see the thumbnails of the different filters and select the desired one.

Ultimate Paint has more than a hundred professional quality effects which is outstanding among image processing programs. Most of these plug-in effects have several adjustable parameters which gives lots of freedom to get exactly what you desire. See the preview of available effects. Most effects have instant preview (small window), and you can also preview the effect on the whole image. Each effect has a detailed help which describes its usage in detail. If you use the freeware version you must take into account that it has only 20 built-in image filters. Additionally, the freeware version doesn’t support Adobe Photoshop.

Align and resize your images interactively with one movement of the mouse or more accurately using numeric values. Add an optional title text or border around your image, and print the final design - all with the advanced print dialog of UP.

Downloading of the program is available at the Download Web-page of the developer. You can download a commercial, or trial, or freeware version of the program.
And here are Tutorials for the program.

Source: ultimatepaint.com

    This is an image editor which features an export optimizer, editable text, image slicing and image maps, selection tools, smart shapes, and image enhancement tools. This image editor is capable of working with image layers and image animations.
    The program is shipped in two versions: freeware (up to the version 6.0) and commercial (beginning from the version 8.0 and upwards). Downloading of the PhotoPlus 6.0 is available at the Download link.
    While installing the program you have two options: US Standard (Letter size paper) and UK and the rest of the world (A4 paper).
Here is the PhotoPlus web-site

    If you select the task of creating a new image, the program opens a small window requesting you to set dimensions of the image (length and width) in pixels, resolution of the picture in pixels per inch or in pixels per centimeter, as well as the type of background (white, background color, or transparent). You can set and clear the animation flag, too. After opening the image (the existing one or a blank) there appears the application toolbar in the right part of the Main window of the application.
    But even the freeware version of the program demands on-line registration. In the process of this on-line registration the installer informs you about the product identification number. You must complete the registration by typing the registration key which is supplied over the Internet. The developer of the program warns that by completing the on-line registration you give him permission to send to your e-mail box various materials about new releases, patches, etc. But you can unsubscribe later. After completion of the registration process the application is unlocked and ready for use.
    After starting the application the program brings out a window with starting options. The window has intuitively understable pictures and buttons for the following tasks: Open Saved Work, Create New Picture, Create New Animation, Import From TWAIN, View Samples, On-Line Resources. You can select and choose the needed task from this window or simply close it; if you close it without selecting the task, you can do it later in the Main Menu of the application.
    After opening the image (the existing one or a created blank) there appear three other windows in the right part of the Main window of the application. These are: the Tool Properties window, the Color window, and the Layer Manager window. The content of the Tool Properties window at every moment depends from the currently selected application tool. If the tool has no available options for setting at the Tool Properties window there appears the Message “No options available“.
    There is a toolbar on the left side of the Main application window. The toolbar contains buttons for editing tasks; some buttons may bring out small associated with combo-boxes toolbar palettes (for example, the button for selecting options). You can relocate the toolbar to the other place in the Main window.
    Under the Main menu of the application there is the taskbar of the program containing buttons for creating, opening, saving and closing image files, printing images, copying and pasting, as well as undoing and redoing changes. There is the button ? standing for Help.
    The Main Menu of the program contains eight options: File, Edit, Image, Layers, Select, View, Window and Help.
    The File option opens File Dialog. In the File Dialog popup there are options for file opening, saving and closing. There are some peculiarities. The options Save and Save As support saving only in the native PhotoPlus .spp-format. Saving the currently opened image in the original format is being done by using options Save Original and Save Original As. While opening images the program supports a number of image formats including Bitmap (*.bmp), Truevision Targa (*.tga), Windows MetaFile (*.wmf), PaintBrush (*.pcx), GIF (*.gif), JPEG (*.jpg), Portable Network Graphic (*.png) and more. Converting the format of the original image is being done by options Export… and Export Optimizer…. The latter option allows to set some options for the output image in a special optimizer window (for example, the quality of the JPEG image).
    You can import images from some outer source with the option Import.The option Print stands for printing images;it opens the print manager window. The options Preferences allows setting working preferences and options such as enabling/disabling Undo system, setting grid size, setting the directory for plugins and much more. The program supports a list of recently opened files.
    The option Edit opens Edit Dialog containing standard editing options such as Copy, Cut, Paste, Undo/Redo and Clear.
    With the option Layers you can handle layers in the picture; you can apply effects to them, arrange them, mask and unmask them. The option Properties opens the Layer Information window. You can also delete and merge layers.
    The option Select of the Main Menu deals with selection options. You can select, deselect and invert selections. There is a special sub-popup for modifying the current selection (for example, contracting or expanding).
    The option View manages zooming in and out of the image as well as visibility of various toolbar windows and palettes of the program. It also manages tool tabs within pageframes in the tool windows.
    The option Window stands for a usual window handling popup (cascading and tiling windows as well as choosing the window by a number and name).
    The option Help of the Main Menu brings out the Help popup containing the Help-system in the Microsoft Help Format as well as links for the PhotoPlus and Serif Web-sites. And there is a Registration Wizard… option in this popup which allows to go through the registration process if you didn’t do that while installing the program. If you select this option with the registration already complete there appears an information window saying the registration is already complete and showing phone numbers for online support in the US, UK and for the rest of the world. And finally there is a standard About option with the developer’s logo.
For better work with PhotoPlus you can download a Tutorial in a .pdf format from the developer’s web-site.