Image Processing Software

    Artweaver is a simple freeware image editing program for creative painting, i.e. Artweaver offers you all artistic effects which you need for your work.
You can create sketches from photos and experiment with a wide range of brushes. The brush simulation is thereby so realistic as possible.
Main features of the program:

• Support of many different digital brushes e.g. chalk, charcoal, pencils and so on.
• Standard image editing tools like gradient, crop, fill and selection tools.
• Transparency and Layers support.
• Effect filters like sharpen, blur, emboss and mosaic.
• Support for the most common file formats like AWD (Artweaver), BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, TGA, TIFF, PNG, and PSD (no layer support).
• Pen Tablet support for a realistic feeling.
• Support for several languages through language files.

    At present Artweaver supports through language files English, German, Chinese and Hungarian languages.
Artweaver is available for downloading through links at the web-page
http://www.artweaver.de/index.php?downloads_en
    You can download via these links the needed language support files.
    Artweaver is primarily an image editing tool with many artistic effects. Although it supports a number of image formats and can be used for image format converting. Image formats supported by Artweaver: AWD (native format for Artweaver), Bitmap (.PCX, .RLE), GIF, JPEG (.JPG, .JPEG, .JPE), PCX, PNG, Photoshop (.PSD), TARGA (.TGA, .VDA, .ICB, .VST ), TIFF (.TIFF, .TIF).
    The Main menu of the application has nine options: File, Edit, Image, Layer, Select, Filter, View, Window, Help.
    The option File initiates File Dialog popup which has both standard options of opening, closing and saving files (New, Open, Close, Save and Save As), and some specific options for this application. These are, for example, options of cloning images (Clone and Clone Source), the option Iterative Save. The File Dialog supports a list of recently opened files though a bit peculiarly for Windows-oriented programmes - not directly but via the option Open Recent of the File Dialog popup. In the File Dialog popup there are also options of exporting-importing images (Export/Import) as well as options for printing images, and the option Exit for cancelling program execution and quitting the application.
    The option Edit calls Edit popup containing standard editing options (Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete), as well as options of undoing/redoing changes, presetting and setting preferences. In this popup are also included options of transforming images (free transforming, rotating, flipping and so on).
    The option Image calls Image popup containing options of various adjustments (coloring, curves, hues, saturation, etc), duplicating the selected image (Duplicate), setting the paper color, setting the size of the image and canvas, and rotating the canvas. The option Attributes of the popup initiates an information window about properties of the image.
    The option Layer calls Layer popup designed for managing layers of the image (if such layers exist). Artweaver supports layers in the image (i.e. the image may have several layers which could be brought to front sent to back. Each layer can be dealt with independently.
    The option Select calls Select popup with various options of selecting and dealing with selected material. Besides usual possibilities of selecting you have the option Layer Content allowing you to select the whole layer content in the image. There are also options of saving the selection onto a disk and loading the selection saved earlier. Selections are saved in .Asl file format (Antweaver Selection).
    The option Filter of the Main menu allows using special effects with images as a whole as well as with the selected layer of the image. There are a whole lot of such special effects and the popup Filter is rather rich in content.
    The option View of the Main menu contains options of zooming in and out of an image, fitting the size of an image, setting the grid and so on.
    The option Window of the Main menu comprises standard options of work with windows for Windows-based programmes (cascading and tiling windows, arranging, closing, and minimizing), as well as options of hiding/showing various tools windows of the application (toolbars, palettes, brushes, color sets and so on).
    The option Help of the Main menu calls a popup with options of Help and About, as well as System Information and links for updating the program. The Help of the application is in Microsoft Help format. It’s structurized, indexed and has the option of context-oriented search. The Help is very detailed describing basic concepts and work with images with application tools. In the Help is especially underlined that the creator of the program strived for maximal approach to real painting (e.g. you can imitate various textures of canvas material).
    In the Main window of the application there are windows of application tools: Toolbar (selecting various tools), Brush (specifically for changing the properties of the brush if brush is used as a current tool), Color Set (denoting the current color of paint), Layers (for changing the layer destined to work with) and Preview (to show the image as it would be printed).
    Under the Main menu is also located the taskbar containing comboboxes with regulators for changing properties of the image.
    You can contact the developer of the application via web-page http://www.artweaver.de/index.php?contact_en or visit Artweaver support forum at the address: http://www.artweaver.de/forum/

    This is a freeware paint and image editing tool. It features soft brushes, scanner support, crop, resize, rotate, special effects filters, gradients, patterns, and much more. The company provides for two version of the product - freeware and commercial (ImageForge Pro). Downloading of the freeware version of the product is available here. You can download either a self-extracting installer or a .ZIP file, containing installation files.
The Main menu of the application has eight options: File, Edit, Options, Picture, Effects, Tools, Window and Help.

    The option File opens a File Dialog. The File Dialog may be conducted in two styles: so-called Standard Windows and Enhanced. The selection of the File Dialog style is done by the option File Selector (pop-up menu) in the pop-up menu File Dailog. Both styles of the File Dialog support an image preview option. The File Dialog popup has also the option of acquiring images via a TWAIN device (Acquire from TWAIN device). There is also the option Print allowing you either to print the selected image on paper or export it to another image format (image converting). Image converting is available by the option Save As of the File Dialog popup. The File Dialog also has the option Exit to cancel program execution and contains a list of recently opened files.
    The option Edit of the Main menu opens the Edit Dialog which contains standard editing options (Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Select All), options of undoing previous actions and redoing them (Undo and Redo), the option Show Clipboard, and specific option Use paper color as transparent color which can be checked or unchecked. This option is checked if you want to set all colors which match the Paper Color to transparent when using the Paste as New Selection (Transparent) option under the Edit menu.
    The option Options initiates the Options Dialog popup which contains the following options:

• Button Bar (Small, Large)

Defines the size of buttons in the Main window taskbar.

• Toolbar (Left, Right

Defines the arrangement of the editor toolbar: on the right or on the left in the Main Window

• Auto Hide Tool Bar

This option can be checked or unchecked. Check this option if you want more editing room and would like the Tool Bar to be hidden when not being used. The Tool Bar activates again when you allow the cursor to hover at the edge of the frame.

• Snap Cursor to Drawing Grid

This option is checkable, too. If checked this option causes objects and tools to align with invisible grid points established with the Set Grid function. Useful to precise positioning lines and objects.

• Set Drawing Grid

Initiates Set Grid function and the Set Grid window, accordingly, allowing you to set the size of the grid cells.

• Show Magnification Grid

This option is checkable. If enabled this option places a grid over the image while it is magnified. This can make it easier to identify individual pixels in the picture.

• Undo On

This checkable option enables Undo feature.

• Set Selection Tools to Auto Crop
• Anti-Alias Image Rotation
• Draw From Centre

Objects (circles or rectangles) are usually drawn by clicking on the upper corner and dragging down and to the left or right. Checking this option allows to draw objects by clicking at the centre of the area in which to place the object and dragging outward in any direction.

• Set Preferences

Opens Set Preferences window in which one can set preferences of the program interface, saving, palette, etc.

    The option Picture calls the Picture popup allowing various actions with the selected image, namely:

• Crop
• Enlarge Canvas
• Resize
• Resample
• Duplicate
• Set palete…
• Change Color Depth (the number of colors)
• Dithering Options
• Flip Horizontal
• Flip Vertical
• Rotate
• Rotate by Degree
• Invert
• Clear
• Skew/Shear

    The popup Picture has also options Info (which initiates the info-window about current selected image - dimensions, number of colors, bits per pixel, size, compression, as well as file date/time and name including directory) and Preview initiating the Preview window.
    The option Effects calls the Effects popup allowing various special effects with the selected image, as to: changing colors of the image by different ways and changing outlines in the picture.
    The Tools calls the Tools popup containing only one option in the freeware version of the product: Create Album Or Slide Show.
The option Window calls the Window popup containing standard Windows options of arranging windows: cascading, tiling, etc.
The option Help calls the Help popup, containing options of on-line Help of the application (in the Microsoft Windows Help format), web-links of the creator, the option About (calling the About window of the application - info about the creator) and useful option Restore Default Registry Settings. With this option you can always restore default ImageForge settings if experience some problem. Sometimes it helps

In the Main window of the application there are also the Taskbar containing buttons for the most often usable actions and the Toolbar containing various editing instruments.

The current positioning of the cursor in pixels in the image is indicated in the left lower corner of the window.

To summarize, this image editor is very refined for a freeware tool .

    This is rather powerful advanced image converter and editor (in comparison with other freeware products of the same type). The full version of the product is distributed on a commercial basis. But there is a shareware version of the utility distributed for trial purposes.
    It supports reading graphics of BMP, DIB, JPG, JPEG, GIF, ICO, ICB, PCX, PCD, PSP, PBM, PGM, PSD, PPM, PSG, PNG, VST, VDA, EMF, WMF, TIF, TIFF, WBMP, RLE, SGI, and more. It supports saving graphics to DIB, BMP, GIF, JPG, JPEG, ICO, TIF, TIFF, WBMP, WMF, EMF, PNG, TGA, and more. It supports screen capturing with different ways. It supports more than 50 different filters. It supports unlimited UNDO and REDO operations.
    Key features of the product:

• Open and view more than 30 images formats including BMP, JPG, GIF, DIB, ICO, ICB, PCX, PCD, PSP, PBM, PGM, PSD, PPM, PSG, PNG, VST, VDA, EMF, WMF, TIF, TIFF, WBMP, RLE, SGI, TGA, and more.
• Save and write more than 10 mages formats including DIB, BMP, GIF, JPG, ICO, TIF, TIFF, WBMP, WMF, EMF, TGA, PNG, and more.
• Support capturing screenshots from many ways including [Capture full screen], [Capture full desktop], [Capture last active window], [Capture ICON Area], [Capture by every windows].
  Stretch image to ICON size and save as ICON file.
• Support editing image with selection, resize, rotate, add canvas, and more
• Support more than 50 filters like noise, contrast, soften, blur, sharpen, stretch, lightness, mosaic, gray scale, tweak, colorize, polarize, shake, swap, swirl, and more.
• Unlimited UNDO and REDO operations
• Full options of capturing, images formats, and other

    The Main menu of the utility has five options: File (File Dialog), Edit (Edit Dialog), View (View Dialog), Effects (allows applying various effects to a picture) and Help.
    The File Dialog provides for standard options to deal with files (New, Open, Save, Save As) as well as printing of the selected image (Print) and quitting the execution of the program (Quit). The File Dialog also supports a list of recently opened files.
    The Edit Dialog allows for various options of editing the selected image. This dialog contains options of screen capturing, too.
    The View Dialog has standard options of displaying files in the current directory (which is displayed at the lower left corner of the Main window of the utility) and the option ‘Options‘ (various preferences). In the Options window there is a pageframe with four pages (Format, Image, Capture and Other). In the page Format all checkboxes of file opening and saving are checked and disabled in the shareware version of the utility. In the page Image you can set some options for JPG, GIF and ICO files. In the Page Other you can set default directories for opening and saving files as well as the directory for temporary files. The option Effects of the utility Main menu is very rich and provides for editing of the selected image with various effects. The pop-up menu Help (the option Help of the Main Menu) provides for on-line help for the user as well as links for ordering the product, a user support, registration of the current copy of the utility (after the registration of the utility copy disabled options become enabled) and has a standard option About (in the About window there are some information on the product and its developer).
    There is a taskbar in the Main window of he application, too, which contains the buttons for often used actions and options.
    You can see the selected image in the right lower corner of the Main window.
    Actual converting of the image is being done by the option Save As of the File Dialog of the Main menu. Here you select the type of the output image.

    Downloading of the product is available at the download link on the wep-page http://www.graphic-converter.net/index.htm

    This is a freeware utility that converts GIF files to PNG “ping” format. The application can work so in batch mode as in drag-and-drop mode.There are different ways of scheduling files for conversion.

• Press the Files button on the application dialog.
• Drag files onto the running application from Windows Explorer.
• Drag files onto exorcist.exe or shortcut on your desktop.
• Run the program from the command line, passing the filenames as parameters.

    After the conversion the utility optionally moves the input GIF file into the recycle bin.
    The Main window of the utility has three different areas: a configuration area, a status area and a progress bar. In the configuration area there are four configuration check-boxes:

1. Create Interlaced PNG file (if this check-box is checked the utility creates output PNG files for every input GIF file; the output file has the same name as the input file but a different extension (.png instead of .gif); the output files are created in the same directory as the input files)
2. Delete Source GIF file. If this check-box is checked the utility moves the input file into the recycle bin after the conversion of the image format.
3. Write Histogram Information. PNG supports an optional palette histogram so that displays with fewer available colours can quantise the image more easily. This will make the output file slightly larger, but improve performance in color poor environment
4. Write Software Chunk. Identify The Exorcist - Gif2Png as the originator of the PNG file.

    In the status area of the Main window the utility displays information about the number of files in a conversion queue and the number of processed files.
    At the bottom of the Main window there are three buttons: File (opens File Dialog), Help (calls the Help .htm file) and About (calls the About window displaying information about the creator of the utility Nigel Stewart) and a status progress bar of the conversion process.
    At present, the utility is available for download at the link http://www.nigels.com/exorcist/Download.html, or through the web-page http://www.nigels.com/exorcist/Exorcist.html
     In general, one can say the utility is pretty refined. Nothing superfluous, it performs its task quickly and exactly.

    This is a simple highly specialized image converter developed for one purpose only: converting images in EMF/WMF (Windows Metafile) format to EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) format. Actual converting of the image is being done using the PostScript driver installed on the user’s PC. Without the PostScript driver the converting of the image format by this application is impossible. The structure of the program is pretty simple.     The Main menu contains four options: File, Edit, Convert and Help. The Pop-up menu File has two options: Open (for selecting and opening EMF/WMF images for converting) and Save As (allowing to save selected pictures under another name). The pop-up menu Edit has standard options for working with a selection list (Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete) and the option Preferences. Actually, the options Cut and Delete perform the same task - they delete selected file from the list for conversion. The option Preferences serves for selecting the PostScript printer (which should be installed earlier, of course). You can also set the resolution of the output image with this option (taking into account capabilities of the installed PostScript driver). The option Convert serves to convert image format of the whole list of image files or the selection of files within that list. During the process of converting the PostScript driver is called; the converted image is shown in the left lower corner of the Preview window of the printer driver. Actually, the destination of the output of the converted image is saving to EPS file, not the printing on paper. The option Help of the Main menu actually contains no help at all - only a pop-up About.
    The distribution package of the application is available at link http://www.projectory.de/emftoeps/emftoeps.zip or through a link in http://www.projectory.de/emftoeps/index.html.
    As a matter of fact there are no installation process, however. The distribution package is a .zip archive containing a ready-for-work copy of the application directory; the executable is EMFToEPS.exe. It’s interesting that the author of the application graciously supplies source files of the program, too. They are contained in the sub-directory ‘source‘.
    The author of the application - Dirk Struve warns that there are some bugs in his applet:

• Some WMF images can’t be loaded correctly, because the WMF format is not well defined and I don’t now all different versions. Solution: Always save images as EMF.
• Some WMF images are not converted correctly. (This seems to be a PostScript driver problem) Solution: Try saving images as EMF or WMF images with True Type fonts as curves.
• Preview of File Dialog sometimes wrong (Bug in Delphi libraries).
• On some Windows systems, images are not displayed correctly or dieappear.

But he writes he probably won’t continue work on it.

    Easy Graphic Converter is a powerful and easy-to-use graphic converter, image converter and thumbnails maker utility that can covert image files and make thumbnails. It a 32-bit software program that runs on Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows ME Operating Systems.
    The version 1.2.0 of the product is free for use and available for download at the link http://www.etrusoft.com/graphic-converter/graphic-converter.exe. The size of the executable for installation is 813K.
    The basic features of the product are:

• Easy Graphic Converter can both import and export images in the following formats:
  • Windows Bitmap (*.bmp, *.dib)
  • GIF (*.gif)
  • JPEG (*.jpg, *.jpeg)
  • Portable Graphics PNG (*.png)
  • ZSoft PCX (*.pcx)
  • Adobe PSD (*.psd)
  • Targa (*.tga)
  • TIFF (*.tif, *.tiff)
  • Windows Metafile (*.wmf)
  • Windows Enhanced Metafile (*.emf)
• Easy Graphic Converter can make thumbnails in two ways:
  • Best Fit
  • Exact Size of specified width and height
  • Or simply export images the same size as the original ones.
• Easy Graphic Converter is a batch converting tool. You can convert batches of different formats images to one type of image in one time. It supports auto name.

    The Help of the application is in an separate .htm file and contains a list of basic features of the program, a simple FAQ section and the link to the site of the creator. At present, there is no on-line help section in the application.
    The Main menu of the application has the following options: Add (for adding individual files or whole directories of files for converting), Remove (for removing files or directories from the list for converting added earlier), Clear (clears the whole list), Settings (for setting converting options) and Exit (for closing application). In the Settings window you can define an output image format, bits per pixel, options of resizing of the initial image, the directory for saving output images and some other characteristics. Selected output settings for converting images are displayed in the Main window of the application.
    The process of actual converting selected images starts when you press the button Start in the application window.

    There are a lot of image formats and hundreds of software programmes capable of converting image formats from one to another. Sometimes individual graphic (image) format is native for some graphic application and may be as an export option in another graphic application (or may be not). In that case may arise a need to convert specific image into native format of that graphic application. Here is a list of some graphic applications and their native image formats:

• CDR - CorelDRAW
• CPP - Corel Photo-Paint
• PSD - Adobe Photoshop
• PDD - Adobe PhotoDeluxe
• AI - Adobe Illustrator
• UFO - Ulead PhotoImpact
• PSP - Paint Shop Pro
• MIX - Microsoft PictureIt and PhotoDraw

    Besides, there are a number of image formats that are considered as standard. A standard image format is one that is cross-platform compatible and supported by the majority of graphics applications.

    The most common standard bitmap-based image formats are TIFF (Tagged Image File Format), JPG (Joint Photographic [Experts] Group), GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), and PNG (Portable Network Graphics). On the Windows platform BMP (Bit Mapped Pictures) is a standard format and PICT is a standard bitmap format on the Macintosh. Photoshop’s PSD format is supported to some degree by most graphics applications, but you should take into account that transferring PSD between non-Adobe applications may give unexpected results.

    The most common standard vector-based formats are EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) and AI. On the Windows platform, most vector-based software also supports WMF (Windows Metafile Format) and EMF (Microsoft Enhanced Metafile Format) formats.

    While sending files over the Internet or transporting them between graphics applications, it is recommended to use one of these standard formats, or the results may be unexpected. When sending graphic images via email and the Web, it is best to use JPEG or GIF format, which can be displayed by any Web browser on any computer. If in doubt, ask the recipient of your files which image formats they can accept.

Sources: http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/aboutgraphics/a/convertgraphics.htm, http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/glossary/g/nativeformat.htm, http://graphicssoft.about.com/library/glossary/bldefstandardformat.htm