This is my site for links to Genuine Free Stuff as well as some useful advice. I use most of these programs regularly. It's good gear. It's all worth having.

** April 2014. Major revamp and update for relevance happening, especially now that support for Windows XP has ended, and now that we all are addicted to our Android phones. A lot of old stuff is going.

This post in particular started this whole website...

I have been building and using computers since about the Ice Age, from DOS 3 through to Windows 7.
I have been mucking about with mobile phones for quite some time, using Symbian S60 and then Android.

Press F8 at boot to start in safe mode - Windows XP and 7
To see the details of you computer, download, install and run 'Speccy' - shows Operating System, Firewall, Anti-virus and hardware.
If you think you have a virus, start here 'Free Online Virus Scan'. Try any or all, and be patient.

March 24, 2014

Image, Multimedia and PDF Editors - FastStone, GIMP, Online, paint.net, Cool Text, Red Dodo, SignBot

Here's a list of image editors that I use.

CamStudio - Free Streaming Video Software
http://camstudio.org/

"CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)
* You can use it to create demonstration videos for any software program
* Or how about creating a set of videos answering your most frequently asked questions?
* You can create video tutorials for school or college class
* You can use it to record a recurring problem with your computer so you can show technical support people
* You can use it to create video-based information products you can sell
* You can even use it to record new tricks and techniques you discover on your favourite software program, before you forget them"

Cool Text - online logo creator
http://cooltext.com/

  

CutePDF
http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp

FastStone Image Viewer and Editor and Convertor
http://www.faststone.org/
An image browser, converter and editor that supports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO, TGA and camera raw files. It has a nice array of features such as image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, color adjustments, musical slideshow and much more.

There's my little Daisy-Mae.... don't ask about the scarf...

This is a nifty piece of free software. Grab it and try it.
Make sure you also drop in to the Fitzroy Australia Dog Blog to see Daisy-Mae and Darcy.

*** The best thing about FastStone is that it will save a .JPG image as a .PDF.

GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program
http://www.gimp.org/

It's free and it's clever. Here's how it starts up.

I've dragged a picture in.
This is a piece of wall art on the Fireman's Credit Union near my house.


Online Image Editor.
If you need an animated avatar for your website or signature, here is good websites that will help.
http://www.online-image-editor.com/index.cfm

"- Resize or Crop your images (also for animated gifs).
- Add Text to your images (also for animated gifs).
- Add Borders, or Overlay your images (also for animated gifs).
- Put your image in a Picture Frame or add a Mask. (also for animated gifs)
- Resize or Crop your images (also your animated gifs).
- Overlay your images with predefined animations! (a must try!)
- Convert, sharpen, reduce size of your animated gif... and much, much, more....
- Create your OWN twinkle star animation
- Add your OWN glitters to an image. "
This is an example of editing an animated GIF file.
Browse and Upload.


Then go to EDIT - Crop and adjust as required.
It's very easy to use.
Here I am cropping an image to a square 110x110 pixels.

I then save this new animated GIF back to my computer.
I now have my required avatar, at the right size.

paint.net
This is the download link
http://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html
I quote ...
"Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows.
It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins."

PDFCreator
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Also take a look at FileHippo's list of PDF creators.
http://www.filehippo.com/search?q=pdf

Red Dodo - online mobile phone live wallpaper creator, live avatar creator.
This is a fun site for making screen savers for your mobile phone, or avatars for websites.
http://reddodo.com/

With Red Dodo's screen saver generator you can make your own unique mobile screen saver / animated wallpaper and download it to your cell phone for free.
We support following animated cell phone wallpaper formats: 240x320, 176x220, 176x208, 176x144, 128x160, 128x128.
Here's an example.
 

Sib Icon Editor - create icons in a .ico format
http://www.sibcode.com/icon-editor/index.htm
Here's what it looks like.

I can make .ico or .png icons.
I can put gradients of colors across pictures.

I can make laser scroll bars or highlight bars for various graphics programs.

And so on. Oh, it's free of course.
See my post on how to make a Favicon using Sib, this thing  in the bookmarks bar.

SignBot - animated scrolling text LED sign
http://wigflip.com/signbot/#
Write some text and click Generate Sign to make your own animated scrolling text LED sign.


Super - convert or play any Multimedia file
http://www.erightsoft.net/SUPER.html

"If you need a simple, yet very efficient tool to convert (encode) or play any Multimedia file,
without reading manuals or spending long hours training, then SUPER © is all you need.
It is a Multimedia Encoder and a Multimedia Player, easy-to-use with 1 simple click.

SUPER © "The Player" surpasses any known player by supporting just
any Multimedia file format. SUPER © plays files that cannot be played with
WMP or even other libavcodec-based players like MPC and VLC.
SUPER © also plays and saves Internet Media Streams of different
protocols ( mms:// rtsp:// http://). "


Also check out this for a complete list of image viewers...
Wikipedia Comparison of Image Viewers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_image_viewers


Cheers. Si.
Checked April 2014 for link and relevance.

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