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Paint.Net v3.5

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:01:26 +0000

Paint.net is an application I’ve found myself using on a day to day basis over the last couple of years. In my opinion it’s a perfect bridge between the ridiculously simple but underpowered ‘Microsoft Paint’ that’s bundled with Windows and the powerful but expensive to buy and difficult to learn ‘Adobe Photoshop’.

The majority of users will find the features of Paint.NET more than enough for day to day photo manipulation however, also thrown in to the mix, are a number of extremely powerful tools.

Firstly, the application has layers; unless you’ve ever used layers it’s difficult to explain in words exactly what they are and how they can help you. The simplest way to explain them would be to think of them as a number of transparency slides, which when all stacked and viewed together form the basis of a whole image. If you change one of the individual slides the overall image will look different, but no changes will be made to the other slides. This means that changes that you make to one layer which are later altered won’t result in damage to the image caused by previous alterations.

Another good feature is the way that the application allows you to view multiple images all at once; rather than having a number of windows that can be minimised and reopened as and when necessary, Paint.NET has a clever style of tabbed interface. In order to navigate between open files you simply click a thumbnail of the image from a scrollable selection on the top right hand side of the screen.

I did fear that development on this fantastic free application had become stagnant – the last release (3.36) was well over a year ago and even that only offered minor improvements on earlier versions. Having obtained the beta for version 3.5 which is due to be release as a finished product next month it would appear the developers are back on track.

Notable improvements include improved memory usage, a Vista / Windows 7 style glass look, new effects along with the usual helping of bug fixes and rendering improvements.

Speaking of special effects, Paint.Net has a large number built in as standard; ink sketch, oil painting, blurs, distortions, noise control, red eye removal, sharpening, softening and so on. The image can also be manipulated by way of adjustments such as hue, saturation, level, brightness, contrast and sepia controls. The standard drawing and selection tools are provided and of course the intensity, tolerance or size of these tools can all be easily adjusted as necessary.

The size of the application has increased quite considerably since the last release which weighed in at 1.6mb but regardless the application is still a tiny 4.8mb in size which in relative terms is about the size of one MP3 music file.

Portable GIMP

admin — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 14:53:20 +0000

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (rather affectionately named GIMP) was first released back in 1996 by two American University students. The program was designed to be an easy to use, powerful open source image editor and since this date it has matured to achieve a large user base over several platforms including the Apple Mac, Windows and Linux.

For some time I’ve been looking for a free image editing program to recommend because I’ve found that any program worth its salt costs money and I realise this is something my readers don’t appreciate! It looks like finally I may have found the answer in the form of GIMP and so today I have decided to take the time to review the latest incarnation of this program. Although GIMP is best known to Linux users I have tested the Windows version of this product as this is the Operating System that most my readers use.

The latest version, GIMP 2.2 includes many of the features you get in costly applications like Adobe Photoshop and these include layers, channels, paths along with a wide variety of painting tools. It includes many features that to my knowledge are not available in any other free product. Whether you want to use it to retouch photos, render images or convert from one format to another then this should fit the bill perfectly. Additionally it is expandable as new plug-ins can be added to the application should you require a function which is not provided as standard in the software.

The software includes dozens of filters which make it ideal for anyone involved in digital photography and there are additional features such as a scripting interface to allow advanced users to automate image editing tasks but I’m sincerely doubting that most home users will choose to jump in this far.

Downloading and installing the program is relatively painless as long as you’re pointed in the right direction as I was first thrown off by the fact you need to download two files in order to be able to properly install the application. If you head to http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html then you will find two files that are required for the installation. First you should download the ‘GTK + 2 Runtime environment’ and install it before downloading the actual application also located on the same page. The two files together come to around 12mb which will be a pretty painless download on all but the slowest of connections.

It is worthwhile noting that this program is supported entirely by people kind enough to dedicate their time to the coding the project so there is no adverting either in the application or on the authors website.

An alternative website you may also like to visit is www.gimp.org as there are a number of manuals and tutorials available online. The program is pretty advanced and it is unlikely that you would be able to scratch the surface of what is on offer without them.

The interface is at times quite confusing and the entire program isn’t as well polished as alternatives on the market however I think it would be quite unfair to try and compare this free program to the £400 Adobe Photoshop! Basically to summerise if you’re looking for a free alternative to the rather lacklustre Microsoft Photo Editor which is bundled with Windows then you’ve found it.

Free Serif Software

admin — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 14:07:50 +0000

I remember back in the days when I used to publish a small fanzine that I was a big fan of Serif PagePlus as it was a capable piece of DTP (desktop publishing) software which was extremely low cost when compared to others that were on the market. Serif seems to have been pushed out of the limelight in recent years but some of their applications still give the costly alternatives a run for their money.

In order to increase the profile of some of their flagship products, Serif are now offering a large amount of their back catalogue or cut down versions of their current products for free at the website www.freeserifsoftware.com and it certainly is worth going along to see what you can get hold of. If I pick out a few of the highlights then I’m sure that you’ll find something that would suit you perfectly:

PagePlus SE – This is the perfect application for the DTP novice as it allows you to easily create documents containing text and images such as cards, flyers, advertisements, invitations, magazines and the such. Too many people still use Word Processors for tasks such as this and they really aren’t suited to the task as they don’t allow any degree of flexibility when manipulating your document layout.

PhotoPlus 6 – Whilst not nearly as powerful as programs such as Adobe PhotoShop, this application will cover most the tasks that any amateur photographer would need on a daily basis. You can choose to use the inbuilt drawing tools to create a bitmap from scratch or use the application to import and alter or enhance existing photos that you have on your hard drive.

WebPlus 6 – An application designed for those interested in producing and publishing their own website. Unfortunately there are no decent tools included as standard in Windows that offer this facility and powerful solutions such as MacroMedia Dreamweaver are just far too expensive for the home enthusiast. If you’re looking to publish a fairly simple website from scratch or to alter one of the existing templates supplier then this tool will be perfect.

DrawPlus – Ideally suited for producing logos and illustrations, this application gives you the tools you need to sketch and animate quickly and easily. I must be honest in saying that I’ve never used a dedicated piece of drawing software before so I have no basis for comparison but for those who are interested it must certainly be worth the 24mb download.

3D Plus – As the title suggests this application is used for creating 3D text, graphics and animations. You can set up a scene and then play around with camera angles, lighting and backgrounds until you render an image that you’re happy with.

Whilst I think that PhotoPlus, Drawplus and 3D plus could have been quite easily been made into one program and placed under the same umbrella I’m not going to complain too loudly since all three applications are offered here completely free of charge. The applications are certainly not ground-breaking in any way, shape or form but they are all very capable especially since you are not paying for them. The applications can be downloaded separately or the entire suite would be a 120mb download which isn’t problematic for those of you with a broadband connection however those on dial up might want to consider getting a friend who has a high speed connection to burn the applications on to a CD for them.