Photo Op Ten

Ten Things to Help You with Your Images

Freeware caution: always scan free downloads for viruses and other bugs before you dump them on your hard drive.

1. If you're looking for copyright free/public domain images to use, try sites like CopyrightFreePhotos, FreeFoto, and FreePhotos -- and always check the site owner's terms of use on any free image site, because while most are free, some don't allow any commercial use. My favorite photo site, Dreamstime, offers photos free to download daily, for example, but there are still some restrictions on use.

2. Fast Image Resize helps you "resize images to any size quickly and in high quality." Might be helpful for those of you who have to create a lot of web site and blog cover thumbnails (OS: Win 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP/2K3)

3. Fototagger "lets you easily add movable notes to individual elements visualized on images. The notes can be hidden in a click of a button so the original view remains intact. Moreover, the notes always stay with the image wherever it is shared." If you've been looking for a way to permanently tag your images, this could work. (OS: Win 2000/XP)

4. Imagelys Picture Styles is "a way of creating an unlimited number of beautiful graphic images in a minimal amount of time. You can create seamless backgrounds for your desktop or your web page, original wallpapers, textures for 3D modelling, skins for your favorite programs, and much much more. You don't have to be an expert designer to be able to produce truly amazing results." (OS: Win 98/ME/NT/2K/XP/Vista)

5. Steve Pan's blog, Slideplay, is his "personal collection of slideshows with music accompaniment and photo stories from the web." It's also the home of Jtvmaker, a "free web slideshow generator and album generator that can remix photo, mp3 and lyric files. You can use it to make a music slideshow for karaoke, or make a simple photo story that can be published easily on the web." For those of you who make your own book videos, could be something you want to check out. (OS: Win 2000/XP/2003/Vista; developer notes on freeware info page that "J2SE 6 is required.")

6. K-3D is a "3D modeling and animation software. It features a plugin-oriented procedural engine for all of its content, making K-3D a very versatile and powerful package. K-3D excels at polygonal modeling, and includes basic tools for NURBS, patches, curves and animation." This looks pretty sophisticated to me, but some of you savvy graphics animators out there might find it fun and/or useful. (OS: Win NT/2K/XP/2K3)

7. Karen's Whimsy is a neat public domain images project. The owner writes: "On the following pages you will find hundreds of scans of beautiful images from my collection of old books, magazines, and postcards. They are all from material printed prior to 1923 and are in the public domain." A very neat colleaction, and definitely worth the time to check out.

8. Visions is "an innovative 3D image management system (3DIMS) which allows you to navigate through your photos in a 3D (three dimensional) world. This way you can view your folders as a collection of boards spread on your screen, allowing you to easily perform cross folder actions such as moving photos from one folder to another, comparing two folders or simply viewing photos from several folders at the same time." This one looks really interesting, especially for you scriptwriters and storyboarders out there. (OS: Win 2000/XP/Vista)

9. WPanomrama permits you to "display panoramic pictures by letting them scroll horizontally or vertically on the screen. You can use this software to view the gorgeous 360° swiss panorama included with the program, the 714 panoramas available on the developer´s site or your own pictures in .jpg or .bmp format." (OS: Win 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP/2K3)

10. XnView allows you to "view and convert graphic files." It's free for private non-commercial or educational use (including non-profit organization); for commercial use, it is necessary to register. The developer/designer, Pierre-emmanuel Gougelet notes: "It is a help for the development of future versions. XnView for Linux, FreeBSD are FREE also for commercial use." (OS: Windows, MacOS X, Linux x86, Linux ppc, FreeBSD x86, OpenBSD x86, NetBSD x86, Solaris sparc, Solaris x86, Irix mips, HP-UX, AIX)