Today, for all of you who do a lot of photography and video camera handling in your computer, I am bringing two programs that are very, very good and on top of it all, they are free.
Of course these were introduced to me by our friends at PC World, (what would I do without them?), our thanks again for all they have contributed to this blog.
FastStone Image Viewer:
If you only use the photo tools built into Windows, browsing through your photos quickly becomes tedious. FastStone Image Viewer displays pictures lightning-fast and lets you browse through them all in Windows Explorer-style fashion. Run the program, go to the folders where you want to browse, and all your photos are displayed immediately, with very little delay. You'll see thumbnails of them all, and a preview screen. To see any full screen, double-click it.
If all FastStone Image Viewer did was display images, it would be well worth the download. But it does much more than that. You can crop, rotate, and resize pictures, as well as send them via e-mail. You can also create slide shows. And the program will also let you convert between file formats.
One of FastStone Image Viewer's greatest strengths is the wide variety of file formats it supports. It can handle just about any graphic or photo file format you've heard of. In addition, it previews videos as well, so you can use it as a full multimedia viewer, not just for photos.
--Preston Gralla
Photoscape:
This remarkable free piece of software is one that any self-respecting digital photographer needs on his or her PC's hard disk. There's no possible way to begin to describe the wide range of tools and features this one has--there's everything from a file viewer to a photo editor, slide show creator, batch editor, screen capture program, and more. There are some quite original and innovative tools in Photoscape, such as combining multiple photos in a single frame. There's also a small, but extremely useful tool--it will take photos that are in the RAW format used by many digital cameras, and convert them to JPG, so that they're more useful.
Even though this program is free, the creator will take donations if you find Photoscape useful. Pay via Paypal. Given the quality of this software, if you keep using it, consider making a donation.
--Preston Gralla
In order to download above programs go to the following addresses:
For FastStone go to:
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,25677/description.html?tk=nl_ddx_h_dlfeat
For above program here is a sample of user reviews:
"Strengths: Faststone viewer does a superb job of resizing, emailing photos, viewing, renaming, change time stamp, light editing, generating slide shows, etc. The list goes on and on. If you need to do something with a photo, Faststone viewer will probably do it. When you think it does it all, they come out with a new version with improvements.
Weaknesses: None that I can think of.
Overall Evaluation: Faststone viewer is a first rate program. Faststone also has other programs, some free, some shareware. All the programs I have work great and do tasks that I don't find elsewhere."
For Photoscape go to:
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,65533/description.html?tk=nl_ddx_h_dlfeat
For above program here is are samples of user reviews:
Strengths: easy interface, LOTS of features, free
Weaknesses: none
Overall Evaluation: I accidentally voted negatively on this program. It is actually VERY powerful for browsing through images and making sime changes.
Strengths: Many features in one program, view, rename, screen capture
Weaknesses: None
Overall Evaluation: Very good program to have. I have not worked all the features yet. It has a lot!!!
Strengths: Easy to use. Numerous options for working with photos.
Weaknesses: none
Overall Evaluation: WOW! WOW! WOW! GET IT!!!!!
I hope you all amateur and pro photographers will enjoy these programs, they are both excellent.
George Freire
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