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  Freeware & Shareware
June 2004

Tim Hoke

Tim Hoke is the Sr. Pastor at Faith Presbyterian Church, a long-time member of Alamo PC and an avid computer user who loves to try out new programs, especially shareware and freeware. He gets excited about a good deal.  More than that, he enjoys sharing good deals with others.

Why not send him a note about your favorite shareware or freeware programs.



Summer is upon us!  Some of you are already on vacation and others are yet to go.  Many will take some memorable pictures as they travel all over the world.  How timely it is that this month’s Alamode theme centers on photo editing.  Below, please find some shareware and freeware offerings that just might enhance those nifty photos your digital camera will capture this vacation season.

Organize digital photos your way with BrilliantPhoto 1.2.0.62. Use QuickDescribe to assign a subject, location, event, or keyword. Rate your favorite photos with four or five stars. Powerful searching lets you find the exact photo you want using the information you entered, or you can just click on the photo calendar. Editing tools help you correct red-eye, clean up spots and stains, fix lighting, adjust brightness, and crop images. E-mail photos directly, resized and compressed for easy downloading. Your photo descriptions are included in the e-mail automatically. You also can create Web pages for friends and family members for viewing online. Let them order their own affordable, high-quality prints with one click through Shutterfly. New features include background music for slide shows; the ability to straighten crooked photos, enhanced Web albums, and improved e-mail support. 
$29.99
Download

Another interesting program is Photo-Lux 3.0, which lets you view and correct your digital photos or images. The following graphics formats are supported: BMP, CEL/PIC, CUR,CUT, DIB, EMF, FAX, G3N/G3F, GIF, ICB, ICO, J2C/J2K/JP2/JPC(JPEG2000), JPC, JPG/JPEG (RGB, GrayScale, YcbCr, CMYK, YCbCrK), JFIF/JIF, PBM, PCD, PCX, PSD/PDD, PSP, PGM, PNG, PPM, PXM, RGB/RGBA, RLA/RPF, RLE, SGI/BW, TGA,TIF/TIFF, VDA/VST,WMF. To smooth the edges and to reduce the noise artifacts, Photo-Lux can display your images on the screen by applying different High Quality Zoom Filters. Photo-Lux has a lot of high performance imaging operations such as RGB- , Brightness/Contrast/Gamma- correction, Image Rotating to any angle, Crop and more. Plus it offers many filters, including Bump-Map, Blur etc. A good-looking 3D-Text can be written on the image using a 3D-Text drawing tool. You can also use a merge command to insert a graphic logo into the image. The extended Open dialog window of Photo-Lux has a thumbnail mode. 
$29.99
Download

Dream in Pictures 1.0 provides a powerful suite of imaging tools and exciting new ways to use digital and video clips. It combines a unique and intuitive interface, the most popular image management and editing capabilities as well as great ways to use digital photos and videos: slide show builder, an interactive 3-D gallery, a fun mosaic maker, a challenging picture puzzle game, screensaver, printed albums, and sharing through e-mail.  At the time I found it, the cost was $29.95, but the ad said it was going up to $49.95.  That’s a little pricey for shareware, I know, but you still might want to give it a 14 day trial. 
$29.95
Download

Some of you cost-conscious folks can save $10 with PhotoRemedy 1.0 (only $19.95 to keep) It is a digital photo correction software that uses intelligent correction algorithms and smart learning to make balancing your photos easy! The program automatically analyzes your digital photo and presents you with a correction for over exposure, under exposure, problems with brightness, saturation, contrast, white balance and hue. To manually edit a photo, simply use the tools provided. The photo editor also learns from the changes you make and quickly increases its correction accuracy to suit what you are looking for. As digital cameras can often take photographs with a color tint, PhotoRemedy can even learn to correct photos in relation to a specific digital camera and mode. Regardless of whether you are a beginner or expert, PhotoRemedy makes it easy to improve the quality of your digital photography. 
$19.95
Download

PhotoWorks Digital Partner 1.0 is more affordable still.  It is absolutely free!  Plug your camera into your computer, and Digital Partner brings your digital photos to life. PhotoWorks Digital Partner makes it easy to sort your photos by date, name, and collection. You can stay organized and enhance photos with crops, red-eye removal, and Instant Fix.  You can also e-mail links and even order genuine prints. You can get 15 free 4x6-inch prints on Kodak paper with your first order. 
FREE
Download

MemoriesOnTV 2.1.5 (formerly called Picture to TV) allows you to create a video CD or DVD with visual effects and music from your digital photos and video clips. It has true DVD authoring; the video you create can be burned onto CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, or DVD+R/RW using the built-in burner software and then played on a TV via a standard DVD player. You also can play the CD or DVD on a PC with a software DVD player installed. You can add text to your pictures, organize them into multiple albums (or subalbums), pan and zoom them, and create a menu to navigate your albums. The original pictures or videos can be stored on the same CD or DVD also, so you can access them for printing at any time.
Download


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