Apple Seeds - www.appleseeds.org

Apple Seeds

Specials, Blessings & Prayers

Apple Seeds Archives

Gleanings

Photo Galleries
 

Digital Tool Shed - resources for digital photography

A  tool shed of resources for digital photography, including editors, image viewers, slideshow/screensavers, audio/video, podcasts, blogs, web pages, color charts. Enjoy!
I've received no compensation for these listing, except an occasional link exchange.


Digital Cameras and Photography:

  • Getting Started in Digital Photography (Dave Johnson, PC World)
  • How to Buy a Digital Camera: From resolution to storage and from exposure control to white balance, we'll explain the digital camera terms you need to know.
  • CompactCameras.org: No. 1 camera information website with everything you need to know about compact and digital cameras, comparing cameras and camera reviews.

  • A Complete Guide to Digital Cameras and Photography (ShortCourses.com): Offers a number of tutorials and informational essays on all aspects of digital photography, camera operation, and editing digital photos. In the site's seventeen sections, visitors can learn about how to choose a digital camera, how to display and share digital photos, and how to best use one's digital camera for a variety of purposes.

  • 6 Secrets to Great Sports Photography (Lexar - Digital Photography)

  • Canon Digital Learning Center: getting the most out of your digital camera.

  • Kodak: Top 10 Tips for Great Pictures. Do you wish you were a better photographer? All it takes is a little know-how and experience. Keep reading for some important picture-taking tips. Then grab your camera and start shooting your way to great pictures.

  • Copyright Basics © - What Is Copyright?: Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to the authors of "original works of authorship," including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works.
  • Digital Focus (PC World): Dave Johnson's expert tips promise to enhance your expertise with your digital camera, scanner, printer, and image editing software.
  • Digital Cameras Info Center (PC World)
  • The Digital Photography Connection: provides FREE quality training and information to all digital photographers. Photoshop Killer Tips is the best of free for Photoshop users.
  • Digital Photography Review: an independent resource dedicated to the provision of news, reviews and information about digital photography and digital imaging.
  • Digital Photography School: Discover how to use your digital camera with tips on photography techniques, equipment and processing.
  • Geoff Lawrence.com - Photography Tutorials. Here are the digital photography tutorials, the techniques that will show you how to become a better photographer and learn to take better photos. Top 10 Photography Tips is a great place to start.
  • Photo.net: a site for serious photographers to connect with other photographers, explore photo galleries, discuss photography, share and critique photos, and learn about photography.
  • Photography's Golden Rule: The most important thing to know about your rights as a photographer: In general, you can photograph anything or anyone as long as you are on public property. Public property includes city streets, municipal parks, and national parks and forests. Nonetheless, Internet photography forums are chock full of tales about people who have been challenged or harassed when using a camera in public.
  • TakeGreatPictures.com: offers photo tips and techniques from master photographers, latest news on new products, events, and artists, photo contests, reviews of photography books, columns on digital photography.
  • Your Digital Photography Tool Kit - 14 Downloads (Including Freebies)

Essential Tools: IMHO

  • CollageMaker: A free online service which allows you to create wonderful collages online in a few steps and you can download the collage to your desktop. There are various templates available for you to customize.
  • Digitize Your Analog Life (PC World): Rip your records, transfer your tapes, scan your photos, and move your home movies onto your hard drive. Some easy ways to convert vinyl, film, and other analog media into high-quality digital files.
  • Dry-All for Smartphones: Dries all phones to 0% humidity - Recovers wet Smartphones in as little as 6 hours - Guaranteed to dry all wet smart phones.
  • Image Resizer for Windows: a utility that lets you resize one or more selected image files directly from Windows Explorer by right-clicking. Regain the joy they left behind with Microsoft's Image Resizer Powertoy for Windows XP.
  • Light Image Resizer (ObviousIdea): Manage your digital photos with this free resize image software. Create e-mail friendly versions of your images, load them faster. Works with 32 and 64bits edition of Windows XP, Vista, 7. Light Image Resizer is integrated into the Windows explorer shell, right click on your pictures and start working on your pictures! NB: also you can add a watermark.
  • PhotoOnWeb: Easily create online photo albums for sharing your pictures on internet with your friends and family. Sort your photos in multiple albums, pick a template and click on the Publish button. Host the pictures with your own ISP, or create an account on their server. No computer programming knowledge is required, HTML editing can be used for custom albums. Uses Flash technology to enjoy the details of the pictures: elegant and professional look and feel.
  • Photovisi: free and easy to use online tool to create photo collages. Select one of the many collage templates, add your photos and then customize by dragging items around. After the collage is finished, it's available for download and print!
    • Shape Collage: take your digital photos and creates an artistic collage from them. Just drag a set of photos into the Shape Collage window and specify the shape of the collage that you want to make. Check out the Screenshots demo.
  • Quick View Plus 10 — For Windows Vista, XP/2000: Support for over 300 different file formats, including Microsoft Office 2007, QVP-10 lets you view all the files and email attachments you need, instantly – without purchasing numerous software programs. Quick View Plus maintains the formatting of the files you view. So you can see and print files as they were originally created and meant to be seen, complete with fonts, text formatting and graphics.
  • IrfanView: a fast and compact image viewer/converter. Features include: multi-language support, Thumbnail option, Painting, slideshow, toolbar skins, fast directory browsing, batch conversion/editing, multipage editing, file search, change color depth, scanning, cut/crop…The Slideshow feature has terrific options to select images to burn to a CD (family photos), create an executable (exe) file. or a screensaver (scr) file. Frequently Asked Questions about IrfanView.
  • CutePDF Writer: Create PDF documents on the fly — for Free! Portable Document Format (PDF) is the de facto standard for the secure and reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents and forms around the world. CutePDF Writer (formerly CutePDF Printer) is the free version of commercial PDF creation software. CutePDF Writer installs itself as a "printer subsystem". This enables virtually any Windows applications (must be able to print) to create professional quality PDF documents - with just a push of a button! (The downloads are in the upper left column)
  • Snagit: the perfect utility to capture and share images, text or video from your PC. Creating beautiful presentations, flawless documentation and just saving your favorite online content is now easier than ever before with Snagit.
  • Boogie Jack’s Background Magic: The ultimate solution to creating web graphics that reflect YOUR perfect taste. You can easily create top-quality web page backgrounds with complementary buttons and banners that say exactly what you want them to say, not just the closest thing you could find.

Photo Editing Tools:

  • Corel® Paint Shop Pro® Photo X2: the ideal choice for any aspiring photographer's digital darkroom. It's filled with everything from easy automatic photo fixes to precision editing tools. It even includes a built-in Learning Center to help new users get started right away!
  • Adobe® Photoshop® CS3: ultimate playground for bringing out the best in your digital images and transforming them into anything you can imagine. Productivity and workflow enhancements, powerful new editing tools, and breakthrough compositing capabilities.
    •
  • Adobe Photoshop Express-beta: Upload, sort, polish, and store up to 2GB of photos. All for free. Resize, tint, distort, and more–add your mark to all your images. Then show them off on Adobe® Photoshop® Express or your web page.
  • Photoscape: easy photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance photos. Features: Viewer, Editor, Batch editor, Animated GIF, Screen Capture, Color Picker, Rename,Raw Converter.
  • Paint.NET (Windows): free image and photo editing software; features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
  • Picasa (Google): Locate and organize all the photos on your computer. Edit and add effects to your photos with a few simple clicks. Share your photos with others through email, prints, and on the web: it’s fast, easy and free.
  • GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program): a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. GIMP can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.
  • FotoTagger 2.3: Users can add embedded comments on the photos. Additionally, the program allows users to create photo blogs, and upload and download photographs to Flickr accounts with all of these wonderful captions preserved intact. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 2000 and XP.
  • IrfanView: a fast and compact image viewer/converter. Features include: multi-language support, Thumbnail option, Painting, slideshow, toolbar skins, fast directory browsing, batch conversion/editing, multipage editing, file search, change color depth, scanning, cut/crop…The Slideshow feature has terrific options to select images to burn to a CD (family photos), create an executable (exe) file. or a screensaver (scr) file. Frequently Asked Questions about IrfanView.
  • Image Resizer: Need to send a photo to someone but it is too large, use Image Resizer to easily resize pics smaller. Right click any image and click Resize Pictures for menu. Part of the PowerToys suite, this add-in lets you resize one image--or several--by right-clicking.
  • Microsoft Photo Story 3 for Windows XP: Create slideshows using your digital photos. With a single click, you can touch-up, crop, or rotate pictures. Add stunning special effects, soundtracks, and your own voice narration to your photo stories. Then, personalize them with titles and captions. Small file sizes make it easy to send your photo stories in an e-mail. Watch them on your TV, a computer, or a Windows Mobile–based portable device.

Tutorials:

  • 16 Digital Photography Tips for Christmas
  • Photography Tutorials (Tutorial 9)
    •
  • Adobe Photoshop tutorials: step-by-step animated Viewlets
    • PhotoShop Roadmap: tutorials, plugins, downloads
    • Photoshop Tutorials (Good-Tutorials): Includes Animation | Basics | Buttons | Color | Designing | Drawing | Effects | Photo Effects | Photo Retouch | Scripting | Text Effects | Textures | Web Graphics | Web Layouts.
    • Digital Image Information (Interactive Media Center at the State University of New York, University of Albany). Over two dozen mini-tutorials here, including "Photoshop CS4: Basic Tips & Tricks," "Create Text Filled with a Photograph in Photoshop," and "Ten Tips for Using Images on the Web." There are also a number of "See It In Action" interactive demonstrations that show interested parties how to use the Photoshop crop tool and how to reset photo resolutions on Photoshop for printing.
    • An Idiot’s Guide To PhotoShop Part 1 (Makeuseof.com): the starter’s manual for every PhotoShop initiate to carry! Contains 30 illustrated pages to guide you through all basic aspects of the application. The guide even comes with three full pages of shortcuts, cheat sheets covering all the application’s possibilities!
    • An Idiot’s Guide To PhotoShop Part 2 (Makeuseof.com): 33 more illustrated pages to guide you through all aspects of the using PhotoShop.
    • How To Change The Background Of A Photo In PhotoShop
  • Corel Paint Shop Pro Tutorials: website graphics, photo manipulation. Tutorials to learn the basics of Corel Paint Shop Pro and create stunning webpage graphics or manipulate photos.
  • Use of Curves Tool
    •
  • Take Spectacular Holiday Photos - Dave Johnson, PC World: Follow these tips to take flattering photos of loved ones at Thanksgiving dinners and other family gatherings, as well as to capture the excitement of holiday decorations.
    • Photograph Spectacular Christmas Lights - Dave Johnson, PC World: Between now and January, it seems that every few weeks we have a new reason to put lighted decorations outside the house. This year I thought it would be fun to take an in-depth look at the best ways to take photos of those holiday lights. You can use these tips over and over again this fall, whether you're shooting Halloween, Chanukah, Christmas, or New Year's events.
    • Five Tips for Better Holiday Photos - Dave Johnson, PC World

Audio Tools:

  • How to Rip a CD to MP3 & Auto-Name Files Correctly. Use CDex, a trusty freeware open-source tool, in order to make MP3 copies of your CD’s (for iPod listening) It’s fast, it’s easy and there’s even a portable version for your on-the-go ripping needs.
  • 10 Most Downloaded Software For Audio Files - MP3 & audio software. Apps used to convert, organize or listen to digital audio files as well as rip physical music to a digital format.
  • Audacity: This editor can record and play sounds and import and export WAV, AIFF, MP3, and OGG files. Edit your sounds using cut, copy, and paste features (with unlimited undo functionality), mix tracks, or apply effects to your recordings. The program also has a built-in amplitude-envelope editor, a customizable spectrogram mode, and a frequency-analysis window for audio-analysis applications. Built-in effects include bass boost, wah wah, and noise removal, and the program also supports VST plug-in effects.
  • Free online MIDI to MP3 or WAV converter: Convert MIDI files to MP3/WAV audio files, which you can then burn onto a CD, import into a flash movie and for other uses where MIDI files are restricted. No need to sign up or download anything.
  • SoundEdit Pro: a full-featured digital audio editing software that offers a variety of audio recording, mixing, editing, analyzing and effects processing possibilities.
  • MAGIX Music Maker: Record, edit and mix. Everything in perfect audio quality for the most demanding standards. Songs, sounds and loops are made quickly with the instruments selected.
  • Audiograbber grabs and copies a cd's audio digitally—not through the soundcard—which enables you to make perfect copies of the originals. It can automatically normalize the music, delete silence from the start and/or end of tracks, and send them to a variety or external MP3 encoders. You can even record your vinyl LP's or cassette tapes with Audiograbber and make wav's or MP3's of them.
  • Use Windows Media Player 10 to rip (copy) songs from your CDs to your computer.
  • Free Audio Dub: free audio editing software that lets you delete unwanted parts from audio files without re-encoding. And "without re-encoding" means without loosing original quality!!! This is a lossless conversion, which is very fast. Supports many audio formats: MP3, WAV, AAC, AC3, M4A, MP2, OGG, WMA.

Video Tools:

  • ClipGrab: Makes it Simple to Download Videos Off Websites. Copy the link, paste it into a single program and download a video. A cross-platform program for downloading web videos to your computer.
  • E.M. PowerPoint Video Converter V2.90 - Convert PowerPoint Presentations to a Video. Easy-to-use, high-quality program, quickly converts PowerPoint to video, audio and images, such as avi, flv, 3gp, swf, mkv, mpeg2 ts, DVD, mp4, mov, mp3...
  • Lightworks: Lightweight Open Source Video Editing Software. an Academy and Emmy award winning professional-grade editor with over 20 years of history in the film and broadcast industry.…includes a full feature set of editorial tools – from advanced trimming and media management, to stereoscopic support and realtime effects including multiple secondary colour correctors.
  • Windows Movie Maker 2.1 (FREE) makes home movies amazingly fun. With Movie Maker 2.1, you can create, edit, and share your home movies right on your computer. Build your movie with a few simple drag-and-drops. Delete bad shots and include only the best scenes. Then share your movie via the Web, e-mail, or CD. Using third-party software you can even take movies you've made and turn them into DVDs. You can also save your movie back to the video tape in your camera to play back on a TV or on the camera itself. Check under Programs > Accessories to see if it is already on your system by default.
    • Windows Movie Maker: Make Quick & Professional Looking Videos. These days, it is very easy to make professional-looking videos in as little as 15 minutes. After trying out a few programs, I finally settled on Windows Movie Maker and it is an absolute cinch to use. (Part One) | (Part 2)
  • Top 5 Tools To Make A Home Movie Online For Free. Thankfully, there are a lot of simple online tools to help you make a movie online for free.
  • Five Steps to Multimedia Reporting (UC-Berkeley & Knight Media Center): offers a number of tutorials that will help such persons learn about choosing a story, doing fieldwork, editing their piece, and even offer a few tips on shooting video. The site is divided into sections that provide tips on picking the right video camera for the assignment and those that give some useful information on the various audio recording devices that might come in handy.
  • Freemake Video Converter (Freeware): Convert between video formats, rip DVD, convert to devices, burn DVD, create photo slideshows and music visualizations, cut, join, rotate and upload video, photos, music to YouTube with our free video converter.
  • BBC - Free Online Broadcast & New Media Courses: These particular guides and modules were originally designed for in-house use with BBC staff, and few editorial changes have been made in the interim. Visitors can browse through such sections as "Television", "Radio", "Broadcast Technology", and "Journalism". While some of the materials can bit a bit technical, there are many that provide basic operating procedures on creating effective radio interviews and editing existing video segments.
  • Motionbox is all about viewing and sharing personal video. Today we have the amazing ability to capture moving images on the fly. With this ability comes a need for innovative ways to share our lives through video. Motionbox lets users easily edit parts of videos to email others.
  • Video Toolbox: free powerful video editor lets you convert videos, add watermark text, cut videos, crop videos, merge several video files, demux video files and much more.

Blog Tools:

"A blog gives you your own voice on the web. It's a place to collect and share things that you find interesting— whether it's your political commentary, a personal diary, or links to web sites you want to remember." ~Blogger

  • WordPress: start a blog in seconds without any technical knowledge.
  • Blogger
  • TypePad: premier blogging service, hosting the world’s leading blogs.
    •
  • Blog Tools: Do you Want to Improve Your Blog?

Podcast Tools:

Web Page Tools:

  • BoogieJack.com: primarily a webmaster resource site featuring HTML tutorials, CSS tutorials, web graphics and very cool products you won't find elsewhere. Check out the Inner Circle benefits.

  • Boogie Jack’s Background Magic: The ultimate solution to creating web graphics that reflect YOUR perfect taste. You can easily create top-quality web page backgrounds with complementary buttons and banners that say exactly what you want them to say, not just the closest thing you could find.

  • Easily Create A Favicon. If you have a blog or website then creating a favicon is a very good idea. This makes your link stand out from all the links that don’t have favicons. Secondly, a favicon brands your site and gives it that extra professional look.
    • Favicon Generator: A favicon (short for "favorites icon" and also known as a page icon), is an icon associated with a particular website or webpage that is displayed in the browser address bar next to a site's URL.

  • Google: Webmaster Guidelines. Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise penalized. Includes How to add your website to Google’s index?

  • <hyper>gURL.com: Learn how to create, improve and promote a website. Tools for webmasters including web templates, html codes, Javascripts and tutorials all help to create your site.

  • HTML 4.01 / XHTML 1.0 Reference (W3Schools): Includes description of HTML Reference and HTML Tags

  • ReCAPTCHAs: used by many websites to prevent abuse from "bots," or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs.

Color Code Tools:

  • Color Theory Tutorial: Color theory has been worked on by a number of individuals over the years, and those with an interest in the field include artists, scientists, and of course, interior designers. Visitors can learn about the basics of color, complementary colors, and concepts such as contrast, dominance, proportion, and intensity.
  • Color Chart Pickers
  • Palleteman
  • Basic Color Code

Free Fonts:

PowerPoint Templates:

Misc. Tools:

  • CDBurnerXP – A Great Burning Tool For CDs DVDs, Blu-Rays & ISOs [Windows]. A free application to burn CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, and HD-DVDs on essentially all relevant versions of Windows, including Windows 8. It’s one of the best tools for the job.

  • Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

  • Fotomorph: simple program that makes it possible to morph images and created animated GIFs within seconds.

  • PosteRazor 1.5 (free): Want to print an image the size of a poster--but you don't have a wide-format printer? One solution is to print the image in smaller sections, each taking up a sheet of standard paper, and then put those sections together to create the full image. PosteRazor is available as a Windows, an OSX and a Linux version.

  • Google SketchUp 6: a 3D modeling software tool that’s easy to learn, simple to use, and lets you place your models in Google Earth. Are you remodeling a kitchen, landscaping your back yard or adding a deck to your home? From simple to complex, from conceptual to realistic, Google SketchUp helps you see your vision before you build it.

  • Official Seal Generator: Enter some text, choose a border and an emblem, pick your colors, and click the 'Go' button. An Official Seal will be generated for you.

  • Buttonator: Create quick-n-easy web buttons. Button templates are on the right. Click and drag the one you want into the "Button Preview" window. Click on the text to change it. You can change the button properties for text font, font size, and the width of the button) and the color of the button and button text. Once satisfied with the button you can download it as a .gif file.

  • Custom Sign Generator - FREE with no installation or registration: Create your own free customized special messages with your own customized captions, quotes, sayings, phrases from thousands of free dynamic JPEG, GIF & PNG image creators. Customize FREE logos, blog headers, parody photos, buttons, banners, email sigs, comics, signs, and more.

  • TheMemStore offers the ultimate in advanced technology Flash Memory products for sale in North America. A new breed of on-line retailer that has taken the step from being one of the largest Flash Memory Product Distributors to selling directly to the end user though our portal web site. Offers the customers the ability to purchase products for the same price as the retailers without stepping foot out of your house or office.

  • ZDNet: How to REALLY erase a hard drive. Secure Erase, a set of commands embedded in most ATA drives built since 2001.

  • What’s Inside a JPEG File?: a tutorial from The Society for Imaging Science and Technology. Very few users actually know what goes on inside a JPEG file and still fewer understand the many pitfalls associated with using this choice when storing their digital photographs. This essay will describe the inner working of this file format that we so commonly use, highlighting its many merits and it many flaws. Like any tool that is available to us, there are correct ways to use the JPEG file format and there are times when it is a poor choice.

Stock Photography:

  • Can Stock Photo: professional royalty free stock photography at prices you can afford. High-quality images start at just $1.00, and a generous license agreement gives you the flexibility you need. Whether you need an image for advertising, presentations, brochures, or just decoration, they've got you covered! Search for Your Images! We offer free weekly downloads with thousands of new images added every week.

  • GoGraph: offers flexible royalty free stock photography, vectors, illustrations, graphics, and stock footage at low prices.

  • PDClipart: public domain clip art collection of 25,00+ clip art files for you to use in your blog posts, projects and presentations. All of them are in the public domain, meaning you don't need to worry about copyright infringement, licences, attribution, commercial usage and all that.

  • Foto Search Stock Photography: The best online search engine for stock photo images, digital illustrations and artwork, map clipart, picture clip art, and stock footage from more than 2.5 million images from 140 quality stock photography publishers at one site. Stock photos and images: Bible | Catholic | Christian. Type query into Search box.

  • Topictures.com: new meta-search engine for photos and pictures that combines search results from Google, Bing (Shutterstock in some cases) and Picasa to get a variety of different images and photos. Try unique themes, categories or concepts.

  • Veezzle: search for free high quality stock photos. A simple search engine that crawls multiple free stock photo resources so you can find and download them easily. Just enter the keywords you want to search for and Veezzle will display a number of results collected from different sites.

Top

Resources:


Academic, Education & Teaching

Athletics & Sports
Ethics & Virtue

Church & Religious

Digital Tool Shed

Medical, Health & Wellness

Recipes & Food