Create video GIFs
I just completed a new software program that makes it really easy to create an animated gif image from a video clip. Check it out at http://www.video-gif.com
More visitors to your web site?
Been a while since the last update. I have been busy on my new blog. If you have a web site and want more visitors you might want to check it out.
Better looking zoomed pictures
This is about how and why the inzomia image viewer makes your photos look better zoomed. You want as good looking image as possible right? Most image viewers show pictures “as they are”. If an image is zoomed the pixels are simply enlarged. This is good when you want to edit a photo, then you really want to know that you are editing the real raw data for the photo.
On the other hand, when you are viewing a photo you probably just want it to look as good as possible. If the photo is shown without zoom any extra effects are just bad. If anything needs to be changed on the original photo they photo should be editied in photoshop, there is no way for a program to know what is good or bad.
When an image is zoomed in or zoomed out you have another case all together. The act of zooming the picture will introduce something called aliasing, in practice there will be bad loooking artifacts.
Imagine that you have a one gray pixel and one white pixel. When the image is zoomed to say the double size (200%) you will have 4 while pixels next to 4 black pixels. The zoomed image would look smother if the pixel row between the black and the white pixels where in the middle ie gray. For photos this almost always what you want. For images with text it might be better to not change the pixels to have the edges sharper but in practice filters are probably better there as well.
By default inzomia image viewer filters images when they are zoomin and zoomed out. You can disable this feature from the preferences below the perfromance tap. The filtering is done in realtime as the image is rendered and it uses your graphics card. If your have a laptop or a computer without a 3d card the filtering will cost some performance but in practice its worth the time and unless you are viewing really large images on a high resolution screen you will not notice the partformance difference.
So in short, filtering in the inzomia image viewer makes your photos look better when zoomed. Download the viewer and see for yourself, its free for non-comercial use.
Fullscreen image viewer
Fullscreen image viewing in the Inzomia image viewer
If you have used the Inzomia image viewer for a while you probably know of the fullscreen mode.
If you do not know about it please read on…
The Inzomia image viewer has a fulscreen mode and a normal mode. If you just want to watch photos i suggest you use it from the fullscreen mode to be able to use all screen space.
You activate fullscreen mode fom the image window, first making sure the image window is active. When you move the cursor to the top area of the window a row of buttons will apear (they will not appear if you have made the image window small). When you press the fullscreen button the program will switch to fullscreen mode. In fullscreen mode click the button again or the escape key to return form fullscreen mode.
When you are in fullscreen mode you can move the cursor to the right hand side and the image in you playlist will appear. When the thumbnail list is visible you can move the cursor to the top or bottom of the screen to scroll the playlist, to load an image from the playlist simple click the thumbnail.
Shortcuts will ocource also work while in fullscreen mode.
The good thing with the fullscreen mode is that you really get the maximum use of the screen when all you want is to watch photos. You can control the slideshow in fullscreen mode and if you create an exe slideshow it will be run in fullscreen mode automatically.
Free stock photos – Part 3
This is the third part of in my list of great free stock photo resources.
The first part of the list of free picture resources is her and the second part of the list with free pictures resources.
Free range
This site has a lot of photos that are free for commercial use. There is an in-house free image directory of very high quality images though not well sorted. Search function for all in-house photos and a lot of user submitted photos. You have to register to download photos without watermark.
Free Photos se
A site with a about 1000 high quality stock photos released under the creative commons license ie you can do almost anything with the photos. No account is required to download.
OneOddDude.net
The One odd dude site has stock photos as well as textures, computer generated images and desktop backgrounds. All files are free for non commercial use.
Free digital photos
A site with very high quality photos free for commercial use. You can download the low-resolution photos for free but you are required to pay a modest fee for higher resolutions photos.
Download more free photos
Here is the more sources for free stock images to download. This is the second part of my list of where to Download free photos. There is at least one more post to go, stay tuned.
Free photographs network
Free photographs network has a lot of free photos for non-commercial use. You need to credit the photographer when you use their photos. In general I find the site rather annoying to navigate with too many google ads and too few photos on each page. The photos are also in quite low resolution though probably high enough for a blogg entry.
Free stock photos
The site is organized as a blog making it easy to find newly added photos. Categories makes it also quite easy to navigate. You may use the photos for free or commercial projects but you are required to add a back link to the site. Each photo is free in the lowres version but if you want a print quality version you have to pay, though the prices are reasonable. In general the quality of the photos seems to be above most other free image directories.
Free photo bank
FreePhotoBank is a free stock photo site with photos for free and commercial use. The use the creative commons license for their material. The photos on the site has a general high quality and are available in several resolutions. Each photo also has a lot of information about how it was shoot. In general an easy to navigate site well worth a visit.
Download free photos
Are you looking to download free photos to spice up your blog or just to have something interesting to look at? Here are a number of resources you can use to find free pictures to download. This post is the first in a series of post that will list free stock photo sites.
morgueFile – A directory of free to use stock photos that has been around for quite some time. Even commercial use is allowed. There is a license, read it, but you are generally allowed to do almost whatever you want with the photos. Photos are sorted and can be browsed in the following categories Animals, Objects, People, Scenes, Still Lifes and Textures. There is also a search function and you can create your own lightbox.
F11digital.com – A gallery of free high resolution photos all licensed under the creative commons 3.0 license ie you are allowed to use them commercially if you want. As with all these libraries, its worth remembering, that if you use a photo of a person you might also need a release form. Images are sorted in the following categories; The Sea,
Animals, Sunsets, Las Vegas, Black & White, Palmtrees, Tutti Frutti, México, Switzerland, Europe, Nature, Aviation. You need to create an account to download photos.
stockvault.net – Stockvalut has a lot of of photos that are free for non comercial use.
PixelPerfectDigital is another site that has a free stock image library. You can also use these images for commercial use, though there are a few restrictions, most use is allowed.
You probably know that the Inzomia image viewer has a build in web browser in its in the information window. If there are image is on the actual web page you can add the photos on the page to the current playlist. Sometimes this does not seem work, for example if the image is displayed inside an iframe ie part of the web page is actually on another web page.
Free image hosting
Here are a couple of free services for hosting and sharing images if you have more please comment on the post.
IXDrive.co.uk – Has a size limit of 3 MB per image and support jpg, png and gif images.
easy2upload.net – Has a size limit of 1024 kb per image and support jpg, png and gif images.
uploadimage.co.uk – Has a size limit per image at 100 kb and allow gif and jpeg images. The service is primary aimed for people that what to link to images from news or blog postings.
Smart photo zoom
One of the most liked features of the Inzomia image viewer is the smart zoom functionality. If you have tried the program I am sure you have not missed it. When you move the cursor over the image and hold the right mouse-button down you can zoom in on where in the image the pointer is.
The smart zoom also has instant filtering to get a high image quality when the image is not displayed at its natural resolution.
So what is so great about the smart zoom. Its always nice with smooth movement but the implementation does violate some windows user interface conventions. First of all you expect a context menu when you press the right button and then the cursor should always move with the mouse. So this is perhaps not great but there is a reason i created it this way.
By directly connecting the mouse movement with the zoom level the mouse button actually change context of the operation.
By having total control over the zoom level without jumps your brain never lose context, your brain does not need to reinterpret the image. You can compare it to looking at a movie where you don’t have to think about that the image is updated 25 times a second.
If zoom level was controlled by a button you would loose context each time you zoom in or out of the image. If you also be hard to do it toward a specific pixel.
Personally I am very satisfied with the solution and its the number one reason I still today use my own image viewer,
Creating a slideshow
Today I want to show you how very easy it is to create a slideshow with the inzomia image viewer. For this example i will use photos downloaded from Flickr. If you haven’t read how to download photos from flickr using the inzomia image viewer feel free to take a look at that article.
For a start begin with adding the photos you want to the Inzomia image viewer playlist.
I find it easiest to click the “add dir” button to add a complete folder and then go though it looking the photos i want to keep for the slideshow. The photos i want to keep i lock from the right click context menu on the thumbnail in the playlist. When i have locked the photos i want i click clear to remove all the other photos from the list.
Next, test your slideshow by clicking play in the image windows, move the cursor to the top border while the image window is active and the slideshow buttons will come into view.
If you want to you can change slideshow settings from the preferences in the program. By altering just a few parameters you can create a wide range of transition effects.
Finally either save the playlist as an image playlist if you want to use it later from the Inzomia image viewer or select “save as self running exe” from the dropdown in the save window to create an exe file you can share with others.
The exported exe file has no addware or other malware so it is safe to hare with friends. If you want to send it with email you probably want to zip the file first as just about every email client will block exe files for security reasons.
I have created a video tutorial for this that you can watch here.
