In this section I have gathered together a number of both programs and tools that hopefully you will find useful. Some I use all the time, while others come in handy occasionally. Often a simple little tool can be a great time saver.

Belarc Advisor - a free program which will inventory your PC. It is 100% secure. From their page: "The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, including Microsoft Hotfixes, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server." The computer profile summary even listed all my Software License Numbers, Software Versions - as well as Printers and Drivers, Controllers, Bus Adapters, Communications, Display - everything in complete detail! I haven't mentioned everything.

Cool Ruler -
From their page: "Very easy to use with your existing programs. Measurements can be set for Inches, Pixels & Centimeters. Create as many rulers on your screen as you need. Adjust the angle of the ruler to a vertical or horizontal position. Works with DOS and Windows programs."
Fabsoft Link

WinSize - From their page: "One of the problems web developers face is producing a web site that looks good at all resolutions. Most developers end up continually switching between resolutions to see what their site look like, if all the menu options are visible, if you can see the right hand edge of the company logo etc. To save all this hassle ICS has developed a shareware utility called WinSize that will resize the browser window to any resolution." There's not much more on the web page, so take my word for it ... its a nice little tool. WinSize 1.0

Eyedropper -
From their page: "Eyedropper, an extremely useful freeware program, has become even better! Praised by the Web designer community and DTP experts, and critically acclaimed by many shareware/freeware hosts, including 4 cows @Tucows Network, EyeDropper excels at its primary task: picking the colour value from any pixel of the screen." Find the English page to download it - inetia.com

Photo Resizer Pro - From their page: "Photo Resizer Pro is a simple, quick and easy tool to resize (reduce) any single or batches of photos or images for the purpose of sending it by email, publish it on the web or just to save space on your hard drive." ShowYourPhotos.com

Microsoft's Photo Editor - I used this for years and years and still fall back on it occasionally. Read this article "MS Photo Editor, Wherefore Art Thou?"

Color Schemer - From their site: "With tools from Color Schemer, creating harmonious color schemes has never been easier! Instantly match colors, find harmonies, and learn about color theory all while building your own dazzling color schemes! Not everyone has an eye for color, but no longer does that mean you can't make great, colorful web sites!" ColorSchemer.Com

Easy RGB-PC - Monitor Calibration Wizard - "This wizard will guide you through the 4 easy steps needed to color calibrate your system." This will NOT replace other more sophisticated monitor calibration tools but you might see if you like the results. Easy RGB-PC

Fast Stone Viewer - From their site: "Fast Stone Image Viewer is an image browser, viewer, converter and editor with an easy to use interface and a nice array of features that include resizing, renaming, cropping, color adjustments, watermarks and more. It also includes an intuitive full-screen mode that provides quick access to EXIF information and thumbnail browser via hidden toolbars that emerge when you touch the edge of your screen with the mouse." Fast Stone Soft

MY BEST RECOMMENDATION is: Ulead's Photo Explorer ... so I'll give its details even more space. From their site: "The All-in-One Tool for your Digital Media Ulead® Photo Explorer 8.5 lets you spend more time enjoying photos, music and videos and less time finding them. It's the all-in-one solution for owners of digital cameras, camcorders, scanners or anyone who wants to make it easier to keep track of their media.
Do More with Your Digital Media
Browse and view your media lightning fast
Describe, tag, rate and search for photos instantly
Use Calendar View to easily manage your photos
Enhance photos and add creative effects
Create slideshows with music, transitions & narration
Edit video and save it in the most popular formats
Share photos by CD and DVD, print, e-mail, the Web and more!"

More Photo Explorer Capabilities

There is also a FREE version to be found here , but it isn't the most recent version - which you really must have!

Ulead's PhotoImpact: While I'm showing you some nice features from the Photo Explorer program I'd also like to mention the fact that Ulead's PhotoImpact program allows you to Open from the Web ... an individual Image or a Web Page as an Image. This feature is nice if you want to show-off web pages you have developed. This is easier than doing a screen capture and it allows you to grab a whole page, no matter what its length! I have this program but don't use it for image editing - just for its special features. The newest version (v.10) includes Photo Explorer v.8.5 (the latest version) plus much more. Find it here

Panorama Factory - From their site "The Panorama Factory from Smoky City Design, LLC is a panoramic stitching program for Windows 95 / 98 / ME / NT / 2000 / XP. It creates high-quality panoramas from a set of overlapping digital images. The Panorama Factory transforms (warps) the images so that they can be joined seamlessly into panoramas whose fields of view can range up to 360 degrees." It's FREE! The Panorama Factory page.  
Example page: Panoramas of the Woolmer Estate in Tasmania

Thumbnail Builder.mxp - a javascript extension for Dreamweaver which makes a thumbnail from a selected image using Fireworks, from Joseph Lowery. You'll find the .zip or .sit links at the top of this page, used in the book Beyond Dreamweaver. This is well worth the trouble it takes to get it. All the thumbnail images used on this page were done with this extension. Australia - March-April 2004

A Drop Shadow javascript to use with Fireworks - I have an icon for this script right on my desktop. Clicking on it askes me to find a folder of images to add a drop shadow to and then a folder to put the results in. So I make a new folder with a suffix of "DS" for the resulting new version of the photos. The Script You'll need to copy this into Notepad and save it as a .jsf file. You will be able to customize it (background color etc.). An example can be seen here: Port Arthur Historical Site, Tasmania
The JustSo Photo Album was used to build the page.

Focus Magic - From their page "Using revolutionary technology Focus Magic corrects both out-of-focus blur and motion blur in photographs.  It works both as a Windows stand-alone program and as a Photoshop plug-in for Windows or the Mac.   Focus Magic works as a plug-in for Photoshop (including Photoshop Elements and LE), Paint Shop Pro, PhotoImpact, ACD's FotoCanvas, Corel's PhotoPaint (part of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite) and other image editing programs." This is worth exploring - it works differently than the Unsharp Mask tool found in most image editing programs. Focus Magic's webpage

And finally:   "The wait is over. Firefox 1.0 empowers you to browse faster, more safely and more efficiently than with any other browser. Join more than 8 million others and make the switch today — Firefox imports your Favorites, settings and other information, so you have nothing to lose."

Other Resources - includes miscellaneous articles and tutorials, mostly about working with images and preparing slideshows for web pages (for both FrontPage and Dreamweaver).

Programs that I use on an every-day-basis include Dreamweaver MX 2004, Fireworks MX2004, Ulead's Photo Explorer, Paint Shop Pro v.9 and Photoshop CS.
Don't hesitate to Contact Me with questions or comments.


Eleanor's Travels Home Page - many photo galleries which document my travels. My 'first love' IS photography!