PCUGR Shareware SIG -
August 25, 2001
Rawls Frazier,
Facilitator
rfrazier
This month,
it took a little scrambling to get started when we discovered
that our usual LAN address no longer worked. In the process
of dealing with that we fixed a RE/MAX worker's own
connectivity problem and found a free address for us to
connect to. Once on line, we looked at a few web sites and
then, in a little anticipation of the next General Meeting
topic on digital cameras, we took a tour of some programs for
manipulating images.
Drivers HQ
Our
first stop on the web was Drivers HQ, a site dedicated to
helping you find device drivers. The main feature here is a
comprehensive set of links to manufacturer or other sites
where up-to-date drivers can be found. The lists are
organized by equipment type followed by an alphabetical
listing of driver sources. The other feature of this site are
a couple of free programs that 1) analyze your system to
determine the current driver versions and 2) backup your
current drivers to help recover if an updated driver results
in problems. You have to fill out a survey before
downloading, so we skipped these. Also, as useful as the list
of links is, this site is particularly lousy with pop-up
windows. Looks like sometimes you have to take the good with
the not so good.
Dick Perron's
Hardware Information Page
Dick
Perron's Hardware Information Page is a treasure trove of
information. And, in contrast to the previous page, this one
is a completely private, labor of love. No banner ads,
graphics or other intrusive stuff. Just lots of info. There
are tutorials, hardware details (like IRQ and IO port
listings), error codes, a technical glossary and lots of
links to other information sites. There is also a fun
computer trivia page - we tried it out and didn't do so bad!
Definitely worth a visit and a bookmark.
Other
Hardware oriented pages
For those who are interested in building their own PCs, there
is an area dedicated to this at PC
Support which has a collection of
links to tutorials, Q&A and hardware info. Another site
for build-it-yourselfers is at PCMechanic. This one has
complete step-by-step tutorials. Finally there is a new Ziff
Davis site called Extreme
Tech,
which has spun off from the PC Magazine site and is dedicated
to more technical articles and information. Extreme Tech also
has information on software development as well as lots of
hardware oriented articles.
At this
point we left the web and headed back to our local PC. The
topic was utilities for images.
Framer
First
up was Framer. Some digitial
cameras have a feature that allows them to take multiple
frames on a single image - for example, 9 images - and saved
as JPEGs. With Framer, these images can be animated to make a
mini movie. It comes with an example file so you can try it
even with out a camera. It works very well but there is one
hitch - there is no option to save to something like an
animated GIF. Too bad, but fun to try anyway.
Animator-9
Animator-9 is another freeware
program to animate multi-frame composite pictures like
Framer. Installation is dead simple - just unzip and run the
program. In use, the program is "hardwired" for a
set of cameras. If you have one of the models in the list,
great. But if you don't the animations may not line up well.
In that case, you need to construct a "film strip"
composite from individual images and then this can be
animated. Whereas Framer couldn't save the animation,
Animator-9 can. It also comes with a java applet to display
the pictures if you prefer not to make an animated GIF.
The next
group of programs we looked at were from MediaChance, a
supplier of image editing and enhancing software for a fee
and for free. The freeware MediaChance utilities all feature
a simple but very usable interface: side-by-side original
versus modified image views. This along with the more or less
single purpose function of each of these freeware utilities
makes them worthy of consideration. Installed, these
utilities are also friendly to your system - just a single
.EXE and no stuff dumped into to the Windows system areas or
the registry.
Digital
Camera Enhancer
Digital
Camera Enhancer is a program to balance
exposure, sharpness and image "noise". It is very
simple to use. Start it up, select an image and let it
automatically do it's thing. Three sliders control each
enhancement. Once adjusted to match your particular source
images (e.g., from your digital camera), the settings can
more or less be left for as is for most images. The final
image can be saved in the usual JPEG format as well as
lossless TIF and BMP.
ColorCastFX
ColorCastFX goes after one thing
in a photo image - bad color balance. It presents the same
type of interface as Digitial Camera Enhancer. Simple to use
and works quite well, too.
BWorks
Next up was BWorks. This is a much more
specialized program - dedicated to converting ordinary color
images into black and whites, including sepia toned,
"duotoned" and cloud enhancing versions. Great for
creating a special look to a family portrait - just like we
did with a sample image.
FilterSIM
Last up of the MediaChance freeware was FilterSIM, a program that
mimics the Kodak Wratten filters in software. This is the
most specialized of the bunch we looked at. Using these
filters, you can correct for lighting anomalies (but first
try ColorCastFX) or add special effects. An interesting
program to see how filters can affect images.
Now that we
have spruced up our images, the next step is to display them.
Software to do this was our last topic.
Qslide
Qslide is a super simple,
freeware slideshow viewer. There is no installation - just
one .EXE file (well, you do need the VB6 runtime .DLL).
Double click it and your off. You set the folder where the
images are located via a browse button and then click the
prominent Slideshow button. An options drop-down lets you
control how big the show is on the screen (from full screen
down to 640x480), the background color, the delay between
each slide, whether image advance is manual or automatic and
whether the image sequence is "normal" (the order
the files are found on the disk) or random. The program can
be set to autostart. Options are controlled by editing a .INI
file.
Alcyone and 
FreeView
Alcyone is a much more
feature rich slide show program - actually a two part
application. The first is Alcyone itself, a slide show
creator. With it you select images, set display transition
effects (dissolves, wipes, etc.) and sound to play (MIDI or
WAV). In addition, each image can have it's own custom sound.
Once setup, there is a test button to preview the show.
Finally, when completed, the slideshow to a single
"combined jpeg file" (a.k.a., a .CJF file). The
second program is FreeView, a standalone
slideshow viewer that works with the .CJF files. Basically
this program follows whatever has been stored away in the
.CJF file - the sounds, slide order, transition effects, etc.
Controls on the viewer let you manually step forward or
backward through the images, pause or stop the slides and
turn off/on the sounds. The program can be started with a
.CJF file specified on the command line (e.g., via a
shortcut) so it displays the first slide automatically. You
do have to press the go button, however to start the show.
One negative from my prespective is that the viewer has to be
installed first. But other than that, it is a reasonably nice
slideshow viewer.
To finish up
things, I showed a set of pictures on a CD with a home made
slideshow viewer constructed from HTML and JavaScript. This
viewer actually uses the default web browser on the
particular system to show the slides. The images are
displayed along with music and controls are available to
pause the show, to manually step forward and backward through
the slides and to start/stop the music. The other advantage
of this approach is the user does not have to install
anything. Just pop the CD in and let AutoPlay do the rest.
The downside to using a web browser is that the images should
be resized to fit the screen for best performance.
Thanks,
again, to Bob for making the coffee! And thanks, as always,
to Bernie Stepan for the meeting room, Internet connection
and coffee supplies at RE/MAX Marina, Petaluma.
RE/MAX Marina
775 Baywood Dr. #100
Petaluma, CA
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