Useful Programs

[veilexxx]

Just discover this litlle free tool that will help u to get the fastest internet connection around. Just click "Fastest DNS" and the soft automatically look for the fastest connection , then click apply and that's it ! Works wonder for me (Windows only)

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Interne...s-Jumper.shtml

[sigare1]

Extract all images from a PDF document in a snap with PDF to JPG

the pdf file on the 'application .... finished
no installation

gif



source:
http://www.tuttovolume.net/utili/esp...documenti-pdf/


http://www.mediafire.com/?t08w0h7tqmfzpdv

[calibaan]

I couldn't see a reference to this software. It's very useful for hiding files that you might not want others to see - and it's totally free (home or commercial use)

http://www.truecrypt.org/

You create a "container" - (a file as big as you want) with pwd protection, then mount that container - it appears as another drive.

I use it both for stuff found on the likes of here, and for work

[Denaniel]

z_o_o_m's File & Image Uploader

http://z-o-o-m.eu/

Great little piece of freeware, frequently updated and works with tons of filehosts. I liked it so much, I even sent the guy some beer money.

I've been meaning to write a proper tutorial on using zoom uploader, I just haven't finished writing it yet. But here's what I've got so far:

Mini Tutorial

If you have a premium account, you need to go into the Tools menu > Settings > File hosters, and you'll see a window like this:



Select the host from the dropdown list, enter your username and password, and tick the little box that says "Use account" (circled in red). Then click the "Add/Edit" button. Give it a minute, and you should see the host name, username and "Yes" appear in green in the box under Accounts. BTW, you only need to do this the first time you use the app, or if you add another premium account to your list.

To add files to the upload queue, you can either hit the plus sign in the toolbar (upper left) or drag and drop the files into the upper window pane. Then you'll get a dialog box that looks like this:



Again, select the filehost from the dropdown list, and tick "use account" (this filehost will become the default option next time you use the app). Then click on the big button with the green check mark.



Now you should see your files in a queue, with time elapsed, time remaining, speed and percentage uploaded ("Progress").

You can choose to upload more than one file at once, but I recommend one file at a time. That way, if there's a glitch and you have to re-upload, there's less time wasted. Occasionally, you'll get an error message and/or one of the files in the queue will appear in red, and you'll need to start over. Just highlight the file in the list, right click and choose "Re-upload selected file", or click the 2nd green arrow in toolbar with the little "R".

When your files have finished uploading, a list will appear in the bottom pane with the new filehost links. If you click on any file in the list, the link will be automatically copied to your clipboard. If you click on the first file, hold down the Shift key and then click on the last, all the links will be copied and you can paste the complete set of links. Very cool!

Also, in the Upload History tab, you'll have a complete list of all the files you've uploaded with their links, and you can copy and paste from that list in the same way.

[sigare1]

good service on line to cut photos , zoom and more .
easy to use

http://picslice.com/

as proof of my post NICI Sterling 359

http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/sho...90#post1885690

[red exposure]

Photoscape and Paint.net

After giving up on Gimp due to crashes, I decided to opt for using 2 freeware image programs together - Photoscape for cropping and colour correction, and Paint.net for stitching double-spread scans together. Both are especially ideal if - like me - your computer has a hard time handling any resource-intensive applications.

www.photoscape.org
www.getpaint.net

Photoscape is an excellent bit of freeware for cropping/rotating and colour correction/saturation issues, with easy to use yet comprehensive functions that can all be combined to work toward desired results. It also has quite comprehensive colour, saturation, and luminance graphs, which have their own undo/redo buttons to allow the user to compare graph adjustments as they go along.

There's also a handy side section featuring all the files in your selected folder, so rather than going through the usual File>Open menu etc., opening files simply requires clicking on the desired thumbnail. Bingo! Not too insignificant if you're working through a series of scans page by page.

The auto functions have low/med/high increments which is useful, and there are other features such as a 'backlight' function (great for any flash-photography) which brings out shadow detail.

It's major drawback is that it doesn't allow playing with layers (seemingly only individual images), so stitching magazine double-spreads is where Paint.net comes in.....

Paint.net isn't new to this thread. It's a great, low-resource program which seems to be the easiest to use for stitching together double-spread scans. I simply double the canvas size (after cropping) of one page, then copy the remaining page, and move to fit.

[rlg118]

Try these on for size:

https://www.ixquick.com/

https://www.startpage.com/

Go to Settings and create your own customized search parameters.

[nissan]

Note: Computer "experts" (of which I am certainly not one of) can probably skip this post.

As briefly as possible:

My computer knowledge is akin to a blind man walking with a cane in an unfamiliar place - I might sometimes end up where I need to be but I stumble frequently;

I tried to clean the internals of my computer with the wrong aerosol cleaner(or did not allow it to evaporate properly before rebooting) and destroyed one of my 2 RAM connectors on the motherboard - leaving it with only 512mb of installed memory making it VERY slow;

I don't particularly want others having access to my computer, especially to "My Pictures" ); very especially a close relative who normally provides me with all of my computer needs/upgrades for free;

When looking for a solution without handing over my computer to said relative I found a potential solution called "ReadyBoost", which is already installed in Windows 7/Vista.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...res/readyboost

To benefit from this very easy to use function, all that is needed is a cheap USB stick(aka "flash drive"?), but do research first as not all such devices are "R/B compatible".

I was very fortunate to find this:

http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/misc/readyboost/

which "sorts out the wheat from the chaff".

Don't necessarily trust the salesman at the computer store- most did not know what I was talking about when I mentioned "R/B compatibility", and I had to go to a few different stores before I got the right help.

In less than a few minutes of my very first ever use of a USB stick(Verbatim "Store & Go 8gb 2.0", part #44093 $14.00 ) my computer's memory has been restored in a "round about" way and is working pretty much as good as new - without the inconvenience/expense of having a new motherboard installed by a non relative computer tech., as I am not capable of doing it myself.

"Happy Endings"

& hoping this post will help others in a similar situation.

NOTE: Will not be as useful for those who have computers that are "up to date" and/or have much larger installed memory than my paltry 512mb.

P.S. "R/B" is using less than 25% of my USB stick capacity.

I am able to use the remaining partition to store the contents of "My Pictures" and will be able to transfer it to a new "hand-me-down" computer which I will probably be given in the medium term, and no one other than myself will be any the wiser.

[vsuamier]

Originally Posted by calibaan

I couldn't see a reference to this software. It's very useful for hiding files that you might not want others to see - and it's totally free (home or commercial use)

For Linux users:

It's quite easy to hide files on a separate partition on linux too. The tool suite is called Luks and is included with most distributions. Useally you can create these partitions with the partition manager. The best way is to use a secret key file, store it safely somewhere as backup and keep it all the time with you. gdecrypt is one fronted for luks.

Concerning the image editors:

I use Gimp for editing JPGs and other image non-RAW image formats (16 bit). Though it's one of the best tools out there it still lacks a good RAW import for my camera.

For this task I have two different really greatly evolving programs:
Darktable - Like the vintage dark room (comes with a dark room interface ) you can edit your raw files undestructable and undo every "step" (filter) easily. It lacks directly editing and repairing tools.
FotoXX - Great for HDR (I had no luck with darktable here in the last 3 versions) and correction of lens "problems" (much advanced to darktable). Also very nice for many different tasks but I usually prefer darktable here.

I normally start with darktable when I develop a RAW file and when I'm finished with the basic filtering/crop I switch to fotoxx for the correction tasks. On both program I really like the curve-based dialogs most when editing some filter. As immediate file format I use tiff. If required I finally do image repairs with Gimp. Gimp also has a really nice perspective tool if you just quickly want to make changes to a jpeg OOC.

Finally if you wish to use these two fine tools on windows, just download some virtual machine. for Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE or Mageia.

Update:
Rawtherapee - for working on image improvements like restoring dynamics, similar to the above image editors but available on all platforms and meanwhile packed with many useful filters for postprocessing.

Regards

[Roger Allott]

Something that's just been launched seems good for those of us who store our files at mediafire is MediaFire Express (http://www.mediafire.com/software/express/tour.php).

I've only just installed it myself and it seems to work fine so far, which is a heck of a lot better than the hit-and-miss frustrations of trying to upload via a browser.

It's still only a beta version so it probably has a few bugs still, but IMHO it's worth trying. Versions are available for Windows, Mac and a few flavours of Linux.