Common Data About Pocket PCs

By admin | May 31, 2007

Sample Pocket PC

    A Pocket PC, abbreviated P/PC or PPC (although this abbreviation is used for other purposes!), is a handheld-sized computer that runs a specific version of the Windows CE operating system. It has many of the capabilities of modern desktop PCs. Currently there are thousands of applications for Pocket PC, many of which are freeware. Some of these devices also include mobile phone features. Pocket PCs can also be used with many other add-ons like GPS receivers, barcode readers, RFID readers, and cameras.

    According to Microsoft, the Pocket PC is “a handheld device that enables users to store and retrieve e-mail, contacts, appointments, tasks, play multimedia files, games, exchange text messages with Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger), browse the Web, and more.”
    From a technical standpoint, “Pocket PC” is a standard from Microsoft that sets various hardware and software requirements for mobile devices bearing the “Pocket PC” label.

For instance, any device which is to be classified as a Pocket PC must:

Source: en.wikipedia.org

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Reflet from Antonio Da Cruz (FreeWare)

By admin | May 31, 2007

    Reflet is rather small and compact utility. It serves for one purpose only: allows to generate an animation simulating ripple effect and a reflection of the image in the water, and makes it in a simple and elegant way. It can be useful for logo animating, to decorate Web pages or just for fun. Of course, it can be used for images of stretches of water but in essence you can use any image including portraits, momuments, etc.
    Downloading of the application is avaliable at Download link. (This is an English version of the program; there is also a French version at the French version link).
    The application is downloaded in the form of the .ZIP-archive file containing the application .EXE file proper, two sample images, a simple .htm help-file, and a license .txt file. No installation as such is required. The program is ready for execution immediately after downloading.
    The Main menu of the application contains only three options: File, Options and ?.
    The option File opens File Dialog and has also only three options: Open, Export and Exit. The option Open serves for image file opening; The program works with a number of image file formats including JPEG, GIF, Windows MetaFile, TIFF, Adobe Photoshop, Bitmap, Icon files, etc. Selecting and choosing an image file for opening is being done through the Windows browser. Right after the opening the image is already reflected. The option Export allows exporting the result image in another file. If you activate this option there opens a window in which you can select an animation format, the number of used colors, what to export (an image AND a reflection, or a reflection only). There is a warning in this window that for animating Web-pages only animated GIF-format is appropriate. The standard option Exit is for cancelling the program execution and quitting the application.
    The option Options allows starting the animation (simulating rippling effect) proper and setting its characteristics. The process of animation begins after choosing the option Enter. After that this option is checked. The second activating the option Enter stops the animation;the option becomes unchecked. With the option Speed you can change the speed of the animation; with the option Type of waves you can select short, medium or long simulated waves.
    The option ? opens a Help popup containing three options. The option Information (with the F1 hotkey) opens the simple .htm help-file containing some explanation of the parameters of images available for adjustment. The option Official Web site contains a link to the Web-site of the developer. And the option About Reflet calls the standard About window containing information about the developer (Antonio Da Cruz) and links to his Web-sites.
    Under the Main menu there is a taskbar of the application. It contains three buttons for Open, Export and Start Animation actions (there are on-line tips for the buttons), as well as spinners Images and Height(%), and an option group Perspective/Regular. The option group allows to change the type of the simulation varying its appearance (it defines the movement of the waves). The Image spinner defines how many images are used for the animation (by default 5 frames). And the Height(%) spinner defines the height of the reflection in percentage to the original image (by default 90%).

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Pixia from Isao Maruoka (FreeWare)

By admin | May 30, 2007

    Pixia is a free painting and photo finishing tool originally created in Japan by Isao Maruoka. There it quickly became rather popular and after some time there appeared versions of the program in other languages including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Chinese (simplified form), Polish and Hungarian. Now there is a rather big circle of Pixia fans who help to develop Pixia, create filters and masks for it, as well as plugins.
    This pretty girl mascot represents English version of Pixia :) Pixia Girl
    Here is a link to the web-page for Downloading Pixia. Here you can download Pixia in the desired language version, various plugins for it, and Help-files. It must be noted that the installer for Pixia application doesn’t include Help-files. The installer of Help is separate. Besides Help-system, the Official Web-site of Pixia has a page with links for on-line Tutorials for Pixia created by its users. Moreover, some users created their own web-sites and web-pages dedicated to Pixia; the links to these web-sites and web-pages are also at the web-page of tutorials.
    For better understanding of working with Pixia and promoting it on the official web-site for Pixia there is a Gallery containing pictures created with Pixia as imaginative examples.
    The Main menu of the application consists of only two options if there is no opened image in the utility: File and Help.
    The option File starts File Dialog. The option New… allows creating a new image. When you choose this option there appears a window for selecting properties of the new image (width, height, resolution). The option Open… is for opening an existing image through the system browser. You can open image from the Clipboard with the option Open from Clipboard. If there is a scanner or camera connected to the PC it is possible to acquire picture from it with the option from Camera or Scanner. The option Select TWAIN.. allows selecting a TWAIN source, and after selecting it you can Acquire TWAIN…. There is an option for setting Preferences for working with the application. You can Customize Tool Bar… for work. The option Exit serves for cancelling program execution. At the bottom of the File Dialog there is a list of recently opened files (program history). This list can be cleared with the option Clear History…. If there is an opened image in the application there are additional options for file saving Save and Save As…, and file closing Close.
    Pixia supports a number of image formats including Bitmap, JPEG, PNG, Photoshop, Makintosh PICT, FujiFilm Standard Format RGB, Windows Icon ICO, Adobe EPS, TIFF, Targa TGA, and native PXA. But image information such as transparency and layer information can be saved only in the native format PXA.
    The option Help of the Main menu initiates a popup with only two options: Help… F1 and About. As has been mentioned above the option Help is enabled only if there is a Help-file separately downloaded and installed.
    If there is an opened image in the Main window then the Main menu expands and contains additional options: Edit, Selection, Paint, Image, View and Window.
    The option Edit of the Main menu opens Edit Dialog. It contains standard file editing options such as Copy, Paste, Delete; options of Undo and Redo changes. You can Copy [image] from File… or paste image content to the current image from other image file (Paste from File…). With the option Copy to Partsbox… you can save the selected area of the image or the image as a whole as a new file in the picture gallery of the application. The option Paste from Partsbox… pastes images from this gallery into a new layer in the current image.
    The option Selection of the Main menu contains Selection handling options such as Select All, Select by Layer Size, Deselect, Invert Selection, Convert to New Layer and much more. There are options for saving selections to a file and loading selections from it (Load Selection… and Save Selection…). You can Flatten Selection… (enlarges selection area by a number of pixels), Slim Selection… (shrinks selection by a number of pixels), Blur Outside Selection and Blur Inside Selection, too. With the option Trim Selection you open a new canvas with the picture trimmed by selection.
    The option Paint contains options for painting. The option Fill fills the selected area with the selected color (i.e. the current color). The option Line draws a line along the edge of the selection using the pentip and the color you selected earlier. The option Tone filter… makes filling and pasting in gradation. There are options for flipping and rotating the selection or the whole image. The option Text… allows applying a text to the image using the selected font. The option Magnify magnifies part of the image and allows pixelwise editing.
    The option Image of the Main menu contains various image adjusting options. You can do Color Adjustment…, Color and Contrast…, Color Balance…, Tone Balance…, Merge Layers… and much more. The option Negative makes a negative picture from the current layer. The option Duplicate makes a complete duplicate from the current image. And more.
    The option View allows zooming in and out of the current picture; it also opens and closes windows for filters and Supplementary Settings of the image, enables and disables the grid and the ruler, as well as enables/disables displaying of the mouse pointer position.
    The option Window contains standard options handling windows within the application.
    Here is a snapshot of the Pixia Main Window:
Pixia Main Window
    Under the Main menu there is the taskbar of the application; the main toolbar is located on the right side of the Main window. Parts of the toolbar can be brought out as separate toolbars. For example, you can move out the color toolbar either in the form of the set of color squares or in the form of a color circle with colors fluently turning into each other.
    In the Filters window you can select a filter for applying to the image. The actual applying of the filter is being done by pushing the Execute button in the window; you can undo tha action by pushing the button Undo.
    The toolbar of the application contains an awful lot of instruments. All the instruments can’t be shown at once so similar instruments are grouped together, and such groups can be opened and closed by pushing the button for them. Each pushing of the button changes the group of instruments in the toolbar; the selected group is indicated by its name on the button.
    In the window Supplementary Settings you can change additional settings of the picture which aren’t shown in the main menu such as Anti-Aliasing (the technique of minimizing aliasing (jagged or blocky patterns) when representing a high-resolution signal at a lower resolution) and so on.

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PhotoFiltre from Antonio Da Cruz (FreeWare)

By admin | May 30, 2007

    Although it’s fairly limited in features, PhotoFiltre offers a simple, but elegant user interface and a lot of one-click image adjustments, filters, and effects. There is a built in image explorer panel for visually navigating your file system, basic drawing, painting, retouching and selection tools, and batch processing capabilities.

    PhotoFiltre is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use, and has an easy learning curve.

    Downloading of the application is avaliable at the Download page on the developer’s site Photofiltre.free.fr (this hyperlink is for the english version of the site).

    Basically. there are four language versions of the utility for download including English and French. But at the download page there are a number of additional language packs for downloading including German (Deutsch), Russian as well as other languages.

    A strong side of the application is a lot of available predefined selections and photo masks donating for public use by devoted customers :) and available for download. Every PhotoFiltre customer can upload on the site his selections and masks.

    The Main menu of the application has ten options: File, Edit, Image, Selection, Adjust, Filter, View, Tools, Window and ?.
    Under the Main menu there are two taskbars of the program; there is a graphic toolbar at the right edge of the Main window, too.

    The option File opens a File Dialog popup. It has standard options for creating new image (New…) and opening an existing image (Open…); the option Recent files supports a list of recently opened files for re-opening; by the option Revert you can substitute the content of the current image with the last saved version of the image. There are standard options for saving images Save and Save as… as well as closing images Close and Close All. PhotoFiltre supports a number of standard graphic formats such as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, RLE, Targa, TIFF.
    There are also options for printing the current image Print and acquiring an image from TWAIN-source (Import TWAIN). The option Image properties opens the window which displays information about the current image; The option Exit serves for cancelling program execution and application quitting.

    The option Edit unites editing options. There are standard editing options such as: Undo and Redo changes, Cut, Copy, Paste, Clear, Paste as new image; there is a Paste special option allowing masking for pastes. There are options for clipping selections, rotating and flipping, as well as defining and handling patterns. With the option Purge you can clear the Clipboard and/or histories of editing process.

    The option Image handles the image as a whole. You can change color Mode of the image, Flip vertical and horizontal, Rotate and Skew…, change Image size… and Canvas size…, as well as Fit image… and Duplicate it. There are options for image cropping, too (Crop and Automatic crop). The option Text allows text insertion. There are options for setting transparency to the selected color.
    The option Selection handles selections in the image.
    The option Adjustment of the Main menu deals with adjustments of color balance, hue, shades, contrast and so on.
    The option Filters serves for applying filters to the image. With the Filters popup you can apply predefined filters as well as use custom filters developed by you or some other person (the option PhotoMasque).
    The option View of the Main menu allows zooming in and out, show grid and snap to grid and so on; it enables/disables Filter bar and Tools palette, and Show bounds and shadow.
    The option Tools allows to select a needed tool for work. The Tools popup has also Image manager allowing file copying, moving, renaming and deleting. The option Export as icon… allows saving the image as an icon-file. The option Preferences allows to set preferences to work with the application.
    The option Window contains standard window handling options.
The option ? stands for Help. The actual on-line help is called with the option Information. The ?-popup has also web-links to the official web-site of the program and the customers forum, as well as standard option About.

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Photobie from Xuedong Cheng (Freeware)

By admin | May 29, 2007

    Photobie is a complete image editing software customized for photo retouching. Unlike other commercial and free image editing softwares, Photobie has its unique identity and is more like a homemade cookie. Photobie developers intend to build an easy-to-use and feature-packed tool for graphics amateurs. Although, it is not yet a perfect tool for professionals, it does contain many handy tools to help professional to achieve simple task quickly.

    Photobie is featured with an unique intuitive layer manager, which enable our users to handle multiple layers with ease for advanced image editing. It beholds a wide variety of painting tools that are crucial for photo retouching. Photobie supports Photoshop filter(.8BF) plugins, which means that our users can apply thousands of free filters to their images. Meantime, Photobie provides an advanced screen capture tool, the simpliest gif animation tool, and a photo framing tool. Photobie integrates an image directory browser with batch resize/rotate, full screen slide show features.

    Photobie was initially developed by Cheng (real name: Xuedong Chen, Ph.D. candidate at UMass Boston) as a special gift for his new baby, Cindy, in 2005. Photobie is loaded with full of Cheng’s wishes for his baby. Photobie is more than just a software, it is alive, and it grows fast as a baby. In Photobie, you will find a special flash player for kids, with which you can play a list of flash movies. Photobie developers are also currently working on a simple intuitive flash editor so that our user can create more fancy flash animation other than relatively old GIF animation.

    The Main menu of the application consists of 14 options: File, Edit, Selection, Layer, Filter, Frame, Browser, ScreenCapture, GIF_Animation, Flash, Color_Setup, Output, View and Help.

    The option Help initiates Help popup contaonong options About Fotobie (calls a window containing information about the application and its developer and how to contact him) and Acknowledgement (opens a window in which the author thanks all those who helped him by the developing the program), help links on the web FAQ and Tutorial, Photobie manual, and useful links in the Web for Photobie users (Go to Photobie.com, Go to Photobie forum and Go to Photobie Gallery).
    The options FAQ and Tutorial are Internet links; the option Photobie manual opens a help file in the Microsoft Help format.

    The option File opens a File Dialog popup. It contains options of creating a new image New, opening an existing image or a whole Image Directory Open, saving the currently selected image to a disk Save, printing the selected image Print, and cancelling the program execution and quitting the application Exit.

    The option Edit opens an Edit Dialog popup containing options: undoing/redoing changes Undo and Redo, cropping the current image to the chosen size Crop, Cut and Copy, and pasting Paste as new layer and Paste as new image.

    The option Layer opens a Layer handling popup. You can add a new layer in the image (Add a new blank layer), Make current layer new image, Layer color balance adjust, Layer rotate and much more.

    The option Filter deals with various filters which you can apply to the image and/or the layer of the image. The first option of the Filter popup Apply filters to current layer only is checkable and manages how the filter is applyed. Then there is a sub-popup of available filters in the application Embedded filters and a sub-popup Photoshop 8BF filters. This option allows loading and applying to the image of Photoshop filters (if you have Adobe Photoshop installed) as plugins.

    The option Frame allows handling the current image as a photo frame, and vice versa. The Frame popup has a link Go Photobie free frame Gallery.

    The option Browser opens an image browser embedded in the application. The browser has a taskbar in the lower part of its window with buttons for various file handling actions.

    The option ScreenCapture allows screen capturing with or without the cursor in the ScreenCapture mode of the application.

    The option GIF_Animation allows handling layers in the image as an animation. It calls a special window for animation control. In this window you can see all the frames in the .gif file, set the mode for animation (repeat or additive), set delay for changing frames in milliseconds, etc. In the animation control window you can test-mode the animation, too.

    The option Flash is rather unique for image editing software. It calls an embedded flash player designed especially for kids fun. This flash player has been a special gift of the author to his daughter :)
    The option Color_Setup manages color handling in the application. You can Set Current Panel Color as Global Transparent Color or Set Current Panel Color as Layer Transparent Color. You can Set the selection mask color, too.

    The option Output manages output in the GIF-format or icon-format. It calls a window in which you can set some characteristics of the output.

    The option View of the Main menu opens/closes the Layer manager and Flat toolbar view.

    In the Main window of the application there is a window of the Layer manager (if enabled in the option View of the Main menu). It allowse to see image layers and handle them. In the Layer manager window there are a taskbar with layer handling buttons, a Transparency bar control, and a table for setting layer properties. You can also enable or disable automatic layer generation.

    Under the Main menu of the application and at the left edge of it there are two taskbars of the application. The one under the Main menu contains buttons for more or less standard file handling actions and zooming, while the one on the left edge deals with specifically image editing (mainly for the choice of an editing tool).

    Downloading Photobie is available at the download link at the web-site
Download.com or directly from the site Photobie.com. But you must take into account that a photobie is not a standalone application. It is a .NET windows application, so it requires installing a .NET Framework package. You can also download it directly here. However, if you’re a Windows XP user, most likely you’ve already had .NET Framework 1.1 installed through live Windows updates. You can check it in the Windows Control Panel.

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Paint.NET from Rick Brewster (FreeWare)

By admin | May 29, 2007

    Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing.
    The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a small amount of C++ for installation and shell-integration related functionality.
    It must be noted that although the program itself is FreeWare but Portions Copyright belong to Microsoft Co - because the application has been based on the .NET Framework platform developed and distributed by Microsoft.
    Unlike most other freeware image editors that are, in essence, rather simple tools (simetimes they’re like student works) that mostly ignore layers, Paint.NET is rather advanced and capable to work with multilayer images.

    The Main menu of the application consists of nine options: File, Edit, View, Image, Layers, Effects, Tools, Window and Help.
    The option File opens File Dialog. The first group of options in the File Dialog popup deals with creating a new image/opening an existing image: New… - creates a new image with properties the user defines in the Image Properties window, Open… - opens an existing image file on the disk, Open Recent - allows opening the image from the list of recently opened files, and Acquire - allows acquiring the image from the system Clipboard, or from a scanner or a camera. The next group of options deals with application windows: New Window - it simply creates a new image window in the application, and Open in New Window - allows opening yet another image in a new application window. Then there are options of saving images to disk: Save and Save As. The program supports the native image format Paint.NET (*.pdn) as well as standard image formats - Bitmap, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF and TARGA.
    Then there is the option Print for printing images. The printing process is conducted with the help of the Print wizard.
    The next two options of the File Dialog actually don’t belong to the File Dialog proper. These are: Language, which sets the application interface language, and Updates, which allows checking for program updates in the Web. Basically, the application interface could be set either English or German (Deutsch). It must be noted, however, that changing of the language doesn’t come into force immediately after setting; you must restart the program execution.
    The last option of the File Dialog - Exit - cancels the program execution and quits the application.

    The option Edit of the Main menu starts Edit Dialog. The first group of options in it are options of undoing/redoing changes Undo and Redo. Then there are standard editing options such as Cut, Copy and Paste. The option Paste in to New Layer allows to paste a selection to a new layer in the image. There are options Erase Selection and Invert Selection. There are options of selecting all the content Select All and deselecting Deselect.
    The option View of the Main menu starts View Dialog which serves for changing the image size. There are various options of zooming: Zoom In, Zoom Out, Zoom to Window and Zoom to Selection; the option of restoring the actual size of the image Actual Size; the options Grid and Rulers which can be applied to the image; and the option Units allowing to change the unit of the image size (pixels, centimeters or inches). The currentrly selected and chosen unit applies to the grid and rulers.

The option Image deals with image resizing. In the Image Dialog popup there are options: Crop to Selection (allows cropping the image to the current selection if there is any), Resize… and Canvas Size… (allows to set the size of the image or canvas in current units - pixels, for example). In this popup there are also options of flipping Flip and rotating Rotate the image, and the option Flatten.

    The options Layerof the Main menu handles image layers. It allows Add New Layer, Delete Layer, Duplicate Layer, Import [layer] From File…, various Adjustments of layers, Flip or Rotate/Zoom layers. The option Layer properties… opens a window indicating the layer properties.

    The option Effects allows applying various effects to the current image or layer. Each effect in this popup is described in the application help which features image samples, too.

    The option Tools allows picking for work a needed editing/painting tool. Actually it duplicates the application toolbars.

    The option Window deals with application windows.
    The option Help opens the popup with options of Help Topics, Donate… (a link for donating money to the developers :)), Send feedback or bug report and About (opens the window with some information about the program and its developers). The application Help is structured and indexed although that’s not done in Microsoft Help format. One very useful feature of the Help is providing a link to tutorials at the Paint.NET forum in the Web. Here is the link to the Paint.NET forum itself

    Under the Main menu of the application window there are two taskbars. In the application window are located its toolbars (basically these are Colours, Tools, History and Layers). You can select the current colour of the tool either from a palette or directly indicating its RGB characteristics. You can select either the color proper or a shade of grey. Hint: the Colour toolbar selects to selecting a shade of grey if you clicks a geometrical centre of the color palette. The History toolbar maintains a list of actions of the current working session. You can repeat the action once more simply by clicking on its item in the actions list. The Layers toolbar shows all the layers in the current image and allows some actions with them; buttons for actions with layers are located at the bottom of the toolbar. Each such button has on-line tip whic activates if you touches the button with mouse pointer.

    At the bottom of the Main applications window there is a status bar showing some information about current position of the mouse pointer, tips for the currently selected tool and size of the image.

    Downloading of the application is available at the web-page http://www.getpaint.net/index.html. It must be noted that the utility demands prior installing on the user’s PC .NET Framework package from Microsoft. If you don’t sure whether you have the package on your PC there is the link on the web-page for downloading the utility AND the .NET Framework package. The size of the downloadable installer is rather small for such a complex and advanced application - only 3.9 Mb. But it’s only if you’d have .NET Framework already.

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The Helium Digital Bluetooth Communicator HDBT-110 (4)

By admin | May 27, 2007

The Helium Digital Bluetooth Communicator HDBT-110

(continuation)

There are also audio cues provided for power on (ascending tones), paired (single blip), and shut down (descending tones).

Once everything is paired up, operation is simple and straightforward. The only slight oddity I found was the use of the Volume Down (-) key to initiate Voice Dialing, since my Motorola BT Headset uses the pickup button. Since the Communicator supports advanced functions like Call Waiting and Conferencing (if you’ve subscribed to these) each of the buttons has multiple functions, based on the current mode and tap vs. press and hold. All of these are explained very clearly in the User Manual which comes with the unit.

In the Car
If you’d bother to read the promotional material on the Communicator, you meet the reference to a “unique magnetic mounting system“. The package comes with two very cool mounting attachments – one for the visor, and another which can be clipped into the ventilation grille.

The visor one is simply a U-shaped piece of springy metal (see package contents above) which slides onto the visor. There is an indentation built into the straight piece of metal which exactly fits the magnets on the bottom of the Communicator. Although the magnets are not super strong and don’t give that satisfying ‘clunk’ when they’ve attached, everything seemed to stay in place well. I never got the feeling the Communicator was going to come flying off the mounting on a sudden stop.

helium-visor.jpgFigure 7: The Communicator mounted on the Visor.

helium-grilleclip.jpgFigure 8: Here’s the mounting system clipped into the ventilator grille.

helium-grille.jpgFigure 9: Mounted on the ventilator grille.

…to be continued…

Source: pocketpcthoughts.com

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The Helium Digital Bluetooth Communicator HDBT-110 (3)

By admin | May 27, 2007

The Helium Digital Bluetooth Communicator HDBT-110

(continuation)

Connecting the Communicator is just like using a regular Bluetooth headset. There is no software nor drivers to install. You just need to have the phone (or laptop or whatever) recognize the device and establish pairing. It even uses the common ‘0000′ security PIN, if required.

helium-heliumbt.gifFigure 4: The Helium Communicator recognized by the ETEN Bluetooth Manager.

After initial pairing is set up, you’d found that both phones immediately reconnected whenever the Communicator was turned on.

Using the Communicator
The Helium Communicator incorporates two sets of LEDs to display status – one blue and one red, which are co-located in a ring around the central speaker. The blue set is used to show the unit is on (single flash) and paired (multi-flash).

helium-bluelightsmall.jpgFigure 5: Blue LEDs surround the Helium speaker

helium-redlightsmall.jpgFigure 6: Helium’s Red LEDs.

When the unit is charging, both the blue and red are displayed solidly together, giving a cute pink tinge. When charging is complete, the red LEDs will go out, leaving just the blue. The blue and red flash alternately when the battery needs recharging.

…to be continued…

Source: pocketpcthoughts.com

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i.Mage from Matthew Allen (FreeWare)

By admin | May 26, 2007

    This is a simple free Pixel-Based editing tool. i.Mage features:

    The Main menu of the application features nine options: File, Edit, View, Image, Brush, Colour Profile, Tools, Language and Help.

    Under the Main menu there is the Taskbar of the editor. It has a number of buttons for the often used actions. One button deserves special attention - the button Tools. It opens up the Toolbar otherwise disabled. This button (the most right button in the Taskbar) has no associated tip; its designation is defined by a title. Other buttons have associated tips which are activated when a mouse cursor touches a button.
    At the bottom of the Main window there are the status bar which indicates current position of the mouse pointer and color composition of the current pixel.

    The option File starts File Dialog. Besides usual options of file opening/closing (Open, Save, Save As amd Close) it features options of creating a new image file New/Properties and New From Clipboard. They are rather peculiar and demand some explanation. The option New From Clipboard creates a new image if there is some image in the Clipboard - using the Clipboard image as a template. The option New/Properties has dual assignment: If there is no opened image in the workspace of the editor it creates a blank image. If there is some opened image in the workspace this option opens the Properties window of the current image.
    The option Recent… is standard and maintains the list of recently opened image files.
    The options Page Setup and Print must support printing but they are currently disabled. Working with the application I couldn’t enable them.

    The option Edit opens Edit Dialog. This popup is rather short. It contains only options of undoing/redoing changes Undo and Redo, the checkable option of enabling/disabling the Undo function Enable Indo, discarding the Undo queue Discard Undo Queue, and options of copying the whole document either as a new image Copy Document or as a code sample Copy Document as Code. There are no standard options such as Cut, Copy, Paste etc.

    The option Image calls the popup containing options of various effects you could apply to images. The option Brush serves, in essence, the same purpose; here you can copy to clipboard some other image and paste it into current image, rotate and flip the image. There is also the option Save As allowing to save the current sample to disk.
    The option Colour Profile handles colour profiles of the application.
    The option Tools handles registered in the application file types, allows colour testing and working with scripts.
    The option Language opens a small language popup. Currently this popup has only two options - English (the basic language of the utility) and Afrikaans :) (rather exotic, eh?).
    The option Help of the Main menu calls a popup with two options: Help and About. The application Help is in an .html form and rather short. There are no context-dependent help. Be cautious by choosing the Help option because it replaces the currently opened web-page in an Internet browser by its own .html page.
The option About initiates the About window containing some information about the application and contacts with the developer.

Some remarks about working within the application from the developer:
Tools generally use the current foreground colour on a left click and the background colour on a right click. The primitive tools can either be filled or outline. You can select which behaviour using the icon Icon_fill
    i.Mage has only one “document” open at a time. This document is a linear array of pixels of a given bit depth, either 8 bit indexed colour or 16/24/32 bit true colour. The same document is displayed in both the right and left panes at different zoom levels. The left pane shows the pixels zoomed to a specified level and the right pane shows pixel for pixel.
    When you select part of an i.Mage it is copied into whats known as the “brush”. The brush is just another bitmap which attaches itself to the mouse cursor as it travels over the document. If you click while holding the brush over the document the brush is combined with the document using the current opererator. The brush is not the windows clipboard. Although it can be easily copyed and pasted to and from the clipboard.

    Downloading of the application is available at the web-page http://www.memecode.com/image.php. Currently there are several versions of i.Mage for downloading - the newest version is 1.06.
The author honestly warns he hasn’t much time for work on the instrument so requests for bug fixing may take some time to get attention from him.

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GIMP fow Windows (FreeWare)

By admin | May 26, 2007

    The GIMP is an Open Source multiplatform photo manipulation tool. GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP is suitable for a variety of image manipulation tasks, including photo retouching, image composition, and image construction.
    It has many capabilities. It 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. The powerful feature of GIMP it can handle multilayer images and save them as an animation sequence.
    GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

    Initially the authors of the program were Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis. But now, being an Open Source platform, GIMP has a whole lot of developers contributing to various aspects of the application.

    You can start GIMP simply by clicking on its icon or with command-line arguments. The detailed list of available command-line arguments is in the Chapter 3.1 of the tutorial.

    Installing of the GIMP for the first time at your PC isn’t possible without prior installing of the environment GTK+. In such a case the installer detects a fatal error of the installation process and indicates the need for installing GTK+ at first. While installing GIMP you see the setup window in which you get information in the language native for your system version.
    You should take into account that GIMP installer creates a number of work directories in your Documents and Settings directory. Without these working directories the work with GIMP may be hampered.
    It’s interesting that the language of the application interface is detected automatically from the native language of the operational system; apart from English there are a number of interface languages available including Russian. You could change the current interface language in the GTK+ Runtime Environment menu from the whole lot of available languages.

    Downloading of the program and its environment as well as libraries and documentation is avalibale at the web-page http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/.
There is also an on-line manual for GIMP in the Web, available in several languages: English, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, Italian, German, Swedish. The English version of the manual is available through the link http://docs.gimp.org/en/, the German version - at http://docs.gimp.org/de/
You can install help-files on your PC via the corresponding link at the web-page www.gimp.org/windows/. These help-files are exceptionally detailed and contain a complete manual and tutorial for work in GIMP.
At the download page there are tips for installing GIMP for the first time at the link http://www.gimp.org/unix/user_install.html

    The basic Main menu in the Main window of the application has only three options: File (opens File Dialog), Xtns (contains a list of configuration options) and Help. But every GIMP window has its own Main menu. The Main menu of the image window has 10 options: File, Edit, Selection, View, Image, Layers, Tools, Dialog, Filters and Scripts-Fu.

    The option File of the Main menu opens File Dialog popup. Apart from usual options of file opening and saving/closing there are options of opening the image from the Internet (Open Location) and opening the image as a layer (Open as Layer…) and saving it as a template for future images (Save as Template), as well as options of closing the current window, quitting the application and printing setup/printing the current image.
The option Edit of the Main menu opens Edit Dialog popup. Here there are usual editing options such as Clear, Cut, Copy, Paste, Clipboard, etc, as well as pasting from Clipboard and colour pouring. There is an option of Undoing/Redoing changes.
The option Select contains various selection options.
The option View contains view options. Some of them are checkable; if checked they enable the feature, otherwise the feature is disabled. The option Scale sets the scale of the image view. The option Information window shows detailed information about properties of the current image. The option Screen filters allows to apply various screen filters to the current image.
The option Image of the Main menu contains other image handling options such as setting the grid, setting the size of the canvas, scaling, getting screenshots, transforming the image.
The option Layers contain opens layer handling popup.
The option Tools allows to select and choose a needed image handling tool.
The option Dialog allows working with the instruments in a dialog mode by selecting and choosing tools from the toolboxes.
The option Filters unites available image filters. It has the option Text allowing to add texts in the image in the selected font.
And the option Script-Fu contains a list of available special effects to apply.

    Of course this description of the application is very short and incomplete. It is very sketchy. GIMP is very powerful image handling tool. You can receive detailed information about interesting aspect of work with GIMP either from the manual or using context-dependent help.

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