software

Image Editing

/ Shane / 2 Comments

My post the other day on Fences got me thinking of what downloaded software I have that I use a lot. As I said, there really aren’t a lot of things that I use a lot, but there is one program that I use quite a bit that I’ve never mentioned on here. And that is a disservice to you, my readers.

The program is Paint.NET, and it is an image editing software. Don’t let the “Paint” in the name fool you, it is more  similar to Photoshop than to the Paint program that comes with Windows. Except that Paint.NET is free, and Photoshop costs about $700.

It takes a while to get used to, just like it would if you were new to Photoshop. There are a lot of crazy complicated features. But once you get your bearings, it is pretty easy to do some pretty advanced stuff. And I’ve always been able to find tutorials specific to Paint.NET about anything that I couldn’t figure out. There is a pretty active community, including people making many plugins, which you can install to get extra functionality.

So, before you go drop $700 on Photoshop, give Paint.NET a try. And if you’re happy with whatever image editing software you have, ignore this post.

Fences

/ Shane / 1 Comment

When i was in college, I probably had 20 or 30 nifty little programs that I used for various things on the computer. Eventually over time, most of those programs were eclipsed by, or absorbed into, the standard set of software, in some cases by Windows itself. Also, I don’t use a computer the same way I used one back in college, so some of the apps probably became less useful to me personally.

So it’s not often these days that I come across a neat little program for the computer, but a co-worker referred me to one the other day, called Fences, which is used to clean up your desktop icons. Interestingly, the makers of the software are a company named Stardock, who make another program I used to use, a Windows skinning software called Window Blinds.

Basically, you make little areas called Fences, into which you drag and drop your icons. These areas can then be named with some logical name for the grouping, such as “Games”, “Photo Editing”, or “Random Junk”. Then the areas can be moved as a group, keeping icons logically together. You can also resize the fence to be smaller, which will give it scroll bars. For example, lets say your desktop is cluttered with a bunch of text files that represent notes to yourself. You can make a group called “Notes” and drop them all in there, and then make that group small enough to see only one or two icons. Then, if you want to see the rest of your notes, you can just scroll within that group.

Another nice side effect is that you can double click on the background to hide or show your icons. So, for example, if you have a really cute picture of your daughter on the desktop that you just need to show off, you can hide all the junk. You can also decide what to hide or show, meaning you can have sort of a normal mode with some icons and an advanced mode that reveals the rest of your icons.

I found it useful, both at home and at work, and I thought you might too.