Photo

Anyone who uses Adobe Photoshop regularly has probably learned to both love and loath Adobe’s signature product. Despite being the top-contender in the image editing business, Photoshop is still missing some features.

For example, out of the box, Adobe Photoshop has no option to save files as .ICO or icon files. One option is to make a bitmap (.bmp) image first and then rename it to .ico . However that creates a problem with icon backgrounds occasionally. Then there are the more expensive additives or plugins. But now you can make, edit and save icon files with Photoshop without spending a single dime using the Icon Plugin by Sibcode.

The Icon Plugin is a small (~ 700 k) Photoshop extension. it lets you export or save image files as icon or .ICO files, fully compatible with Windows XP. This plugin supports a wide range of features including multi-format icons, transparency and semi-transparency. The icons created can also be made Windows Vista compatible from the icon creation dialogue by enabling .png compression. It also supports non-standard icons of different sizes, colors and resolutions, including monochrome, 16 colors, 256 colors, 24-bit True Color, and 32-bit True Color with semi-transparency. The users also have the handy option to add/remove sub-icons from the root icon file.

Icon Plugin is compatible with a slew of front running image/graphics editors like Elements, AfterEffects, Premiere, PhotoDeluxe, Corel PhotoPaint, PaintShop Pro, Painter, and Photo. As for OS compatibility, for the time being, this plugin goes fine with Windows, no MAC/Linux support (sorry apple/unix boys and girls). The plugin is a freeware and comes compressed in a zip file. The installation instructions are available in a tidy “read me” file inside the package. Go on, start belching out cute icons with Photoshop today.

If you’re an iPhoto user and want an easy way to upload your pictures from iPhoto to Picasa Web Albums (Google Photos), then check out Google’s Picasa Web Albums Exporter iPhoto plug-in. The plug-in is available as part of a package from Google’s Mac tools site (if you don’t use iPhoto, you can use the standalone Web Albums Uploader program to upload your pictures to your Picasa albums). Once installed, open iPhoto and either select an album or specific photos you want to upload. Then click File -> Export and choose the “Picasa Web” tab. The plug-in lets you upload the selected photos to a new album, which it will then create for you with a title and description that you can specify, or to one of your existing albums.

The plug-in makes short work of sharing your iPhoto pictures via your Google account. It even allows you to choose how to scale your photos during the upload (better quality, faster upload, actual size) which is helpful if you’re on a slow Internet connection. The plug-in will also add any keywords or descriptions you’ve added in iPhoto to your Picasa Web Album!

VectorMagic lets you take your pixelated bitmap images and converts them into curvaceous clean vector images easily. Known as an auto-tracer, and similar to Adobe’s Live Trace and Corel’s PowerTrace, VectorMagic converts raster images into vector images.

So you know how some images look like they’re made of a cross-stitch sewing artifact from your mom’s linen closet? VectorMagic transforms those jagged squares from their pixel base into a vector image which is composed of geometric shapes like lines, circles and curves.

Unlike raster files, with vector images you can scale an image without making it blurry or pixelated. This is particularly useful when you need to enlarge a small file and keep its clarity.

VectorMagic’s site features a good video tutorial and side by side comparisons of its output against Adobe and Corel’s. It is the result of a Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory research project by James Diebel and Jacob Norda.

To use VectorMagic, you upload your raster image (files supported JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF) and VectorMagic analyzes the image, walks you through some steps like file quality, colors you want in the final image, etc. Afterwards, VectorMagic spits out your new vector image which you can download in EPS, SVG, or PNG formats, and/or email. You also have the option of editing quick defects in the image using their segmentation editor.

We were impressed with its ease of use, good results and who can argue with a price like free?

Thanks Steven!

Sometimes you need to process, crop, clip, or otherwise edit an image file in a hurry–and Photoshop takes longer to launch than most folks are willing to wait when a simple image modification is all that’s needed. That’s why we were pretty excited to find out about Photo Drop, a Mac Dashboard widget that really seems to speed up quicky image edits.

Since Photo Drop is a widget, you can drag files to it from other widgets or even from your desktop (drag the file to a hotcorner to activate Dashboard and then drop it on the Photo Drop widget). When you’re done with your edits, drag it back out to the Finder and off you go.

Photo Drop provides several handy manipulations including cropping, resizing, borders, and some tasty eye candy like “1-bit”, which will convert your photo into a strictly black and white image. We’re digging it.

Animoto is a fun way to add some hollywood to your old, dull, same as everyone else’s slideshow. You know those family vacation, special event, or even worse - yawn corporate outing or shareholder meetings. Animoto isn’t the kiss of death to Powerpoint unfortunately, but it will add some zip and keep people’s eyes open when it’s “your turn” to show ‘em something.

In beta, Animoto is a web application that generates a professionally produced video with music using your photos. At its core is a technology that analyzes and combines your images and music with the post-production savvy of a hollywood film editor. Below is a sample video produced in 5 minutes (or less) for this post.

The service is free for as many 30 seconds videos as you want, or $3 each for extended length videos. They also have a $30 annual pass that provides unlimited access. While you do have the option of uploading your own music, Animoto has a slick library of its own divided into 3 groups, Indie Rock, Electronica or Hip Hop.

You have the option of emailing your video, embedding it on your blog or website and posting it as a widget on your social network of choice. See screenshot below:

Nice touch is you retain all rights to your content. Animoto assumes no copyright to your material. And coming soon is the ability to download videos to your computer, and send videos to your cellphone.

We like Animoto’s no hassle ease of use and its professional results. We definitely would like to see the ability to add your own captions or titles, maybe even illustrations to further customize your creation - and with that perhaps less reliance on the overdone, stick a fork in it, the ever present, Powerpoint presentation.

The founders of Animoto are veterans of the entertainment industry and are headquartered in NYC.

We’ve not mentioned Pixelmator before, but our colleagues over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) have. Pixelmator is arguably one of the intriguing looking Mac applications in a while, and whilst the user interface looks great, so does the feature list.

Layer-based editing, an array of selection, painting and editing tools, real-time filters and a metric ton of file formats with which it’s compatible (thanks to its under-lying ImageMagick base) make this a very attractive addition to those of us unable to afford, or unwilling to budget for, Photoshop. Unfortunately, that is as much as we know at the moment, as the program has been kept strictly under wraps until today. The good news is that a closed beta test is now going on to fix any bugs that are in what would appear to be a complex piece of software so hopefully it won’t be too long before everyone can enjoy the features this baby-Photoshop-esque application has to offer.

Pixelmator, once available will cost $59.

Mac users have, for quite some time now, been able to kill time with Photo booth, Apple’s software that allows you to take photos (and apply fun filters) via the built in iSight cameras. However reader Keifari wrote in to tell us about a neat new site that (whilst still in Alpha) uses Flash to allow anyone with a Flash-accessible webcam to kill time with an online Photo booth.

Seenly offers you a number of different effects, including a Lomo 9 effect (where 9 shots are taken in shot sucession, and placed in a single frame), and you can save photos to the service too. If you’re not on a Mac, and want to have a little bit of fun with a webcam you might have, this might be just the ticket.

Earlier in the year, on the Windows Media HD photo format. According to Computer Buyer UK, the JPEG group is now working on a successor to the venerable JPEG image format - and making extensive use of Microsoft’s HD Photo standard within the format.

According to the site, “JPEG says it has received assurances from Microsoft that it will make patents necessary for implementation available free-of charge” - a surprising move, but definitely a welcome one, given the huge “proprietary standard” reservations people generally had toward HD Photo not too long ago. Don’t expect to see this new format any time soon, however: it could be the better part of 18 months before the standard is finalised.

We’ve all taken one of those pictures. It’s perfect. There we are with our family around us, and we all look like something out of a horror film. It’s not that your family is unattractive, it’s just that the lash has created a red-eye effect making you all look evil.

Removing red-eye can be easy. This quick tutorial shows you how to remove red-eye like a pro, and take the demon looks away from your family and friends. Best of all, it doesn’t require Photoshop, or other really expensive applications; Just plain of Paint Shop Pro, available for $59 bucks!

We covered Tubes before - it’s a free PC web application designed to let you instantly share photos, music, video and documents with everyone you know and have them share their stuff with you through the same tube. It has online backup and automatic syncing capabilities, and is getting some great reviews.

If you are interested in trying Tubes out, you may want to get a leg on, as they will be cutting back data storage from the current 2 GB size to 1GB sometime soon.