Smart Saving and Investing

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. I discovered Paint.NET over a year ago when it was in its infancy.

It started as an undergraduate college design project and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. It has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool.

It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.

It has received rave reviews from some big name reviewers and you can read them on the Paint.NET website.

Paint.NET has come a long way. When it was released to the public a few years ago it was in a state that you really didn’t want to use it. But it has matured to an extremely easy and fast loading image and photo editor.

The screen below shows what Paint.NET looks like after you load it.

Features:

• A “simple, intuitive and innovative interface” that provides tabs where you can view thumbnail versions of the images you’re working on.
• Layers - In image and photo editing, layers allow you to create “levels” of work that are stacked on top of one another to create your final image.
• When you first start Paint.NET it checks to see if there are any new versions that can automatically be downloaded and installed for you. If there are the program will restart to reflect the update.
• Paint.NET includes many standard special effects such as blurring, sharpening, distortion, noise, etc.
• There are many tools included that are typically found in image and photo editing software like a gradient tool, drawing shapes, a text editor, cloning, etc.
• A history list of what you’ve done to an image that is only limited by how much disk space you have. This is a life saver when you’re working with images and you need to make adjustments to what you’ve done.
• An online forum that is very active.
• Tutorials, Tutorials, Tutorials
• Paint.NET also allows plugins as well. Plugins are snippets of functionality that help users do specific things.

Here’s a link to the Paint.NET documentation.

I own Photoshop but I am not a heavy photo editing kind of person. For my purposes I use Paint.NET because I’ve been able to do everything I need to and that works very nice for me. Besides, who doesn’t like free when you look at the price of Photoshop. YIKES!!

Download Paint.NET here.

written by Bill Stevens

Today is Technology Tuesday!!

Have you heard of Google Desktop? Google Desktop indexes the files on your PC so you can use the power of Google Search on your PC.

Here are some of the items you’ll be able to do full text searches on after installing Google Desktop and letting it index your PC:

• email
• files
• music
• photos
• chats
• Gmail
• web pages that you’ve viewed
• more…

It provides an extremely nice, advanced search, easy to learn and easy to use:

Google Desktop also comes with Google Gadgets, Sidebar, and Deskbar:

Here are some Google Gadgets. You can add as many as you like through the Add Gadgets Interface:

Google Deskbar:

Google’s Add Gadgets Interface

Google Sidebar:

And finally one of the best features you have to use if you’re an Outlook user, Google Search Outlook Integration:

Out of all these features I prefer Google Desktop Search and Outlook Integration. After playing around with the Gadgets, Sidebar and Deskbar I find them annoying and in the way. But, that’s just me.

The Google Desktop Search alone is a must have. You can turn it off (unload) when you’re not using it. When you know you’re going to be away from your computer for an extended period of time, fire it up and let it index automagically in the background. Cool Beans!!

Download Google Desktop here.

written by Bill Stevens

Today is Technology Tuesday.

The FREE software for today is Sizer from Programs by Brian Apps.

Sizer allows you to size any window to a predefined size. If you work with multiple size screens you can change the window size of a web browser or a resizable program instantly to see what it would look like.

This is very handy for web designers as they can switch between window sizes to see what their web pages will look like in different size browsers.

Computer support folks can provide better help by resizing a program on their PC as they help remote users over the phone. Let’s say a remote user is working in Microsoft Word and their window size is 800×600 and the support person is running Microsoft Word in 1280×1024, the support person can resize their own Microsoft Word to 800×600 to “see” what the remote user sees.

Sizer parks itself in the system tray as two-crossed double-sided arrows icon. By right-clicking on the crossed arrows you get the configuration options for Sizer as well as some standard defined window sizes.

You can also right-click on the resize corner of a window to resize the window as show below.

And yet another quick way to resize a window is by right-clicking on the maximize button of a window as show below.

The configuration screen (show below) allows you to add and order sizes as they would appear when they pop-up during use.

The “Move to” functionality allows you to position a window when you resize it.

The program ran fine on Windows Vista even though the author says that Sizer is not supported on Vista.

written by Bill Stevens