Free and useful online resources for designer and developers

Image Tools

7 Coolest Web Apps You Might Not Know About But Should

There are many web apps out there, but getting by free and good ones is not that easy. That is why I am sharing The 7 Coolest Web Apps You Might Not Know About But Should. Read each entry in the list and see which tool suits your needs best.

You are welcome if you want to share more web apps that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at  SmashingApps.com, just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and follow us on Digg as well to get updated.

icloud

icloud lets you do just that. icloud is a web service that provides its users with a virtual desktop. After creating an account and signing in to it, you virtual desktop loads up.

WobZIP

WobZIP is a free web service created to unzip ZIP archives. All you do is upload your archive on the site and get the list of files it contains. If the archive is password protected, simply provide the password.

FontFonter

FontFonter is a free and simple to use website that will let you view any website in Web FontFonts. The site’s usage is extremely simple: you enter a website’s URL, FontFonter analyzes the webpage, and displays the website with its default fonts replaced by Web FontFonts.

Pilot Handwriting

Professional font creators have mastered the tools of their trade and know exactly how to bring their font concepts to life. To dodge the traditional font creation tools, you can use a wonderful service named Pilot Handwriting. Pilot Handwriting lets you create a font in your handwriting.

Favitt

Everyone knows how important search is. You search Google, YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, Flickr, Last.fm, Amazon and plenty of other sites for different products, content, images, videos etc. Unfortunately, none of these sites lets you customize the search interface as good as Favitt does. Favitt lets you simplify the search experience by bringing all these search engines in a customized start page.

Historious

Normally when you work with separate computers, there are not many ways you can share your bookmarks. Having access to your bookmarks therefore, is quite a problem. And Historious is its solution. Historious stores your bookmarks by indexing them, much like a search engine does.

Backupify

Backupify is a web service that can be used to backup the data you store on email servers and online social networks. A number of websites are supported including Flickr, Twitter, Delicious, Zoho, Google Docs, Photobucket, WordPress, Basecamp, Gmail, Facebook, FriendFeed, Blogger, Hotmail, Picasa Web Albums, Google Contacts, and Google Calendar.

The 5 (Really) Cool Windows Tools You Might Need

There are so many software available out there that can make your windows PC performs better, getting by free and good ones is not that easy. That is why I am sharing 5 great freeware tools for you to make your lives easier than ever. Read each entry in the list and see which tool suits your needs best.

You are welcome if you want to share more software that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at  smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.

Soluto

Soluto is a freeware program for Windows operating systems. Although no system requirements are specified on the website’s page, I tested the program on a Vista 32 bit machine and it ran flawlessly.

Smart Defrag

Smart Defrag is a tiny Windows compatible utility sized at only 1.8 MB. When you run the program, you can view all your hard drive partitions. Click on the partition you feel is responding slowly, and perform an analysis to see if any files require defragmentation.

USB Write Protect

A flash drive virus works by writing itself onto your flash drive. If you could somehow temporarily disable the writing permissions on your drive, your flash drive would be more secure. At the same time, you will be unable to accidentally delete or modify the flash drive’s contents. USB Write Protect is tiny Windows utility sized at only 11 KB. You download the archive, extract it, and run the executable in it.

FontFrenzy

To clean up these redundant fonts, you could employ any one of countless font managers available on the web. My primary choice, however, would be FontFrenzy – a font manager with some extra font cleaning features. FontFrenzy is a freeware sized at only 490 KB and compatible with Windows. When you load it up, the program shows all fonts installed on your computer.

Bvckup

Bvckup is a program currently in its beta that works with Windows operating systems. The program has a number of interface and functionality features which set it apart from applications that perform the same auto-syncing tasks.

SlideshowBox (Amazing Photo Slideshows Using HTML & Pure JavaScript) Giveaway

SlideshowBox is running a contest, where winners will get 5 Slideshow Box Premium HTML licenses (worth $99 each). Well, you guys know what SlideshowBox is. Lets say it once again for n00bs.

SlideshowBox is an easy to use application that enables you to create amazing Flash and HTML (JavaScript) photo slideshow galleries.

SlideshowBox comprises 24 high-quality slideshow templates that allow you to create custom photo slideshows without the pains of coding. Many new templates will be added in the near future, including more pure JavaScript slideshows.

SlideshowBox enables you to create professional photo slideshows starting from dozens of stylish templates, and no coding. SlideshowBox will output Flash AS3.0 and JavaScript galleries using standard XML files as sources, though neither AS3.0 nor JavaScript coding is required for you to use their templates.

The HTML (JavaScript) version of SlideshowBox makes all the Flash templates available to non-Flash developers without the need for Adobe Flash, through their online configuration panel. Because these slideshows consist in configurable SWF files, Flash Player is needed for them to work. Also on the HTML version, there are 5 full JavaScript slideshows which are compatible with iPad and iPhone. See all available templates.

This contest will run from July 29, 2010 to August 6, 2010 and we will select the winners randomly by running MySQL query. Result can be announced any day before August 10, 2010 so keep visiting here or subscribe to our rss feed to get the latest updates. To participate in the contest and win free license of SlideshowBox, All you have to do is just :

1. Just leave a comment.
2. Use valid email ID in the email box.
3. Not necessary, but you can subscribe to our rss feed and follow us on twitter as well. (To track this contest and for future updates)
4. And thats it!

So what are you waiting for now? Let’s participate in the contest and good luck!

Mugtug Offers Online Image Editing & Drawing Tool At One Place

If you have been using your computer for some time, you already have separate applications installed for image editing and drawing. But if you are using somebody else’s computer, you might not have the administrative privileges required to install new programs. In this case online apps come quite in handy. Rather than looking for separate web apps for image editing and drawing, you should pay a visit to “Mugtug.”

Mugtug is a free to use web service that offers two web apps – an online image editor and an online drawing tool, both HTML5-based.

The site also has a small community which users can log in to share the work they got done through Mugtug.

The online image editor is called “Darkroom” and offers a number of impressive features.

You can upload an image to the editor from your computer, a URL, or through your Picasa or Flickr accounts. Once uploaded you could use one of the basic features from the top pane. These features include rotate, mirror, crop, and red eye removal.

Further options can be found in the left pane. Here you can set the colors, set the brightness and exposure levels, and modify the contrast and saturation levels.

You can also add effects to the pictures. Previews of each effect can be seen by placing your mouse pointer over the effect.

When done editing, you can save or share the picture using the button on the top left. You can do a final resizing of the picture and choose to save the picture, share it via URL, or publish on your Picasa or Flickr account.

The drawing app offered by Mugtug is called “Sketchpad.”

This tool offers standard drawing options along with advanced features of pattern, gradient, and swatch. You can also create your own colors using the color chooser set in the top right. When done drawing, you can use the button in the top right to save your drawing in PNG image format.

Mugtug successfully merges these tools in a user friendly interface. The next time you need to draw or edit a photo, remember to visit Mugtug.

Favitt Lets You Create Your Own Multi Search Engine In Minutes

Everyone knows how important search is. You search Google, YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, Flickr, Last.fm, Amazon and plenty of other sites for different products, content, images, videos etc. Unfortunately, none of these sites lets you customize the search interface as good as Favitt does.

Favitt lets you simplify the search experience by bringing all these search engines in a customized start page.

The idea is very simple. You head over to Favitt.com and create a free account. Once your account is created, you add all the sites where you frequently search for content, images, videos, products etc. This could mean adding Cars.com or Techcrunch.com or your personal blog

Next, You can search all these sites from the same page and do not have to open multiple browser tabs, open the URL’s of all these sites one by one, type in the keywords and perform a search separately. This is very useful, saves a lot of time and above all – you get a very customized search experience.

Lets quickly see what are the main features of Favitt:

Features of Favitt

Multiple Search Engines, One Browser Window: Favitt lets you add multiple websites as tabs on it’s homepage. Say you are a fan of Bing, YouTube and Flickr and want to search all of them from a single page. Just use the more button placed at the right of the search box and you can add your favorite search engine as a new tab on the Favitt start page.

When you perform a search for a specific keyword, you can simply switch between search engines and see the different results with a single click. All you have to do is select the search engine from the left sidebar in the search result page, as shown below:

Add a custom search Engine: Favitt lets you add your favorite sites as tabs in your Favitt start page. Just name the site you wanna search, add the URL of the site and you are done.

Now a tab will appear in your Favitt start page showing the site you just added.When you want to search that site, simply type the keywords in the search box and hit the tab. You will see results from the specific site as search results.

This is immensely useful, when you want to search your favorite sites without having to visit them over and over again.

Creating a custom search engine with Favitt has more advantages. Say you are a soccer fan and want to search all the popular Soccer blogs for the recent updates about FIFA world cup 2010. Just go to the Favitt user engines page and add the sites, blogs one by one. Then you can share the URL of your Favitt homepage with friends and family members so that they can search and find the latest soccer updates from different blogs, all at one place.

Here is an example of a Favitt page with the main search engines being Google, SmashingApps, and Techie-Buzz.

Preview Real time Results: When you do a search for any keyword and if there are any images, YouTube videos, news articles, or recent tweets about the same topic, you will see them on the right side of the search results page.

This is quite handy, when you want to track the recent buzz surrounding the topic you just searched for.

Upload Images and set them as Background: Favitt lets you upload images from your computer or from a web URL and stores these images in your account. You can use these images as the background of your start page.

What’s even interesting is that Favitt will automatically rotate the images on a daily basis and change the background of your start page, so you always get a refreshing search experience.

Here is an example of my Favitt start page, with a minimalist background:

Enlarge Facebook Photos By Hover Mouse Pointer (Firefox+Chrome Plugin)

I find Facebook’s picture viewing interface inconvenient. When I am viewing a friend’s album, I can view the pictures as thumbnails in the main album page. To view a picture’s true size I have to click it. Then I have to go back to the album (photo thumbnails view) and select another image to enlarge. The process can become quite time consuming. But thanks to two browser extension, I no longer have to click back and forth while viewing pictures on Facebook.

The first is Facebook PhotoZoom (there is no space between the words Photo and Zoom).

This is an addon for Mozilla Firefox and can be used while viewing Facebook photos. Its function is a simple one: it shows you the true size of an image thumbnail in Facebook. Whether that thumbnail is in a photo album or the thumbnail of an image shared on your wall or news feed, you simply place our mouse pointer over the thumbnail and view its enlarged version in a hovering view.

The second extension is Facebook Photo Zoom (there is a space between the words Photo and Zoom).

This tool is an extension for Google Chrome and works much in the same way. In addition to enlarging your Facebook photo thumbnails in a hovering window view, the extension places an icon near the bottom right of Facebook i.e. next to the Chat bar. You can toggle Facebook Photo Zoom on / off from this icon.

Hence it is up to you whether to use the hovering window photo enlargement or use Facebook’s original interface.

These extension are absolute must have for all Facebook accountholders using Firefox or Chrome. They have certainly saved me the umpteen clicks required to view a photo album. I am positive they will be as helpful to you as they were to me.

Click here for the Firefox Addon and here for the Chrome extension.

Filter Forge Expands Your PhotoShop Ninja Skills

As I’m sure you’ve already noticed, many of the most creative types both online and offline make extensive use of Adobe PhotoShop. It has become the de facto image editing software package for just about everyone, but it is still inherently limited in scope. That’s why there is so much interest in different add-ons and upgrades that are available for the popular photo editor.

One such utility is Filter Forge. It is a plugin for Adobe PhotoShop that not only grants you access to a huge library of additional filters, but it also gives you the ability to build your own filters too. This opens up all sorts of creative possibilities that may not have otherwise been available to the regular PhotoShop user. Compatibility appears to be quite good too, supporting both current and legacy versions of Adobe PhotoShop.

Standalone or PhotoShop Integrated

Going through the features page for Filter Forge, we discover that despite the software utilizing just one main user interface, it can actually be used two different ways.

First, Filter Forge can be used as a standalone application. You can launch it like how you would any other program on your computer, going through to view, edit, and create different filters that can later be used with PhotoShop. The user interface has the filters organized based on a number of categories, which are then further broken down by different types of filters.

Each individual filter comes with a number of different factory presets, which are quite distinct variations on the main filter. Shown above, for example, is the “bacteria” filter. As you can see, the green version is not only different in color from the red or purple version, but the sizes of the “bacteria” elements are quite different as well.

Second, Filter Forge can be used as a PhotoShop plugin. After the main installation process is complete, you will see a new option within PhotoShop to access and edit the different filters available in Filter Forge. The plugin itself is quite tiny, only being used to send and retrieve image information. The image processing is done with the main Filter Forge application and then it is output back to PhotoShop for your creative needs.

Other Major Features of Filter Forge

In addition to the large number of filters that come preloaded with Filter Forge (currently at 7000+ and growing), you have the ability to edit and create new filters as well. With the factory presets described above, for instance, you can click on the Settings tab to access individual components of that filter, shifting and adjusting them to suit your specific needs.

Take this distortion filter as an example. You can adjust the relative level of the distortion, roughness, stretch, angle, size in pixels, and variation. You’ll also notice that there is a checkbox for “seamless tiling.” This Filter Forge feature allows for the filter to be seamlessly expanded and replicated without the appearance of having separate tiles. This works even for non-square elements.

Similarly, all filters in Filter Forge are generated procedurally. Since they do not depend on external bitmap images, they can effectively be scaled infinitely without pixilation and other artifacts. As such, they are resolution-independent, allowing you to use any filter in any size under any circumstance.

In case you want to have an extra large filter, you’ll be glad to hear that the software supports “huge” resolutions as well. The developers were able to generate a filter measuring 65536 x 65536 pixels. It took hours to render, but the interface remained responsive during the rendering process.

Seeing the Filters in Action

After downloading the program (there is a free 30-day trial), the installation process took mere moments. It’s all automatic and easy enough for even computer novices to understand.

To test out the capabilities and usability of Filter Forge, I tried editing a simple photograph that I took on a recent business trip. Loading the image in PhotoShop 7, I selected a portion of the wall behind the two gentlemen using the magic wand and lasso selection tools. I then clicked on the “Filters” section from the main pull-down menu and selected Filter Forge.

This loaded the primary user interface shown earlier this review. I chose one of the pre-existing wood-based filters and edited it slightly in the Settings portion. As I did so, the preview section within Filter Forge showed me when the end result will look like. This live rendering can come in really handy, since you don’t have to go back and forth to see which filter is the one you want to use.

Reasonably satisfied with what I created, I clicked on Apply and the full filter was then applied to the main image back in PhotoShop. The result could use a little more post-processing to make it look more natural (that’s more in regards to my PhotoShop skills than in regards to the Filter Forge software, of course), but the actual filter application was perfect.

The process was very straightforward and the wealth of filters available is truly impressive. If you want to expand the possibilities of PhotoShop for your image post processing, Filter Forge is a solid choice.

Buy Filter Forge for Mac or Windows

Available on both the Mac and Windows platforms, Filter Forge has a free trial version for use for 30 days. There are positively no limitations to the trial version, except for the time limit. This allows you to try out all the features and functions available for both the standalone application and the PhotoShop plugin. This gives you free access to over 7000 user-created filters too.

There are three main versions of Filter Forge available for purchase: Basic, Standard, and Professional for $99, $199, and $299, respectively. However, you can upgrade to the newer three versions now and save quite a bit of money.

Filter Forge 2.0 can be preordered for $79, $139, or $229 for the Basic 2.0, Standard 2.0, and Professional 2.0 editions, respectively. The Professional version allows for the largest bitmaps, unlimited CPU cores, high-precision file formats, and support for both 16-bit and 32-bit image modes.

FindEXIF Lets You View Detailed EXIF Data of Any Image Online

When you take pictures through a digital camera, a lot of detailed information is attached to it. Among other things, these details include which camera the picture was taken from, what are its dimensions, its exposure time, and color space. All this attached information is called EXIF data and can be accessed by right clicking your photo on your computer and entering the details field its properties (in Windows).

The information in this properties window is not always easy to interpret. Moreover there is no method to store this information in a file unless you start typing yourself.

FindEXIF is a website that lets you view and save the EXIF data of any picture.

FindEXIF is a free to use website that extracts the EXIF data of any website and presents it to you. This can be done for any picture, not only the ones on your computer. The input is an image’s URL; for online images this becomes quite easy but if the image is store on your computer you will first need to have it hosted online through a service like ImageShack.

Once you enter your picture’s URL you can click on the “GO” button and view its detailed EXIF information.

Your information is shown under the thumbnail of your image. You get a permalink (permanent URL) for this information which you can use to access the EXIF details from anywhere. Alternatively you can copy the text on the webpage and copy it in a text editor to save on your computer.

Visit FindEXIF by clicking here.

Free Image Editing Application “Picsay” For Android SmartPhones

If you are an Android smartphone owner, you must spend a lot of time capturing moments through the lens of your phone’s camera. While the pictures you take are often good enough to remind you of good times, sometimes the moment is made more memorable if you add funny effects to the pictures.

To add such effects to the pictures you shoot from your camera, you first need to transfer them on your computer, then use a computer software to edit the transferred picture. With PicSay however, you can complete the entire process within your cellphone.

PicSay is a free picture editing application for Android smartphones; it lets you add wonderful funny effects to the picture stored on your phone. This application enables you to be a lot more creative with your pictures: you can improve the images by color correction, or make them more fun by word balloons, paint, stickers, special effects, and more.

Picture personalization is one of PicSay’s aims and users are able to do it with ease.

One of PicSay’s prominent features is selective desaturation through which you can select only a specific area of a picture to be shown in color, and the rest in black and white.

“Watch Your Head” is another fun tool of PicSay that facilitates changing the heads of two people (or even animals) in a picture.

The basic features can be found in PicSay’s free version whereas the best features are in PicSay Pro, the paid version. Both the applications can be found through in the Marketplace through your Android phone.

(* Note: PicSay Pro will not show in Marketplace unless paid Android apps are supported in your country.)

9 Cool Websites You Need To Bookmark To Manipulate Your Photos

The most fun way to use image manipulation technology is by using it on our own photographs. Morphing our photos can produce some very amusing results which will surely entertain us. Many websites offer image manipulation services. For you all I have gathered a list of 9 such entertaining website that let us have fun with our images. Check out each entry in the list and you will definitely find something that will manipulate photos to achieve amusing results.

If you want to share more entertaining and cool websites to have fun with photos so please comment about them below. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at  smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter. Click on the images to go from where the images has been taken and learn more about their creators and to appreciate them.

PhotoFunia

PhotoFunia is another effect-adding website to add interesting and humorous effects to our photos. Visit PhotoFunia.

In20Years

In20years is a free to use website. Its purpose is to estimate what a person’s face will look like 20 or 30 years in the future. We can also choose to add the ‘drug addict’ effect for funnier results. Visit In20Years.

GetGrossedOut

GetGrossedOut is another free website, although its aim it quite different from in20years. With GetGrossedOut, visitors can upload their photos for the site to add disgusting effects to them. These disgusting effects are not ‘actually’ disgusting, since they are visibly cartoonish. Still, we can have a lot of fun with our photos. (Our pictures have the site’s logo on them.) Visit GetGrossedOut.

Fotobabble

With Fotobabble, we can upload our images and record audio with them. Each ‘fotobabble’ consists of an uploaded picture and our recorded audio. We can then share the fotobabble’s URL with our friends so they can view and hear what we have to share. Visit Fotobabble.

MagMyPic

MagMyPic will add a magazine-like look to our pictures. We upload our picture and the site puts it on a virtual magazine cover. Results look real and can easily fool our friends. Just remember to upload a high quality photo so it looks even more authentic. Visit MagMyPic.

Citrify

Citrify does not contain many humorous features, although it does let users to add very interesting effects to their photos which (at times) can be hilarious. The image above, for instance, got the “hulk” effect. Visit Citrify.

TiltShift Generator

As the name suggests, this site is a wonderful to add tiltshift effect to our pictures. In case you do not know what this is, tiltshift is the technique to have on a portion of the photo in focus thus drawing the attention there. It can be humorous if we are pointing out the humorous part of a picture by bringing it in focus. Visit TiltShift Generator.

SuperLame Word Balloon Engine

SuperLame Word Balloon Engine provides its visitors with a simple interface to add nice speech bubbles to their images. We can change the font of the text as well as the shape of the speech bubbles. Visit SuperLame Word Balloon Engine.

Wanokoto Labs for Old Images Effect

The last entry in my list is a website in Japanese. The site adds an ‘old’ effect to our photos. I had to make up its name from what I could gather from the URL. But even without knowing the language, figuring out what the site does and how it does it is quite easy. The controls can be recognized through their icons. Visit Old Picture Effect Creator.