Malware Update
February 22, 2010
I’ve revamped and expanded the Malware page here, with more info, instructions and sequence of steps for sweeping your computer for malware with a suite of free programs. Check it out!
LCD Screen Pixel Utilities
February 13, 2010
In theory, these should examine and maybe even do a little bit of work on LCD pixel and screen irregularities.
http://wareseeker.co … elsok-1.0.zip/351072
http://wareseeker.co … pixel-2.2.zip/304046
http://wareseeker.co … er-1.1.zip/21802dd27
http://wareseeker.co … buddy-1.1.zip/307794
Graphics Applications
October 25, 2009
GRAPHICS RELATED APPLICATIONS
Nearly this whole post is also now in the permanent “Graphics” resource page in the sidebar, but I figured to celebrate the opening of Utilitools, might as well go with something cheery, like graphics and colors and shapes, etc.
EDITING AND MANIPULATION
Photofiltre
While Photofiltre is miles away from the professional oriented Adobe Photoshop it’s an excellent free alternative. The program contains all the essential tools and options to edit and optimize pictures.
GIMP Graphics Editor
The Gimp is the open source reference in image manipulation. This free application will allow you to retouch, author and edit your photos thanks to a wide set of tools.
Photoscape
Here you have a really excellent photo editing tool that includes just about everything you need to view, optimize, edit, print and have fun with your photos, all for free.
VIEWING, SORTING AND PROCESSING
DupDetector
My seal of approval on this one. Dup Detector finds duplicate and near duplicate images by opening and reading image pixel data.
Visipics
VisiPics does more than look for identical files. It applies five image comparison filters in order to measure how close pairs of images on the hard drive are.
Duplicate Images Finder
The program features a quite basic interface and is really easy to use: simply select the directories you want to scan and let Duplicate Images Finder do the rest. If there are any duplicate images, the program will display them in a separate window where you can compare them head to head and decide which one to erase and which one to keep.
SortPics
Image viewer, image sorter, and duplicate detector. It’s designed for people who have a lot of images to go through, and need to categorize them quickly and efficiently. Supports jpg / jpeg, gif, bmp, emf, wmf, and more!
Picasa, Google
Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great.
Sharing your best photos with friends and family is as easy as pressing a button!
Irfanview + Thumbnails
IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 , 2008, Vista, Windows 7. Effects, batch processing, thumbnail views, paint/drawing tools and more.
Format Factory
Format Factory is a multifunctional media converter. All to MP4/3GP/MPG/AVI/WMV/FLV/SWF. All to MP3/WMA/AMR/OGG/AAC/WAV. All to JPG/BMP/PNG/TIF/ICO/GIF/TGA. Rip DVD to video file , Rip Music CD to audio file. MP4 files support iPod/iPhone/PSP/BlackBerry format.
RESIZING AND THUMBNAILS
Image Resizer Powertoy, Microsoft
The best part is this is a Windows Explorer context menu “plugin”, so next time you’re just thumbing through tour graphics and find one you want to resize, just right click on it and find the Resize Pictures and set it as needed. Can’t ask for much easier than that.
Fastone Photo Resizer
An image converter / resizer intended to enable users especially digital camera owners to convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermark to images in a quick and easy BATCH mode.
Oscar’s Thumb Maker
Maybe one of the best to make exactly uniform thumbnails and smaller pictures, all the same size, from larger, even huge pictures. While it may look complex, it isn’t. What you need is to choose source directory of JPEGs, optionally with all subdirectories and then the output directory. Set the desired Width and Height and various options and go - press Start.
Posterazor
Take a large image that would be impossible to print out and cut it into a desired number of smaller images and save them back individually to your computer - good for various projects, from posters to blue prints to wallpapers, websites, etc.
Picslice (online only)
An online service that allows you to upload a large image and cut it into a desired number of smaller images and save them back to your computer - good for various projects, from posters to blue prints to wallpapers, websites, etc. just as above.
Welcome to Utilitools!
October 24, 2009
Welcome to Utilitools, providing an index of free utilities and tools for various computer related needs, that I personally have found useful and even invaluable, for many different things. It is basically my own set of bookmarks that I tend to fall back on, again and again, for the same types of problems - if I need a thumbnailer, I go with Oscar’s - if I need a quick graphics editor, I go with Photofiltre, etc. Same with all the other categories, the antivirus, the multimedia.
I’ve got sort of a “suite” of free programs that I rely on for much of what I actively do online, maintaining websites, working with images, etc. And I decided to put this, my personal bookmarks, up on the web, so I can get to them easily, all in one place, and also, anyone else can find these terrific resources here, discovering what I already think are great programs and applications and utilities.
So without further ado, as the cliche goes, allow me to step aside and let you peruse the site. -JP