Four Free Apps for Editing Your Photos Online

By Scott Nesbitt – October 4, 2009

You might recall a couple of previous TechTips that covered some free, simple desktop computer photo editing software. But what happens if you're using a netbook that might not have the grunt to run those apps efficiently? Or if you're not using your own computer?

A more than viable alternative is to go online. This TechTip looks at why you'd want to and five of the better Web-based photo editors.

Why go online?

As mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago, you might be using a netbook, an older desktop computer or laptop computer, or you could be working on one that's not yours. There's a chance that computer won't have enough hard drive space or memory or a fast enough CPU to handle a decent image editor. And if the computer isn't yours, the owner may frown upon you installing software on it.

Another reason is convenience. About half of my work is done on my netbook. And I try to keep the amount of software on it to a minimum. That means, among other things, no photo editors that might slow the netbook down. But I often need to resize or crop a stock photo for an article, blog post, or presentation. In those cases, an online photo editor comes in handy.

Finally, your photo editing needs are probably modest. You just need some basic functions and effects, which a good online editor packs.

There have to be some drawbacks

Of course there are. The obvious one is that you need a reliable and fast Internet connection to use these editors. If your connection drops, you'll more than likely lose your work.

On top of that, the editor that you choose might not have the feature or function that you need. If it does, that feature or function may not be as easy to use or as powerful as you need it to be.

Sometimes those online editors can be slow, especially when uploading or downloading a photo. While researching this TechTip, I even had one or two hang my Web browser.

Four of the best

There are a large number of photo editors on the Web. Some are good – comparable to a decent desktop editor. Others aren't. Here are four of the best of the crop of Web-based photo editors. They're powerful, flexible, and free. And you don't necessarily have to set up an account to use them.

Note: Most of the editors that this TechTip discusses impose a limit on the size of files you can edit. Depending on the editor, that limit is between two and three megabytes.

Pixlr

Pixlr reminds me of an online version of the popular desktop photo editor called Paint Shop Pro. Of the four editors that this TechTip discusses, Pixlr is the most like a desktop application in appearance.

There are two versions of Pixlr: Editor and Express. Editor is the fully-featured application, while Express it the lite version. Both allow you to upload a file from your computer or open a photo somewhere on the Web for editing.

Remember what I said about Paint Shop Pro? Well, that's Editor. You get the full range of functions that you'd expect from a desktop photo editor, all available from a set of menus.

It's more than just a photo editor, though. You can also create images with it using a set of drawing tools. And in addition to the basic functions for manipulating a photo, Editor packs an array of filters and of photo touch-up tools. You can blur, sharpen, and emboss a photo. You can also make your pic look like an old photo and even add scan lines (like and old TV).

One feature of Pixlr Editor that some photographers might find useful is the ability to add layers. Among other things, layers allow you to seamlessly superimpose one image over another.

Pixlr Express, on the other hand, does away with the menus. You access all of the functions from a sidebar. There aren't all that many functions available, but they're more than enough for basic image editing.

As with most other editors, Pixlr Express enables you to crop, rotate, and resize photos. You can also adjust brightness and color, and add some of the same effects that you can add with Pixlr Editor.

If you use the Firefox Web browser, there's an add-on available that opens images on the Web directly in Pixlr – no need to do that at the Pixlr site.

Change-Images

If you're looking for something that's simple, then Change-Images is the online photo editor to go with. It's bare bones, but if you only need the basics then it's a great choice.

Change-Images only supports five functions: resizing, cropping, converting, applying effects, and adding border (called frames) to photos. Each function has its own tab, and each tab has a simple set of controls.

You can only upload photos from your computer to Change-Images. It doesn't integrate with photo sharing sites, and you can't point it to an image on the Web. Still, for what it is, Change-Images does a solid job.

The resize feature has a set of pre-set sizes to which you can shrink a photo. You can choose sizes in pixels or as a percentage of the original file. You can also set a custom size in pixels.

The conversion feature can take photos (and other images) in a number of formats – including popular ones JPEG, TIFF, GIF, and BMP – and convert them to one of nine commonly-used formats. You can also choose the quality of the conversion, from highest to lowest.

There are also 18 image effects available, ranging from generic viagra 50mg rotating a photo to embossing it. You can also change the brightness of a photo or convert it to grayscale.

Overall, Change-Images is quick and easy to use. It's not pretty, but it doesn't have to be.

Picnik

This is one of the two Flash-based editors mentioned in this TechTip. As such, you'll want to make sure that you have the latest Flash player installed to use it.

Picnik is a simple, but flexible tool. It enables you to upload a photo, or open one from a variety of photo sharing sites including Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, Webshots, and even FaceBook and MySpace. You can't, however, point to an image on the Web and edit it.

Picnik packs two sets of functions. The first one, under the Edit tab, allows you to do basic editing. Things like cropping and rotating an image, sharpening it, adjusting the color and removing red eye. Things get interesting, though, when you click the Create tab.

The functions under the Create tab enable you to add a whack of nifty, funky, and downright strange effects. Like what? You can convert a color photo to black and white or sepia. You can soften it, and even turn it into something resembling a pencil sketch.

Some of Picnik's other features include adding text and borders to photos, and stitching a bunch of photos together to create a collage.

A number of the effects are labeled Premium in the interface. If you want to use them, you need to pay a $24.95 annual fee. Unless you need those effects, or if you want to support Picnik's development, the free features are more than  good enough

FotoFlexer

FotoFlexer bills itself as the most advanced online image editor. I don't know if I'd go that far, but FotoFlexer is easy to use and it does pack a lot of useful features.

FotoFlexer allows you to upload a photo, grab one off the Web, or get a photo from your account on popular photo sharing sites like Flickr and Picasa, or from your MySpace or FaceBook account.

FotoFlexer combines some of the best elements of the other Web-based photo editors  that this TechTip discusses. There are no menus. Instead, functions are grouped under a set of tabs. There are a wide range of these functions – from basic cropping and resizing and rotating to sharpening and removing red eye, to removing blemishes from a photo.

As with Pixlr, you can add layers to a photo that you're editing in FotoFlexer. You can also insert another image (without a layer), add text, and apply over a dozen effects to a photo. If you're so inclined, you can also distort a photo in a number of ways and add animated shapes to your photo. The latter isn't my thing, but obviously there's a market for it …

What I found interesting were the functions under the Geek tab. Among these is one that interfaces with a webcam to capture images. Two other functions that I found interesting are Smart Scissors and Smart Cutout. Both of these enable you to select selections of a photo and pull them out, jagged edges and all – sort of like cutting out portions of a printed photo with scissors. While Smart Scissors and Smart Cutout are more fun than anything else, they can be useful for putting together a digital collage.

Like Picnik, FotoFlexer is Flash based. And, like Picnik, you'll want the latest Flash player installed on your computer before you use the editor.

A final word

If your photo editing needs are simple, or if you just don't want to clutter your hard drive with more software then a Web-based photo editing application is a good way to go. There are a number of them out there, and they're fast and easy to use. Chances are you'll find one with just the features that you need.

Four Apps to Take Your Tweeting to the Next Level

By Scott Nesbitt – September 13, 2009

There's no doubt that Twitter has become a major player in the world of social media. In fact, it's pretty find viagra much at the top of the heap of the various microblogging services available on the Web.

And with good reason: Twitter is easy to use and the breadth and depth of posts is something to see.

For a power user (or a power user wannabe), the Twitter Web interface leaves a bit to be desired. It's fine for reading and posting messages (called tweets in Twitter-speak). But the interface is lacking in a lot of ways. If you want to, for example, send a message to another Twitter user or retweet (repost an interesting message), then you have to remember a keyboard command and/or do some copying and pasting.  Why do that, when you can use graphical tool that gives you point-and-click access to all the Twitter functions you need? And a few more to boot. There a number of desktop clients for Twitter, and a few Web-based ones too.

This TechTip looks at four of the more interesting Twitter clients out there. All of them are free, and they work on computers that run Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.

Going minimal with Qwit

While somewhat barebones, Qwit (an Open Source Twitter client) fills in a lot of the gaps of Twitter's Web interface. And it's easy to use.  Qwit has a tabbed interface that seems to be popular with desktop Twitter clients, and other kinds of desktop apps too. There are seven, to be exact – for updates that you and the people you follow have posted, for messages that you've sent and have been sent to you, to do a search, and one tab each for all new posts to the service and for specific Twitter feeds that you want to pay particular attention to.

While I'd like to get rid of a couple of the tabs, there isn't a way to do that. A minor annoyance.

But the real flexibility is on Qwit's Home tab. That's where you view your posts and the posts of those you're following. You can type an update at the top of the Qwit window, and you can even attach a photo to a tweet. The photo doesn't go to Twitter; it's uploaded to a site called TwitPic and linked to your tweet. On top of that, long URLs are automatically shortened.

Every update on the Home tab has three additional buttons which allow you to reply to a tweet, repost it, and to send the poster a private message.  It's a lot easier than remembering keyboard commands.

Giving twhirl a whirl

You might remember a TechTip that looked at a technology called Adobe AIR. One of the great things about AIR is that it make it easy for developers to create software that interacts with Web applications. Twitter is no exception.

twhirl is one of the first truly cross-platform AIR apps that I've used. Other applications, either Twitter clients or apps in various other categories, either didn't work under Linux or were sluggish.

With twhirl, you can post, reply, retweet, and send direct messages all by clicking on an icon on the toolbar at the bottom of the twhirl window. You can view the people you follow and who follow you, and search for specific Twitter users. You'll need to know their Twitter user name, though.

As well, twhirl shortens URLs with a click – that's great for posting a long link that cuts into Twitter's 140 character limit. As with Qwit, you can share photos in a tweet by uploading them to TwitPic from within the app.

My only gripe with twhirl is that its interface takes some getting used to. It's obvious what some of the icons in the twhirl window do. Others you're not so sure about until you click them. I'd also like URL shortening to be automatic, but clicking a button to do the deed isn't all that onerous a task.

Don't tweet, twait instead

Twaitter is one of the growing number of Web-based Twitter clients. But Twaitter goes further than other desktop and online Twitter clients with a few features that power user and businesses will find useful.

Like any other Twitter client, Twaitter enables you to read and view tweets, send replies, retweet messages, and view and send private messages to other Twitter users. You simply go www.twaitter.com and log in using your Twitter user name and password.

But Twaitter has one feature that's sets it apart from all other clients. That feature is the ability to schedule tweets. Using Twaitter, you can write tweets ahead of time and let them appear on Twitter at specific times and dates. This is useful if, for example, you're doing a marketing promotion and want to leak details on to Twitter without it seeming like you're spamming.

To use Twaitter, all you need to do is type your tweet. Then, click the twait button. Choose the time and date one which you want the tweet to appear and then click the Schedule button. You can also tell Twaitter whether you want the tweet to only appear once, or if it’s going to recurring at regular intervals.

One useful feature of Twaitter is that ability to edit a tweet. Even the best of us succumb to the typo bug. If you've entered a tweet in Twaitter, you quickly fix a typo or an error. To do that in Twitter's Web interface, you need to delete the tweet and then resend it.

If you don't want to worry about fiddling with a browser to get to Twaitter, you can always bring Twaitter to your desktop using Prism (software that creates desktop shortcuts for opening Web applications in their own windows).

Add TwitterFox to your browser

As long as that browser's Firefox. Why install yet another piece of software on your computer when you can make Twitter a part of your browsing experience? That's what TwitterFox does.

It's an add-on for Firefox, the popular Open Source browser. While Qwit is fairly bare bones, TwitterFox is downright minimalist. After installing and configuring TwitterFox, an icon (the stylized Twitter t) appears in the lower-right corner of the Firefox interface. When updates from the people you follow are available, the icon displays how many updates there are. Click the icon to open the TwitterFox window.

The TwitterFox window contains three tabs. The main one lists all updates that you and the people you follow have posted recently. The other tabs list any messages in which you're mentioned (what Twitter calls @mentions) and private messages that you've sent or received. There's also a small area at the bottom of the window for entering a tweet.

TwitterFox is easy to use, but not always intuitive. A part of that comes from its minimalism. If you want to reply to a tweet, you must hold your mouse over the tweet. A curved arrow appears. Click the arrow, and go from there. On top of that, there's no button for retweeting a post. Instead, you right click a tweet and choose Retweet from the menu that appears. That right-click menu, by the way, also enables you to copy tweets and to delete any of your own tweets.

The integration with Firefox goes a little further than TwitterFox simply being spawned from the browser. In the bottom left of the TwitterFox window is an icon that looks like a bit of chain. Click that to include the URL of current tab in a tweet. If, with the URL, the tweet is over the 140 charactewitterr limit, TFox will shorten the URL using the popular TinyURL service.

Conclusion

Good desktop (or even Web-based) Twitter clients give you a lot of flexibility and a number of features that are just not found at the Twitter site. They make tweeting faster and easier.

Do you have a favorite desktop Twitter client? Share it with the TechTips reader community by leaving a comment.

Four Password Managers To Wrangle Those Pesky Passwords

By Scott Nesbitt – August 30, 2009

Passwords. They're a blessing and a curse, aren't they? In today's digital world, we all seem to have passwords for … well, for everything. And a lot of passwords. For online banking, Web mail, e-commerce sites, our favorite Web applications, and more.

As many of us have learned, though, it can be hard to remember all of those passwords. If you forget a password, the kinds of sites mentioned in the last paragraph can either send you a password or reset it. But that's takes a bit of time and just adds to the confusion.

While you can write down your passwords in a paper notebook (remember those?) or in a file on your external hard drive, what happens if you lose the notebook or delete the file? Or if someone else gets hold of them? The situation will end in tears.

Instead of relying on your memory or more traditional ways of storing passwords, why not turn to a password manager?

Enter the password manager

A password manager is a piece of software that, obviously, lets you securely store and organize your various passwords. The software is usually designed for a desktop computer or a notebook computers, but password managers are also available for smartphones. The BlackBerry, for example, comes with one called Password Keeper.

The principle behind the password manager is simple. It stores your login information in an encrypted database or in a file hidden somewhere on your external hard drive. You enter your information using a simple form. This information can include:

• The name of the Web site or service with which the password is associated
• A user name
• The password (of course)

Optionally, there might be space for entering a URL and a note.

Whenever you need a password, you just dip into the password manager and pull it out. Some applications, like Apple's Keychain Access, enable you to log into a Web site using a single password.

The obvious advantage to using this kind of software is convenience – you don't need to try to remember multiple user names and passwords, or worry about confusing them. They're all in one secure place. But what's out there? Let's take a look at a few.

Universal Password Manager

This is an interesting one. Universal Password Manager is an Open Source application that runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. You'll need Java installed on your computer to run this application, but the three operating systems on which it runs usually have Java installed already.

To get set up, you create a database for your passwords. From there, you can add your passwords to the database using a simple form.

Universal Password Manager has a nifty feature that lets you copy a user name or a password from an entry in the database, without having to double click on the entry. This is useful when you remember one or the other (it happens!).

The database is encrypted with a scheme called AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). It's not the strongest encryption but it works. While you can create multiple databases – for example, one for our desktop computer and one for your cheap netbook – Universal Password Manager is Web enabled. You can save a database to a Web server and point the application there. No matter what computer you’re using, you can always access your password store.

KeePass Password Safe

KeePass is sort of like a supercharged version of Universal Password Manager, though only for Windows. It comes in two versions. The Classic version, which has more than just basics features, and the Pro version, which needs Microsoft's .NET to run. You can compare the features of the two versions here.

Remember what I said about KeePass being Windows only? That's not quite true. The Classic version also runs in Linux under Wine, although the toolbar buttons go AWOL. And the developer says that the Pro version will run under any operating system, like Linux or Mac OS, that supports Mono (an Open Source version of .NET).

KeePass stores all of its information in a database that's encrypted with AES (told you it was like Universal Password Manager). You can have multiple databases, and add multiple groups to a database. Groups enable you to collect similar Web sites, applications, services in separate folders — one, say, for Web applications, one for e-commerce sites, and another for banking information. This makes it easier to manage your passwords.

You can also tell KeePass to protect certain fields of the database — like password or user name — while the application is running. While you're using a database, or before you save it, this keeps the information safe from other applications, like trojans, that may try to read your computer's memory. What really sets KeePass apart from other password managers is its collection of plugins. There are plugins for importing passwords from other applications, managing databases, integrating KeePass with other software, and more.

GNOME Password Manager

If you're running Linux with the female viagra sildenafil target=”_blank” title=”http://www.gnome.org/”>GNOME desktop, you've got a password manager already installed. Called GPass, you can find it under Applications > Accessories. It's a simple application but one that gets the job done.

To use it, you click the Add button on the toolbar. From there, enter whatever information you need. At the very least, you should specify a name to identify the information, a user name, and a password. Click OK and you're done. It's that simple.

Passwords are stored in a file, encrypted with the Blowfish encryption scheme, somewhere on your computer. I'll be darned if I can find that file …

GPass lacks a lot of frills. But one useful feature that it shares with Universal Password Manager is the ability to copy user IDs and passwords by right clicking on an entry – you don't need to open it. GPass also has a decent search feature, which is useful if you have a lot of passwords.

Passpack

Passpack is a Web-based password manager. It's said to be quite secure. The login procedure itself is in three steps: enter your user name and password, then click a security image, then enter a passphrase.

Once you're in, it's easy to use. As with desktop password managers, Passpack has a form for entering a user name, a password, and a link to a Web site (if necessary). On top of that, Passpack shows you the strength of the password while you're typing it. I can't vouch for the accuracy of this. If you enter the entire alphabet and numbers from 0 to 9, the password will be considered fairly strong.

Passpack also has some useful tools. You can import and export password files to and from another password manager. There's an Adobe AIR application that lets you access your passwords from your desktop. On top of that, Passpack supports a feature that lets you specify sites to which you can login with a single click.

A few words of advice

If you're using an online password manager like PassPack, it's probably best not to add passwords for online banking, credit cards, or services like PayPal to it. The application might be secure, but you can never be 100% confident. The convenience could wind up costing you.

If your password manager has a feature that automatically generates password, don't use it. A good password is random. These applications generate passwords that aren't truly random. Instead, they're what's call pseudo random. You get a complex password, but there are tools available that can detect a pattern in the password and break it. It may not happen to you, but you never can tell.

And never, ever forget the password to get into your password manager. That seems like simple advice, but far too often people have let that password slip their minds. It's embarrassing, and I'm speaking from experience.

Conclusion

Wrangling your many and varied passwords isn't an art. It can be tough, but with the good password manager the job is a lot easier. You don't have to worry about potentially fallible human memory, and you'll eliminate the chaos that all of your passwords are causing you.