Editing Photos

[Workingman]

John, the first thing to say is that you are not being a pest. We come on here because we want to help, nobody is imposing upon us, nobody is taking us for a ride, nobody is a pest.

Secondly, sorry about any nasties. A lot of "free" programs come with optional add-ons, but they are automatic unless we take action to prevent them. As a general rule look for pre-ticked boxes and untick them and use the 'Decline' button if available. Maybe we should have made that clear.

Thirdly, It has been a long-time hobby of mine messing about with photos and documents - see STD on the Games board. I have used most of the Windows programs from Suff's link and the only one I ever kept was IrfanView, so I can understand your frustration. However, can I ask exactly what it is you want to do to your photos? It could be that I find something to meet your specific needs rather than a comprehensive suite, or I could make a tutorial of how to do them with one of your downloads.

[Aggers]

Thanks Frank.

I can, of course, manage OK without a photo-manipulating programme, but I have on occasions
found my previous one useful, mainly for cropping.

With regard to all the downloads I made, I have deleted them from my list of programmes, but
I still have the annoyance of unwanted items popping up frequently. Do you think System Restore
would remove these? - providing it's not back to a time prior to my recent laptop overhaul?

[Workingman]

If you can find a Sys Restore to just before you made the downloads it should work. A scan with Norton might pick up any stragglers as well.

I went a looking when I last posted and found this little beauty. It does offer something called PicturesToText but the box is unticked by default so nothing to worry about.

It has the standard layout with the tools panel to the left and a set of panels to the right, but they can be closed using the X at their top right. It opened anything I threw at it in a flash. It is very simple to use without any of those "helpful" wizards popping up. Any changes you wish to make are done in real time. For instance if you wish to change brightness or contrast there is an option from the Colors menu on the top toolbar. It brings up a panel with sliders and as you move them the changes are done there and then. The crop tool works a dream. Select an area with it, but it stays there in case you put it in the wrong place or of the wrong size. You can grab it to move it or resize it using the handles, the Esc button removes it.

It is a tiny download and if you choose to install it as a Portable version it will write nothing to your registry and can easily be removed.

[Suff]

I'd like to second what WM said. We do this for varied reasons but we do it because we want to. Personally I do this for a bit of fun and mental exercise. Plus, I often learn things. We, in IT, tend to live within a comfort zone which we stray out of from time to time but, generally, we build safe comfortable places around us and then work in them. You, on the other hand, have needs which we don't always have.

It gives us interest and things to research and study and look for fixes. I see it as rewarding from both sides. When someone has a problem either understanding or even getting the software from the links we publish, it's not a pain, it's a challenge to help.

For instance I'm willing to bet that when you tried to download some of this software you clicked on the big obvious buttons which say "download", only to find that you have some piece of junk trying to cram stuff into your system and flash stuff on your browser. Sorry I should have issued a public health warning on that. You have to look for the very plain areas which are relevant to the download. It is one of the reasons that both WM and I use the status bar in IE, which Microsoft stupidly disabled by default. If you hover over the wrong button or link it's often obvious by what is in the status bar that it's the wrong thing.

On to imaging. I must admit I don't really do cropping. what I do is select the area of a photo that I want, copy it, paste it into a new window and either save that window as a new file or work on it till I get what I want then copy and paste it into the application I'm working in. Which, quite often, is Outlook.

This is exactly what I do when I'm putting stuff on VV. I copy out what I want from the Image in paint.net, I click on the new window button which automatically sizes itself to what is copied, paste the image into the new window and then save it. I then upload it to Picasaweb and link it to VV.

Beyond that, I do very little with Photo's except keep them on disk and, occasionally, view them on the PC or the TV...

[Aggers]

Thanks, Frank and Suff,

I'll have a look at the at the site you mention, Frank. It sounds like the thing I've been looking for.

Regarding the nuisance bits that kept bobbing up, I've had a look at the list of programmes in the
control panel, and found several strangers there, which I have proceeded to remove.

Everything is working normally now. Thank goodness.

I'm ready for bed now.

[Workingman]

Just out of interest, what were you previously using for photo editing?

[Aggers]

Just out of interest, what were you previously using for photo editing?

I can't remember. Frank. It might have been something that came with my old Cannon SLR.
I'll have a look at the website you last mentioned sometime, but I don't feel like spending much more time
on it today - I have backache now, probably by spending too much time hunched over my laptop yesterday.

Thanks for your help - much appreciated.