Garmahis » Software

Free Raw Converter RawTherapee

Michael Garmahis — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:16:27 +0000

RawTherapee is a Windows/Linux free opensource Raw image converter. RawTherapee features non-destructive editing with all the internal processing done in 16 bits/channel. Besides numerous RAW files from digital camers, RawTherapee also opens and outputs JPEG, (8 and 16bit) TIFF and PNG images. The main questions for RawTherapee: the quality of Raw conversion and how it compares with other Raw tools

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Photoshop CS5 New Features

Michael Garmahis — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:59:43 +0000

Photoshop CS5 new features look fantastic. Photoshop CS5 productivity and creativity enhancements will greatly speed up designers and photographers workflow as well as bring in new creative features to express your genius. Photoshop CS5 will include several groundbreaking new features such as new automated patching tools, new warping tool, highly improved edge detection in masking, a lot of improvements for brush using as well as color picker and eye dropper. Adobe Photoshop CS5 will be released on Monday, April 12, 2010. In this post we’re taking a sneak peak at all the new Photoshop CS5 features

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Create panoramic photo with Microsoft Image Composite Editor

Michael Garmahis — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:54:41 +0000

Microsoft Image Composite Editor is one of the best and easiest to use free panoramic photo stitchers. In a number of tests made by panoramic photography community, Microsoft ICE is 4-6 times faster that panoramic photo market leaders such as Hugin and Autopano Giga without compromise in quality. Microsoft ICE takes a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location and creates a high-resolution panorama that seamlessly combines the original images.

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Illustrator free alternatives

Michael Garmahis — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:54:47 +0000

Illustrator free alternatives are great apps for editing and creating vector images. Some of these Adobe Illustrator alternatives have advanced features suitable for professional work with vector files while other is very simple tools to quickly create vector logo, diagram, illustration. The main advantage of the vector software in this review: it’s free unlike not cheap Illustrator. Illustrator doesn’t have an online version as well. Don’t miss Free Photoshop alternatives

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Topaz ReMask Photoshop plugin review

Michael Garmahis — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:39:38 +0000

Topaz ReMask is an extraction tool on steroids which works easily and fast. Topaz ReMask can save you tons of time and efforts. With Topaz ReMask you can painlessly extract objects, change backgrounds, refine selections including complicated objects such as hair, fog, fur. You can use Topaz ReMask to create masks or just to separate object from background and seamlessly integrate with other images. While images with complex edges are traditionally hard for masking, ReMask helps a great deal in details extraction of the subject without requiring a lot of manual work

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Photoshop Free Alternatives

Michael Garmahis — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:23:11 +0000

Most of the Photoshop features used by 90% of people can be found in free Photoshop alternatives. Believe me or not most users do not need to pay the huge price of Photoshop for basic editing needs like editing web images to be posted on Facebook or Flickr. Photoshop as a product is intended to use by professionals who make living out of creating and editing images in graphic/web design as well as photography. That’s why it costs so much. Some of free Photoshop alternatives even have unique features which Photoshop doesn’t have. Besides software this review also include online tools which are getting more and more powerful these days and gives you unlimited mobility.

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Topaz Detail Photoshop Plugin Review

Michael Garmahis — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:09:36 +0000

Topaz Detail is a new Photoshop plugin from Topaz Labs. As it name says Topaz Detail aims at increasing or decreasing level of details in the image. It also provides tone control based on color and crisp black and white conversions. It could be also described as Clarify slider in ACR/Lightroom on steroids but more controlled and not changing color/brightness.

The main advantage of this plugin over some similar tools is that Topaz Detail does not create visual artifacts like overshooting or halos. That means you can create more natural looking ultra sharp looking/ detailed images.

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Topaz Adjust Photoshop Plugin Review

Michael Garmahis — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:20:30 +0000

Topaz Adjust is a Photoshop plugin that lets you make gorgeous looking HDR photos just from one image. Besides HDR look Topaz Adjust lets you create high contrast, ultra sharp looking images similar to Dave Hill look photo effect. In general, Topaz Adjust provides powerful control over image exposure, detail (or better say microcontrast), and color which you can use either in creative way (create from original image something completely different looking) or use it slightly to correct your photo and make it pop

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Picasa 3 new features and shortcuts

Michael Garmahis — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:19:35 +0000

Picasa 3 Windows/Linux easy to use and feature rich photo management software from Google got number of new and improved features besides faster performance, increased stability, improved RAW support and a faster scanning engine. Picasa 3 adds basic movie editing, fuller syncing to Web Albums, new quick view app, Retouch tool for basic photo improvements, easy watermark adding and text tool add as well as new collage styles and number of other goodies

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Most popular design apps Top 20

Michael Garmahis — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:39:18 +0000

What are the most popular design apps? It’s rather hard to estimate most popular design software relying on vendor selling information and there are no general stat as well. But there are some new online services which tracks apps usage by installing special software and it works like Alexa for websites. According to websites Wakoopa and Software Informer most popular design apps are:

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Adobe Photoshop CS4 new features

Michael Garmahis — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:42:30 +0000

Adobe Photoshop CS4 new features, what are they? As a rule, part of Adobe products new features come from top 100 features requested by users and other part is completely new features to let Adobe marketing better sell its product (don’t forget that Adobe is a business company first of all). In addition, the Photoshop developers are working hard to make the 64-bit version of Photoshop CS4 (codename Stonehenge) for Windows with significant performance kick for some tasks. While there is a long way before Adobe Photoshop CS4 final release I tried to pick all available currently info about new features

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Pictomio 3D photo manager

Michael Garmahis — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:44:04 +0000

Pictomio is a free photo browser using 3D effects and animations to manage your photo collection. With Pictomio you can experience innovative way of browsing photos through 3D image carousel and create amazing animated slideshows with advanced transitions. Despite the many players on this market developers are sure that Pictomio will find its admirers because of its innovation and usability

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Photology: next-gen photo organizer

Michael Garmahis — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:12:44 +0000

Photology is Windows software for organizing and searching through your digital photos. Photology intuitively searches a user’s photo collection and filters by a number of criterias. Photology is unique as it requires no tagging or folder management to organize and search for photos. Photology provided its online demo recently which is using about 9,000 photos from Flickr to show how the software works. The classifications you’ll see are the result of a completely automated analysis, which is the identical analysis that the desktop Photology application does

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Windows Live Writer installation problems and solution

Michael Garmahis — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 07:20:33 +0000

I was unpleasantly surprised by Windows Live Writer installation. While with other blog clients ( BlogDesk, BlogJet, W.bloggar etc.) I had no problems at all, every time I got a couple of errors installing Windows Live Writer. Most of the time I get error ‘It looks like you’re offline’ though it was everything ok with internet. Even if I managed to go further I get errors 0×80070641 or 0×80070643.

Check out blog clients review for Windows Live Writer alternatives.

After number of unsuccessful attempts I contact Microsoft support and was amazed by quick and polite answer

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Free Photoshop actions to sharpen photos like a professional

Michael Garmahis — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 10:00:02 +0000

I made this Photoshop sharpen actions (link to download) to save time and get better result in sharpening photos without a lot of efforts. Photoshop sharpen actions set includes individual Unsharp mask filter presets for Flowers, Sky, Portrait, Landscape. There are also Strong Sharpness, Sharpen for Web and More contrast action which actually use Unsharp mask to increase contrast in photos. High pass sharpen action in this set use another algorithm than Unsharp mask and sometimes give better results. This actions will sharpen photos without halos and unwanted effects

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