Each issue we’re going to be hunting down the best digital media applications available on the internet so you don’t have to. This could be anything from image manipulation to video editing, from audio compression to media management and everything in between. You name it, we’re likely to cover it. Best of all, everything you’ll find on this page will be freeware. So no nagging popups, no time restrictions and no feature limitations. Just strictly no holds barred functionality! Read on to find out what we’ve been digging during the last month.
Free Opener NEW
There are many free image-editing suites out there. Some of them useful, some of them not so much. But often, those that are useful are just complete bloatware. Free Opener is neither of these. It just contains the most useful functions for basic photo manipulation including resize, rotate, flip, change format, add watermark texts and the ability to sort or rename your images.
Freesizer
When you’re managing a website and uploading images it’s best not to rely on your CMS to do the processing legwork. The results can often be found lagging behind the output of a more offline solution like Freesizer. So ensure you’re giving your web readership the quality it deserves by making use of this app to process your images quickly and to a good standard.
With Freesizer you can quickly edit images without waiting for long software load times.
Helium Audio Converter
Downloading and listening to WAV files can often be a huge pain. Very few audio players out there are able to play this audio format in their default configuration. You’ll often need to download extra plugins to do the deed. Save time by converting your music to a more widely recognisable format using the incredibly lightweight Helium Audio Converter.
Google Music Player NEW
One of the annoying things about Google Music is that you need to keep the tab open whenever you’re rocking out to your favourite tracks. Should you accidentally close the browser you’re suddenly pulled back into the sound of the world around you. Solve this by installing Google Music Player where you can enjoy a separate app that minimises to the system tray and supports your keyboards media keys.
JPEGmini NEW
The folk behind this little beauty believe they’re on to such a good thing that they’ve lodged a patent request. With JPEGmini it’s possible to significantly reduce the size of your favourite photographs in preparation for uploading them to the website. The big hook here is you’re likely to see no noticable degradation in quality. Give it a try, the results might surprise you.
PhotoFilmStrip
We like a bit of stop motion like the next person. Remember Morph? This little sack of putty was easily one of our childhood favourites! Now you can create your own Tony Hart-inspired animation in three easy steps using PhotoFilmStrip. Simply select your photos, customise the motion path and then hit Render. You can then output your creation to VCD, SVCD, DVD and even HD.
RIOT
Breathe a sigh of relief because this has nothing to do with the random acts of violence that have spread across the UK of late. RIOT, also known as Radical Image Optimization Tool to those enjoy a good acronym, has the power to let you let you to visually adjust compression parameters while abiding by a minimum filesize. Definitely not one to be missed!
Screen2Avi
Video tutorials are everywhere. Think of a subject and the chances are you’ll be able to find some movie-based tuition to assist in the learning of said subject. If you want to contribute to this educational scene then you’ll want to install Screen2Avi, is a great screen capture tool with the capability of producing some fine screencasts and screenshots from your desktop.
Free Audio Converter NEW
What happens when you download a piece of music and it’s not in the format you’d hoped for? the easiest solution is to quickly load up Free Audio Converter. With this program you can convert audio between a number of different formats such as MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, AAC, M4A, OGG with support for MP3 players, iPods, iPhones, iPads and PSPs. It’s also possible to extract audio from video and join audio files.
Easily convert between a variety of audio format thanks to Free Audio Converter
ffDiaporama NEW
Love to snap a few photos? Find that you have an overwhelming number of images to keep tabs on? Then you’ll obviously want to add ffDiaporama to your workflow. It’s more than capable of cataloging photographs from removable drives and your local disks simultaneously. Plus images can be arranged in a single, virtual file system doing all the hard work for you in the process.
All these great tools are part of issue 314 of PC Plus, on the shelves on 18th October 2011. Subscribe today to the paper edition and you can get it up to a week early! Subscribe to PC Plus.
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