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Useful Image Freeware

eezypeazy

Member
Joined
4 Jul 2005
Messages
626
Location
UK
I’ve had a reasonable digital camera since February 2004. Since December 2004 I’ve been using it to capture reference shots for my BVE projects, and the introduction of the POTW competition on this forum has encouraged me to try my hand at other railway photography. Increasingly, I’ve found myself needing to use some simple image manipulation and enhancement software to improve the look of my pictures.

So, the purpose of this thread is to enable us to share and comment upon image manipulation freeware that we find useful, or have experience of using; or, to ask questions about such freeware. (Please, keep this to freeware – I have to lie down in a darkened room if I ever part with more than a tenner in one transaction!)

So, to start this off….


Irfanview is a neat little program, with many plugins available. It enables “lossless” rotation of jpeg images through 90 degree steps. I tend to use it most for reducing color depth (and hence file size) to produce efficient bitmaps for BVE, and to resize jpegs (many thanks to those who pointed me towards this some time ago!). Has a nifty little red eye reduction tool.

Faststone Screen capture is a neat little program I use for screen captures.

Now, this is the one I need some advice on….

As my photographic skills improve, I’ve become more aware of “noise” in digital images, and went looking for noise reduction freeware. I found Ditigal Auto Enhancer, a neat little freeware program, which seems to do the trick without leaving images looking a bit odd. If anyone else has used this, I’d appreciate some comments on it.

Regards

eezypeazy
 
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Bill EWS

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10 Feb 2006
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661
Location
Didcot
Hi Eezypeezy,
I have used 'NeatImage', which is a similar programme. I found it best to let the programme automatically scan the image and make the smoothing from that figure. However, you may find that reducing the figure gives a better result. If too high the image tends to go towards being chrome plated!!! I've an idea the programme is using the Chrome 'Filter', which many graphic programmes have, and fine-tuning the amount of smoothing. It really works, but as I say, I tend to reduce the auto figure by apprx 5-10%.

Hope this helps.

Cheers.

BillEWS.
 

eezypeazy

Member
Joined
4 Jul 2005
Messages
626
Location
UK
Hi Eezypeezy,
I have used 'NeatImage', which is a similar programme. I found it best to let the programme automatically scan the image and make the smoothing from that figure. However, you may find that reducing the figure gives a better result. If too high the image tends to go towards being chrome plated!!! I've an idea the programme is using the Chrome 'Filter', which many graphic programmes have, and fine-tuning the amount of smoothing. It really works, but as I say, I tend to reduce the auto figure by apprx 5-10%.

Hope this helps.

Cheers.

BillEWS.

There's some useful stuff on this site:
http://www.photo-freeware.net/

I've used Neat Image too and found it to be quite good.

Err... isn't Neat Image payware, chaps?
 

Dennis

Established Member
Joined
8 Aug 2005
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2,676
Location
Trowbridge
I've tended to use Neat Image in the past for noise removal as it is quick and simple to use if you stick to the auto-profiling. I would also agree with the comments about reducing the severity of the filtering a bit as Neat-image is prone to overdoing it.

The DCE software doesn't impress we much; I found it slow and cumbersome to use and the results on a par with what could be achieved with Neat Image.

The most impressive noise reduction software I've come across is Noise Ninja2, I downloaded the demo version of this a day or two ago (think it was Craig who mentioned it in another thread); this is quick and easy to use and also very effective, the results being a vast improvement over both Neat Image or DCE. Only drawback with the demo version is that it watermarks the images, need to pay a few £'s for the licence to get rid of this but I think it will be money well spent.
 

eezypeazy

Member
Joined
4 Jul 2005
Messages
626
Location
UK
My quest for the best in noise reduction freeware continues...

Image Analyzer does a lot more than just analyze an image! Noise reduction and image sharpening seem to be very good (to my eyes, anyway!).

eezypeazy
 

mbonwick

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26 Oct 2006
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Kendal
Sorry for hijacking an old thread! :oops:

I have found paint.NET to be acceptable, bordering on the excellent. It's freeware, available here
 
T

Tom

Guest
The Gimp is quite good IMHO, it's a very similar program to Adobe Photoshop, and open-source too. :)
 

Techniquest

Veteran Member
Joined
19 Jun 2005
Messages
21,674
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Nowhere Heath
URL for that then?

I keep meaning to get paint.net, sounds good. I use Irfanview myself, brilliant piece of software! Only ever use it for avatar re-sizings, but for that alone it's handy!
 

pinkpanther

Member
Joined
10 Jul 2009
Messages
134
Location
Bournemouth
If you're into geotagging photos (useful if you're uploading to Flickr or one of the other location aware photo services) GeoSetter is well worth knowing about.

It lets you easily set or adjust positional information on one or more photos using an embedded Google Maps window. I can't recommend it enough, really. :)
 
Joined
31 Aug 2009
Messages
52
A simple request gentlemen.I am a retired driver(ex EWS) and tried to upload clickable images into a thread.They uploaded,but clicking on them opened up my complete photobucket collection.Boring mostly but still a private collection.Now how can I upload the photographs with anonymity so to speak.Hopefull in anticipation..many thanks.
 

Old Timer

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24 Aug 2009
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On a plane somewhere at 35,000
A simple request gentlemen.I am a retired driver(ex EWS) and tried to upload clickable images into a thread.They uploaded,but clicking on them opened up my complete photobucket collection.Boring mostly but still a private collection.Now how can I upload the photographs with anonymity so to speak.Hopefull in anticipation..many thanks.

PM on its way Albert
 

HST Power

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25 Nov 2010
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3,704
I too recommend Paint.Net. It's free, and it's good quality. What more can you want?
 

VEP3417

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27 Jun 2011
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710
Location
Hampshire
this is an interesting thred as i used the free vertion of photoshop but it ran out so i was looking for a replacement - my passion is photography so i often need to edit photos
 

Bevan Price

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Joined
22 Apr 2010
Messages
7,320
Some other free alternatives:

Pixbuilder - fewer facilities that something like Photoshop, but has facilities to correct exposure , image cropping, etc. :

http://www.wnsoft.com/pixbuilder/
--------------------------------------------

Phierha and Pixia. -- Intended more for those who like to do digital "painting / artwork", but Phierha also has basic image editing facilities.

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/mighty/knight/aboutpixia.html
 

Jeffreyskils

New Member
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26 Mar 2017
Messages
2
Id like to get in touch with anyone whos handy with image editing in Gimp/Photoshop/Whatever as I have a request Its to create an avatar for Twitter as part of a little project of mine. I dont want to say more at this point but its nothing illegal/immoral dont worry. Anyones whos interested would you P.M me please? Thanks .
 

Bevan Price

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22 Apr 2010
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7,320
Id like to get in touch with anyone whos handy with image editing in Gimp/Photoshop/Whatever as I have a request Its to create an avatar for Twitter as part of a little project of mine. I dont want to say more at this point but its nothing illegal/immoral dont worry. Anyones whos interested would you P.M me please? Thanks .


All you usually need is to do is reduce the size of the image, and then "save as" "new image" in the required image format - usually .jpg or maybe .gif

Always change the filename at this stage, otherwise you may overwrite the original image.

Most image editing software contains a menu option such as:
Image - Size - (enter required size) .

Not familiar with twitter, but if it is like a forum, it will probably specify the image size for avatars.
 

quanshuo

New Member
Joined
6 May 2021
Messages
1
Location
new york
Darktable has many interesting features.

PhotoscapeX is also a great app. The basic free package has a ton of presets and has some deeper editing functionality as well.

But I also use GIMP. And again, these are available on all OS.

For photo retouching & editing, I'm more than happy with the XP-Pen Graphics Tablet as it does great.

It's good for me for retouching, especially in Darktable with the adjustment brushes, or Gimp when cloning things or healing faces...just depends on how much editing you go through and of what
 

341o2

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17 Oct 2011
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1,899
Faststone has been mentioned, it has some editing features. some of these such as shadow and highlight adjustments are under "color". Open an image full screen and right click to see the menu
 

najaB

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28 Aug 2011
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Scotland
Don't have much to add other than to second Paint.net, and also to comment on incredible thread necromancy on display with this thread being resurrected after gaps of 2, 2, 3 and 4 years. Happy 2027 to whomever next brings it back to life! :D
 

Ken H

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11 Nov 2018
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6,271
Location
N Yorks
I use image software to manage the scans of timetable and other transport documents.

Faststone is great. The batch processing options if fastsone image resizer are awesome.

Microsoft Image Composite Editor(ICE) is great for sticking images together, Microsoft have discontinued supporting it but you can find copied to download on the internet. Its is great for joining images of portions of maps and stitching them together.

Here is a link to an image of a Leeds City Transport Map dated 1963 that I scanned on a £30 Cannon scanner/printer, and stitched using ICE - https://timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.php?token=328e627a-0887-44e1-bca0-7ad1e805f91c
 

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