Clipping Magic

Whilst I know the bigger software groups like Adobe and Corel are trying to provide packages that do everything. I have always been happy with a really good, and usually very simple, utility program that just does the thing I want. Ok like Apps on your phone such utilities can quickly grow into a big menagerie. Yet they usually let you get the job done quietly and efficiently.The same logic really applies to on-line applications. There are more and more becoming available, particularly with google's promotion of chrome. One such application that you need to check out for yourself is called clipping magic, and its still just and Alpha release. I know that Adobe's photoshop and Corel's power clipping can do much the same job but you need a few weeks of learning and a fair bit of skill to use them. Clipping Magic is actually really simple, you just need to draw a bit of green on the "foreground" (the part you want to clip to keep) and red over a few parts of the "background" (the part of the image you want to remove. It really is that simple and at the moment its free to try out.

Back in the Aviary

I have been using the toucan colour editor in aviary lately, to help select harmonious colour schemes in my photo impressions. It have a variety of nice features that I assume are primarily there at the request of web developers. However what I want to write about here is the rapid expansion of capabilties and connections aviary now offers. If you have broadband connection (I would not recommend using it, or any other graphic heavy application on a slow or flacky connection) you may find to can get a photo filtered, cropped and published to the web quickly and easily, probably in less time that it takes Photoshop or Corel Draw to open on your PC. It seems particular popular with those using Facebook & Flickr, being able to read and edit images on those services as well as publishing to them. It also offers a number of ways to share and publish images in the web and a good selection of social networks. You can use your existing twitter, facebook, google or Yahoo accounts to login if you don’t wish to join. Best part its still free.

Their byline says it all -

Aviary is a free, powerful suite of browser-based design tools for people who love to create.

The best way to keep up with their developments is to have a look around their blog.

Something good for free

Ever tried to add text to a photo (most programs that come bumdled with your camera can't do that) or hide the two fingers above aunt mables head in that otherwise great family photo (again few camera bundled software has cloning tools that will help you do that). Do you find microsoft's Paint program tediously simplistic and pretty useless. Don't want to get involve with the expensive of hard to learn photo manipulation or graphics software. There is an alternative and its free


It is called Paint.net it is easy to use and you can download it for free.

It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing.