XnView is freeware software that allows you to view and convert graphic files. It's very fast and easy to use. But more importantly it supports more than 400 graphics formats!Comment The individual right to take photographs is being threatened, and distrust of police and government motives in respect of photography is growing. On Monday, the issue will be defiantly, peacefully raised as a mass demonstration, supported by comedian Mark Thomas, converges on New Scotland Yard to assert the right of snappers to take pictures.…
Windows only: PhotoPerfect Express is a free, powerful image optimization tool that covers a wide range of photo enhancement scenarios, and can provide casual photographers with great results.
While nothing can compare to getting your hands dirty with a detailed photo editing application like Photoshop, the majority of casual digi-cam shooters won't need or want to invest that kind of time into snazzing up their snap shots. PhotoPerfect Express comes bundled with five pre-set photo enhancement methods—each of which can be further fine-tuned if you desire. There's batch processing options, especially handy if you realize after tweaking the first few photos in a series that you're seeing the same issues throughout the set. If you're having trouble deciding which optimization is yielding the most pleasing result, press the A key while tweaking to display the original next to all five optimization algorithms for easy comparison—a nice fix for those with photo-fixing self-doubt. PhotoPerfect Express is freeware, Windows only.
I was disappointed to read a post that Paul Buchheit posted on FriendFeed today regarding recently passed legislation in the UK which might make it illegal to photograph the police there. The article, from Prison Planet, cites the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 as containing the relevant legislation:
From Prison Planet:
"According to the British Journal of Photography, the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008, which is set to become law on February 16, "allows for the arrest and imprisonment of anyone who takes pictures of officers 'likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism'." The punishment for this offense is imprisonment for up to ten years and a fine.
However, even before the passage of the legislation, police in Britain have already been harassing and arresting fully accredited press photographers merely for taking pictures of them at rallies and protests."
In the UK, the section of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 that deals with this is in section 76, where it states that it will now be a crime to "elicit, publish or communicate" information about members of armed forces etc.
From the legislation:
"(1) A person commits an offence who—
(a) elicits or attempts to elicit information about an individual who is or has been—
(i) a member of Her Majesty's forces,
(ii) a member of any of the intelligence services, or
(iii) a constable,"
While I'm still not exactly 100% sure what "ellicting and publishing information" about members of the police might entail, I could certainly see the issue being raised where an officer was identifiable, perhaps even with their name on their uniform. In any event, it certainly would seem to give the police more ammunition, so to speak, to be able to use when asking photographers not to photograph them.
This legislation would appear to be yet another chilling move by the UK in encouraging harassment of photographers. Last year you might remember that the London Metropolitan Police launched a very public advertising campaign asking people to turn in "odd" looking photographers.
Retaining our rights to photograph the police is important. Whether the Rodney King case or the more recent case of BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle's killing of Oscar Grant in Oakland, it is important that as citizens we be allowed to record the day to day activities of our police officers. Police officers wield an incredible amount of power over the general citizenry in our day to day lives. Being able to record their activities (as certainly they record ours) is an important right and power in ensuring that they handle their own power with the responsibility with which they should.
This law in the UK is unfortunate. It further muddies the water for what photographers can and can't photograph with regards to the police and further paves the way for police officers to harass photographers. While the law seems to be targeted towards people who would photograph the police with the intention of using it for terrorism, I could easily see how it could be used by any police officer to try and stop photographers from photographing them. I would much rather have seen wording in this legislation that specifically said that regular citizens have every and all rights to photograph the police at any time.
I've taken a lot of photographs of the police here in the U.S. You can see my photoset "Cops" here.
If you've got an idea (or concept) but find it hard to present on your artwork because the drawings just don't add up, try Photoshop Brushes. Brushes are designers best friend, particularly web designers who don't illustrate graphics much.
Adobe Photoshop does comes with a basic package of brushes but it has not been updated by folks at Adobe for quite some time. Thanks to the great community of designers out there who constantly distributing and sharing their brushes, you can almost find brushes of any patterns these days. Whether you are working on a nature-related artwork looking for floral and wood graphics, or merely adding some torn, burned and cracked effects to your artwork - there's a free brush pack out there and all you need to do is Google.
In today's post, we attempt to present you some of the high quality and good ones, those we thought would be generally useful in many occasion and definitely worth checking out and bookmark. Here's our hand-picked of 50 Free and High Quality Photoshop Brush Sets You Should Bookmark. Full list after jump.
Some useful Photoshop related entries we've previously written:
9 metal texture brush set.
A set of 12 abstract pixel brushes for Photoshop. Compatible with Photoshop 8+ / Photoshop Elements 3+.
8 really beautiful and fantasy butterfly brushes to spice up your painting.
Thirty-seven brushes from various torn, wrinkled, pieces of tape brushes made in Photoshop 7.0
13 awesome abstract brushes.
Pack contains 8 brushes, including 2 different sized leaves, 1 astral rose, 1 astral flowerbud, 1 astral butterfly, an assortment of whispy, starspangled curves.
Two barbed wire brushes.
Made with thick black poster colours. Just great for those pieces needing brush strokes with hard bristles.
Can be used for grunge, stars abstract and smoke/forg effects. This set was based upon the stars of the heavens. This set, cataclysm, was designed to bring violent destruction upon the use of other sets. It has many uses and works very well for sigs.
This pack includes around 80 brushes, all cracks, chips and cuts.
Demolished.Cracks pack contains 12 brushes compatible with PS 7 and up!
There are ten of fractal brushes in total.
New style of CS4 brushes.
There are 11 big brushes made with Photoshop 7.0
Now with these wonderful brushes all you need is Photoshop and the brush tool selected, you'll create floral frame brushes so awesome that you will love.
A set of brushes for photoshop (created in CS3) with sizes range from about 700px to 1600px.
The pack contains the the letters of the alphabet, numbers and some extras. Theres a piece of tape and some marks which could be used in white and added to the labels once they're done to make them look authentic and cool.
152 Photoshop brushes made on Ps CS4.
Metal Mesh Brush by =SocioBunneh.
45 moon brushes for ps7, ps8, ps9, ps10.
It includes 25 tiny text brushes for icons. The .zip contains an .abr file compatible with Photoshop 7.0 and up.
20 high-resolution stamp brushes.
8 brushes for lens, film and camera.
The package contains 15 different brushes made of different wall pictures. You will find cracks, scratches and dirty brushes.
8 large floral brushes, for use on headers and wallpapers.
7 100×100 floral brushes, for use on icons.
These hole brushes are higher res so would be good for higher res projects as well.
With this pencil brush and sketch paper action, you can quickly and easily create natural-looking pencil sketches, without the pencil! The brush takes advantage of both pen pressure and tilt to create a very natural feel and look.
Oldies set (8 brushes) for photoshop cs-cs2
A pack of solid and dotted lines.
The pack contains 70 cute brushes for lines, random scribbles and drawings, animals and a lot of hearts!
A set of high quality (200dpi scans) 42 photoshop brushes about photography. They are more like illustrations and blueprints of various cameras and photography related processes.
20 handdrawn musical note scribble brushes.
There are just 3 smokes per vol. All of them are more than 1300 px.
Several different variations and sizes of syringes.
A set of 7 pen brushes.
