Camera Labs

Today's Giveaway is a slightly newer version of Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder Standard that was given away on 10 September this year.

There's also a download without the GOTD wrapper here

You can get a free key here.

From the GOTD page:

Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder Standard easily turns your still photos into a stunning photo movie. It’s movie making made easy and automatic, each movie style could contain multiple photos so that you can create a photo montage movie. Now gather up your favorite photos and relive your photo memories and share them on TV, PC, YouTube/Facebook and all kinds of devices.

* Burn home movies to DVD for playback on TV with any standard DVD player.
* Share photo movies on YouTube and all popular portable devices, e.g. iPhone, iPod, PSP, etc.
* Enhance photos with built-in tools, filter effects, texts and red-eye removal available.
* Hundreds of well designed dazzling movie styles are available.
* Choose pre-made DVD menu templates to author DVD in clicks.
* 30+ preset text effects to make animated titles with ease.
* Creative intro/credit movies make your movie professional.
* Real-time and full-screen preview.
* Quick and helpful online support.


From Wondershare's site:

What's New in Version 6.0.2

* No registration needed, and no watermark on the output files;
* 210+ made movie styles for free use;
* 60+ delicate DVD menu templates;
* Backgrand music, narratage and subtile adding supported;
* Output DVD and videos for common use.

The offer expires tomorrow 7-12-2010 08:00 GMT/UTC.

Enjoy.

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.

Today at GOTD you can download Aneesoft 3D Flash Gallery 2.4
To see what it can do you can view some samples.

The text from GOTD:
===
Aneesoft 3D Flash Gallery 2.4 is an easy to use yet powerful flash gallery making software that displays your digital photos in an interactive and elegant 3D photo gallery for MySpace, Blogger and your personal websites easy and fast. You won’t need any flash programming skills to start making your first 3D photo gallery.

Add Photos and music and choose from a variety of preset 3D flash gallery templates to create personalized flash galleries for sharing with friends and family.
Key features:

* Add up to 500 photos in one flash gallery project;
* Import multiple soundtracks as background music;
* Set caption and hyperlink for the photos;
* Choose from 21 ready-to-use 3D Flash gallery templates;
* Customize 3D gallery template by setting thumbnail effects & scrolling actions;
* Set photo transition delay time for displaying photos automatically;
* Publish and share it on any websites with your friends & family.
===
You can export the slideshow as .SWF, as HTML, as an .EXE(cutable) and as a .SCR(eensaver).

The offer expires tomorrow 5-1-2011 08:00 GMT/UTC.

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.

Only three days later another photo related offering at GOTD. It's a Manager/Viewer/Editor that seems to have a fair amount of features. This might suit those who do not (yet) feel the need for a 'heavier' application in the Photoshop/Lightroom range. For free (today) you can't beat the price.

It's called Zoner Photo Studio 13 Home Edition. The developer's product page is here.

Here's the 'blurb':

Take control of your digital photos with Zoner Photo Studio. Acquiring photos from your camera, your scanner, and even your screen has never been easier. Have fun organizing, sorting and browsing through your digital memories. With Zoner Photo Studio, you’ll be improving and personalizing your photos with special effects. Wow your family and friends with 3D photos and impressive panoramas!
Top Features:

* Catalog, advanced picture management and archival NEW!
* direct upload to Facebook, Flickr and Picassa Web Albums NEW!
* acquire photos from your camera, scanner, card, or screen;
* fix pictures fast with Quick Fix;
* save time with convenient batch operations;
* create panoramas and 3D photos easily;
* use a wide array of edits and effects;
* add GPS photo locations and see them on a map;
* publish to the web easily and directly;
* templates for calendars, greeting cards, and more.

The offer expires tomorrow 8-1-2011 08:00 GMT/UTC.

Enjoy.

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.

Today at GOTD a newer version (3.0) of Inpaint that was given away in July last year.

It removes objects from images by means of a 'Context-Fill' or 'Content-Aware Fill'.

If you installed the previous version (2.7) be warned that the user interface has changed. The options to select the offending object by rectangle or polygon are no more. You now have to paint over the part you want removed before activating its removal. Too bad they don't understand that adding features is good but removing features is bad. They should simply have added the third method.

Fortunately the two versions will happily reside side-by-side on your system as long as you change the installation path from its default directory (Inpaint) to something imaginative as "Inpaint 3.0" or whatever so it won't overwrite the previous installation. And if you want it to create a desktop icon rename the previous one first. The download is only 3.14 MB so you don't have to worry about wasting disk space.

If you are interested: Get it here!

The offer expires tomorrow 12-1-2011 08:00 GMT/UTC.

Enjoy.

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.

Today another giveaway which allows you to create slideshows in the form of video's (.avi with option to burn to CD), standalone executables (.exe) or screensavers (.scr).

It offers over 200 transition effects and you can add sound/music. It also supports the PDF format and oddly enough the makers for some reason have focused on this format and call it 'Boxsoft PDF to Video' which is only a rather limited description of its functionality.

From the Boxsoft's site Feature list:

===================
Create sound-supported slideshow with PDF files, images;
Support acquiring images directly from scanner or digital cameras;
Support 35+ formats of images: TIF, TIFF, FAX, G3N, G3F, XIF, JPG, JPEG, JPE, JIF, PCX, BMP, DIB, RLE, PNG, DCM, DIC, DICOM, TGA, TARGA, VDA, ICB, VST, PIX, PXM, WBMP, JP2, J2K, DCX, CRW, PSD, IEV, LYR, AVI, MPEG, MPG, WMV, etc.;
Support add PDF files continuously and Add Folder (Include sub folders) of images at a time;
Support Drag and Drop to add images, or insert images in front of existing files in lists;
Support create Import List and Export List of frequently used;
Support Reorder images: Move First, Up, Down, Last, or drag directly, or sort by name, file size, create time, or Rearrange etc;
Support Image Setting: Size, Flip, Rotate, Crop, contrast, brightness, Sharp, De-skew, Image effects—B/W, Gray scale and Edge Detection;
Support add MP3 files, define loop or not;
Provide 200+ kinds of Transition Effect: expand, slide, unroll, fade, reveal, bars, etc;
Support Process Control on Step, Interval, Loop etc;
Support change Layout such as Image Placement, Background, Frame;
Support slide images setting such as Over Draw, Compress for Screen, DVD or Custom;
Support preview output effect of slideshow;
Add control buttons on slideshow: Continue, Pause, Preview, Next, Close;
Provide 4 output modes: Build SlideShow (EXE), Build SlideShow (SCR), Build to video (AVI, WMV, MPEG), Burn to CD;
Support Screen Capture Setting on Input and Output while Build to video;
Design and save as project (.XML) for later use.
===================

With any (free) virtual PDF printer utility you can create PDFs from any application which you should be able to combine into a presentation. You may have a use for that option.

It's a 16,5MB download available here.

As part of its installation procedure it also installs "Microsoft C++ redistributable 2005" in my case telling me it was removing an older version. Just so you know in case this might be of importance to you. Apparently it also asks to download and install Ghostscript if you don't already have it installed (which I have so I didn't get asked).

The offer expires tomorrow 13-1-2011 08:00 GMT/UTC.

Enjoy.

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.

The photo related offerings are plentiful so far this year at GOTD.

Today another slideshow maker. It's Flash based with the familiar output options (SWF/HTML, EXE, SCR, AVI).
It's called "ThunderSoft Flash Slideshow Factory 2.5.0".

It comes with 47 Templates. If you want more you'll have to buy the app. which costs $9.95 during the giveaway period.

There are fairly standard templates (or no template) and a fair amount of more cartoonsy/cutesy styled templates. Nothing wrong with that for the right purpose. You can add animations and music and there are lots of transitions to choose from. Things are mostly straightforward in the UI. You'll have to right-click to find a few settings. You can add starting titles and end credits. I was surprised how snappy everything worked during the creation phase on a not too fast computer.

Due to some in hindsight very unwarranted negative comments at GOTD (perhaps someone is trying to scare away customers from the competition?) I delayed trying it myself so there's only about ten hours to go when I will have posted this here. Ignore the negative comments. It's quite a nice little app.

The offer expires tomorrow 16-1-2011 at 08:00 GMT/UTC.

Enjoy.

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.

Today a little app to clean the metadata from your photos.

Most likely you already have software that can do this but since this one is small (1.4MB download and the Portable version only uses 638KB) and you can (un)register a shell extension to it you might find it useful. Everyone should be careful with concern to privacy issues when posting photos on the web.

It's called ExifCleaner 1.5.
Info on developer's site.
Direct download link to Portable version.

The offer expires tomorrow 26-2-2011 at 08:00 GMT/UTC.

Enjoy.

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.

A somewhat different image related app today at GOTD. iResizer is an 'intelligent' resizer which lets you mark wanted and/or unwanted parts of an image before you resize it. I only tried it out on one photo so far but it had an interesting effect. I marked a person standing in a landscape oriented photo and resized it to a portrait orientation. Everything is still in the photo but a bit squished to fit inside the new portrait aspect ratio. It's one of those little apps that you have to experiment with a little to see whether it has an added value for you.

You can find out at Giveawayoftheday.com.

The offer expires tomorrow 11-3-2011 at 08:00 GMT/UTC.

Enjoy.

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.

Not a directly photo related giveaway today but it might come in handy to help with your workflow if you have to perform certain operations on lots of photos which you cannot achieve with the batch operation features alone of the software you use. It's called Robotask 4.4.

From the GOTD site:

RoboTask enables you to automate any combination of tasks on your computer, ranging from simply launching applications, to checking email, moving or backing up files to uploading or downloading, sending email and much more. The program allows to easily create simple task, as well as highly complex automations, involving conditional IF/ELSE statements, loops, custom variables and other advanced options.
Key features:

* Runs applications and open documents;
* Manages automatic backups;
* Alerts you of any changes in your folders;
* Shuts down Windows and powers off your computer triggered by any event you choose;
* Processes files and folders (copies, moves, renames, deletes);
* Works with FTP and Web servers (downloads, uploads, etc).

And a lot more. It seems quite powerful so this might just be able to do what you previously couldn't get to work. Since they usually charge $119,95 for a personal licence and $179,95 for a business licence you might want to get it while it's free. There is a free Lite version too though. You may even have non-photography related applications for it. I already had. They are probably using the giveaway to generate some extra user experiences since they just released this new 4.4 version. According to the About window you can even get updates until 5-3-2012.

Check it out at the GOTD site and at the developer's site.

The offer expires tomorrow 22-3-2011 at 08:00 GMT/UTC.

Enjoy.

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.

Today at GOTD you can get Easy Watermark Studio Pro 2.1 for, you guessed it, watermarking your photos.

Those who do watermark will undoubtedly already have software that can do this but as this is specialised software it is not unlikely this has a few tricks up its sleeve other software hasn't. It can add some other effects (corners, borders) too.

The offer expires tomorrow 19-4-2011 at 08:00 GMT (DST) 07:00 UTC.

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.

Today on GOTD:

"Visual Search Pony enables accurate and quick search for duplicate images and video files by analyzing the visual content, rather than file size, format and resolution. Found duplicates are checked automatically, so you can remove them instantly."

So if you want to try content-based search to find duplicate photos and/or videos on your drives you might want to give this one a whirl.

The offer expires tomorrow 21-4-2011 at 08:00 GMT (DST) 07:00 UTC.

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.

Today you can download Picture Collage Maker Pro v2.5.7 with which according to the GOTD site you can do this:

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Picture Collage Maker is a powerful, versatile way to build any photo collage and scrapbook project-whether you’re just starting out or have been collaging for years. You can also create your calendar, greeting card, invitation card, poster and more you can think of! Whether you see collaging as a relaxing pastime or a way of life, Picture Collage Maker can improve your efficiency, save you money and help you transform your priceless pictures into precious memories.
Key features:

* Choose from hundreds of collage templates;
* Personalize your photo collage with your own digital photos;
* Decorate your photo collage with frames, masks, text and cliparts;
* Print or email your collage direct to friends and family.
---

They forgot to mention the collection of backgrounds supplied.

One warning. I had the previous version from GOTD (2.2.8 ) and had made a three month calendar with it which I updated every quarter. Now that I installed this new 2.5.7 version the programme crashes when I load that project. So if you too have projects made with the previous version You might prefer to not let the installation overwrite the old version as I did but install it to another folder so you can use both versions.

It's a 92.8MB download.

The offer expires tomorrow 28-4-2011 at 08:00 GMT (DST) 07:00 UTC

Enjoy.

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.