WorkRave

Just found this great program That is essential for Graphic Artists as well as anyone who uses the computer often. Its a free program called Workrave.


We spend ALOT of time with our eyes locked on our monitors, typing away madly at the keyboards, clicking our mouse around every so often. Let's face it, we're all working too hard. Aside from the fact that none of this typing and clicking seems to have reduced the amount of time we spend working, it has introduced other problems: lack of exercise, sore eyes, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other repetitive strain injuries (RSI). The easy fix to these last problems is to take breaks, walk away from the computer, and do a couple of exercises.

Workrave is a free program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). The program monitors your activity. Using this information, It frequently reminds you to take breaks, and restricts you to your daily limit.

Micro-pauses
Studies have revealed that taking several short pauses an hour (i.e. micro-pauses) helps in keeping yourself healthy and help injuries to heal.


Subtle, yet persistent Workrave alerts you to take a break in an undisturbing manner. When it is time for your break, a friendly small popup window appears asking you to take a break. This window automatically moves out of the way if you keep on working. However, if you ignore these hints too often Workrave acts less friendly and pops up the break window for your own good. The break windows can be configured to completely block your Computer for the duration of the break.

Activity monitoring
Workrave continously monitors your keyboard and mouse activity. Hence, if you leave your computer running while you are at a meeting, Workrave will notice that you are taking a natural break from the computer.
Get this program here.

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ColorSchemer ColorPix

Graphic designers tend to look at things differently. They see the arrangement and color scheme of things that mere mortals would just take for granted. Anything can be art, and it takes a discerning eye to really see it sometimes. While taking part in normal computer functions, some designers may see colors that they'd like to use in their own projects. Identifying the type of color can be very difficult, but with ColorSchemer ColorPix, you can get the exact color value of any pixel.


ColorPix is a useful little color picker that grabs the pixel under your mouse and transforms it into a number of different color formats. You can use the built-in magnifier to zoom in on your screen, click on a color value to copy it directly to the clipboard, and even keep ColorPix on top of all other apps and out of the way. Best of all, there's nothing to install - just download the tiny app and off you go. So grab it now, it's FREE!

ColorPix Window

This is the actual size of the ColorPix window. When you move your mouse over your screen the color values on the left and the color swatch on the right will change color depending on the pixel under your mouse.

ColorPix Window with Magnifier

Expanding the ColorPix window to show the magnifier lets you zoom in on your screen underneath your mouse.

You can also control the zoom percentage, up to 1600%.

Product Highlights

• NEW! Minimize ColorPix to the system tray, and keep it out of the way until you need it.
• NEW! Set ColorPix to launch when Windows starts up.
• Click on any color value to copy it to the clipboard. Press Ctrl-C to copy the HEX color (without the '#' sign).
• Press any key to lock or unlock the current color and the magnifier.
• Click on the '+' icon to keep ColorPix on top of all running applications.
• Click on the 'Magnifier' button or press Ctrl-M to show/hide the built-in magnifying glass.

Download here now!

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FastStone Image Viewer

FastStone Image Viewer will be the only image viewer you will ever need! It is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. Its innovative but intuitive full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touches the four edges of the screen. Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram and much more. It supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CRW, CR2, NEF, PEF, RAF, MRW, ORF, SRF and DNG).

• True Full Screen viewer with image zoom support and unique fly-out menu panels
• Image browser and viewer with a familiar Windows Explorer-like user interface
• Crystal-clear and customizable one-click image magnifier
  
• Superior Red-Eye effect removal/reduction with completely natural looking end result
  
• Image modification tools: Resize/resample, rotate/flip, crop, sharpen/blur, brightness/contrast, etc.
  
• Eleven (yes, 11) resampling algorithms to choose from when resizing images
  
• Image color effects: gray scale, sepia, negative, Red/Green/Blue adjustment
  
• Image special effects: watermark, annotation, drop shadow, framing, bump map, lens, morph, waves
  
• Multi-level Undo/Redo capability
• One-touch best fit/actual size image display support
  
• Image management, including tagging capability, with drag-and-drop and Copy To/Move To Folder support
  
• Histogram display with color counter feature
• Compare images side-by-side (up to 4 at a time) to easily cull those forgettable shots
  
• Image EXIF metadata support (plus comment editing for JPEGs)
  
• Configurable batch processing to convert/rename large or small collections of images
  
• Slideshow creation with 150+ transition effects and music support (MP3, WMA, WAV...)
  
• Create efficient image attachment(s) for emailing to family and friends
• Print images with full page-layout control
• Create fully configurable Contact Sheets - just like the pros (and save $$$ on ink)
  
• Create memorable artistic image montages from your family photos for personalized desktop wallpapers (Wallpaper Anywhere)
  
• Acquire images from a scanner
  
• Versatile screen capture capability
  
• Powerful Save As interface to compare image quality and control generated file size
  
• Run favorite programs with one keystroke from within Image Viewer
  
• Create a no-install fully portable version of the program which can be run from a removable storage device
• Configurable mouse wheel support
  
• Supports multiple program skins
  
• Supports dual-monitor configurations
• And much more... Download it here:
  

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Yod'm 3D

Yod'm 3D allows you to use multiple virtual desktops and change between them with a fashionable 3D effect in the shape of a cube.By default, the rotation of the cube is done with Ctrl+Shift and the arrow keys: left and right to move from one desktop to another, and up and down to zoom in and out. However, you can also change between desktops with Ctrl+Shift and the mouse, plus zooming with the mouse wheel.
You can have different desktop images and applications on each desktop. The 3D effect looks really nice and it doesn't use much system resources.

The software comes in an archive which stores everything the program needs to run properly. The price for the vantage? Believe it or not, the application comes for free. So, it does not bloat the registry, it is free and provides a multi-desktop environment in Windows. These alone should make you download it already. The interface is too obvious to be described. All you need is prepare some wicked images to place as wide-background and wallpapers. The rest are technicalities that can be assimilated very fast. And if you are too lazy to go look for really cool pictures to put on your desktop you can use the ones that come with Yod'm 3D. If you haven't tried virtual desktops, this is a fine place to start. Yod'm is free; the developer accepts donations. You'll need Windows 2000, XP or Vista to run it.

Download it here


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Characterizer

Sharing with you another great app which is like most of my entries here are freeware so enjoy!

Characterizer is freeware "One form" application for converting images to ascii text (ASCII art). Characterizer support JPG, BMP and WMF source images. Result is plain text file.
You can set result size (width x height in characters), destination font size. There is implemented more render methods like photo, shape or contour blur. User can define own character set for rendering.

Characterizer support four rendering modes, color inverting and adding random noise.

The screen shot doesn't do justice to this program you just have to try it out yourself!

DOWNLOAD

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Vspainter 1.75 for pocketpc

I just found this great program that I'd like to share with all of you.

VSpainter has advanced drawing tools using the last technologies of your portable Windows Mobile equipped with a stylet. Draw, modify, and publish your creations easily using many creation tools. A good complement tool for your professional PC/Mac desktop software.
Vspainter is also able to create, store and view simultaneous creations.

• Screen Distorsion - Manipulate your picture

• Axis Tools - Duplicate quickly with the symetric X/Y tool or flip the screen in horizontal and vertical.

• Stamp Tools - Clone a part on the current page or in a other work pages.

• Colors Tools - Select or Manipulate colors.

• Multi pages workspace - Switch quickly between your creations.

• Finger Tools - Realistic and very usefull tools.

• Load and Save and manipulate your creation in JPEG Format.

• Zoom Windows - Create detailed artworks Zoom by 2x, 4x or 8x.

• Advanced Drawing tools - Use the advantage of the stylet. Draw anytime, anywhere.

• Full Screen Mode and Historical Undo.

• Devices Compatibilities - Windows Mobile 5.0 / 6.0, Phone Edition and Squared Screen Support.

• Advanced brush Tools - Draw using many different brush including Line, Circle anq square.

• Special Effect Brush Tools - Use special Brush Effect ( lightning, cloud, etc )

• and many others features.

Download a demo here

BLENDER 3D 2.45

I just found this great program that I'd like to share with all of you.
Blender combines 3D modeling, rendering, animation, video sequencing, and game development in one application. It is also available on every major platform, meaning Mac, Windows, and Linux users can all work and play together with exactly the same tools.

Blender may be open-source, but it is incredibly rich with features. As with professional commercial products like Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver, there is a learning curve with such powerful software. A new user should not expect to be creating his first feature-length animation without spending significant time developing skills. Fortunately for everyone, Blender has an active user community that creates tutorials and helps everyone with answers and troubleshooting.
The main Blender window can be divided into smaller frames of any configuration the user desires. Each frame can then be used for:

• 3D View (to view, edit, pose, and animate the model)
• File and Image Browsing
• Buttons (palettes with textures, object, and rendering options)
• OOPS Schematic (interesting, but haven’t found much use)
• User Preferences
• Text Editor (programming)
• Audio Timeline
• Video Sequencer
• UV/Image Editor (vertex color and texture)
• NLA (non-linear action) Editor
• Action (linear) Editor
• IPO (non-linear keyframe sequences) Curve Editor

Blender’s texture abilities are fairly standard and comparable to many other 3D applications. Material options range from simple color, alpha, and specularity settings to application of image maps to procedural texturing. Image maps and procedural textures can be applied to object color, mesh surface geometry, bumping, specularity, mirror color, reflectivity, hardness, alpha, and light emission. The standard procedural textures include clouds, stucci, noise, magic (“woven” sinusoidal), marble, wood, and blend (gradient). Environmental settings, including mist (fog, atmospheric perspective) and stars, are easily applied. As with many other 3D packages, Blender’s material abilities can be extended with plug-ins.Blender’s built-in renderer uses scan-line rendering and generally produces excellent to acceptable results. Anti-aliasing is available in various levels, as well as automatic gamma adjustments. Images and animations can be rendered in any size with presets for NTSC, PAL, and even interlaced formats. The layers features used for modeling carry over to rendering, so layers can be used as needed or rendered separately for compositioning in Blender’s sequencer or other software.

Its powerful features, improved interface, strong continued development, and helpful and open user community make Blender an amazing tool for illustration, design, effects, and animation. And best of all, it’s free.DOWNLOAD

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TERRAGEN

Terragen is a scenery generator, created with the goal of generating photorealistic landscape images and animations. It is available for Windows and the Mac OS. At this stage in its development, Terragen is free for personal, noncommercial use.Terragen is an extremely powerful piece of software, which can create stunning and almost photographic images of landscapes. It is in a constant state of development and is currently free for non-commercial use, which is nice. You are limited to images of 1,280 by 960 however.
The interface is relatively straightforward and within minutes it's possible to turn out an impressive landscape. Terrain can be created manually or from various types of digital mapping, notably that supplied care of NASA. Atmospheric conditions, cloud and water levels are all easily manipulated along with general camera preferences. Terragen exports your landscape as a Lightwave .lwo file so unless you use Lightwave you must translate your new world into a format that would be useable elsewhere.
It is well worth to make the rounds of the website for the documentation and assistant applications, such as Terranim. This creates a animation of your world by using a script to run Terragen. If you want to play God and create sweeping landscapes then Terrgen is ideal place to start.click here to download

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