Sunday, February 26, 2006
More Freeware Utilities
Another batch of freeware utilities that I have come across:
Graphics tools
Graphics tools
- ExifTool - ExifTool is a Perl module with an included command-line application for reading and writing meta information in image, audio and video files. It recognizes EXIF, GPS, IPTC, XMP, JFIF, GeoTIFF, ICC Profile, Photoshop IRB, AFCP and ID3 meta information as well as the maker notes of many digital cameras. This requires installation of Perl and a bit more work to use the command line interface, but hold much more promise for working with geotagging.
- IExif is a freeware tool used to get you to upgrade to their Operanda's Power Exif. I was underwhelmed with the pro version. The freeware version does have tabs for exif, gps, and iptc. it supports drag and drop of a single file and supports export as text or XML, but no command line options to extract to file.
- Photo Studio is a multi purpose tool for dealing with photographic images geared for getting images from digital camera to the web, including downloading from camera/memory card, rotating/resizing/conversion, previewing, edit comments/thumbnails/EXIF fields (including GPS info) and generating HTML index pages.
- EXIF Renamer does one thing: finds the EXIF date-time of all images in a folder and appends it to the front of the file name. You can also correct the time with this program. It does not seem to support EXIF very well. Raw photo from the camera came out OK of me, but those resized in Google's Picasa and uploaded to Yahoo's Flickr did not. The site also offers other utilities that might be worthwhile. What expecially attracted me is it small size (250k) and no install.
- Tweak PDF allows you to set the initial view preferences of a PDF document, e.g. hide window UI (slideshow mode); the page mode (full screen/outlines/thumbnail); properties (title/subject/author/keywords). Unfortunately, it does not support drag and drop, so you have to actually open the file through the Load... button.
- Exiv2 is another command line tool written in c++ that has source code available
- WinMerge is a visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. It has a handy drag and drop feature and can show what has changed by color coding and intensity (to differentiate only white space changes). Other fratures: editor, file filters in directory diff, highlights differences inside lines. It can also be used as a replacement for the built in brain dead diff tool in Visual SourceSafe.
- worldKit is a SWF (Flash Player) based mapping application for the Web. It's configured by XML, data fed by RSS, and can run as a stand-alone app or integrated in larger projects. This doesn't quite fit my typical profile, but portable apps are more and more likely to be hosted on the web, such as the web based version of Gaim
# posted by xltd @ 2/26/2006 03:04:00 PM 
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