ie8 fix

rotator

Log-on screen changer

Windows 7 and Vista let users change the log-on screen's background image, and there's no shortage of free tools to make the job easier. Many such tools automatically resize images to fill the screen, a shortcoming that limits their usefulness with wide-screen displays. Windows Logon Screen Rotator not only offers Center and Fill settings but also randomly rotates an unlimited number of images as your Windows log-on screen.

Windows Logon Screen Rotator's interface is Spartan but attractively rendered, with three tabs: Images, Monitored Folders, and Settings. Aside from a Web link to the developer's site, the … Read more

How to edit photos in iOS 5

Apple has added a lot of new features in iOS 5, one of them being the ability to edit pictures directly in the Photos app. This feature is very easy to use and almost feels like it has been there from day one, even though it has been noticably absent.

Look through the slideshow below for a step-by-step guide on how to edit photos on your Apple device on iOS 5.

Hands-on: HandStand2 for iPad 2

Very few cases offer true utility as well as nice style and design. The HandStand2 for iPad 2 does just that. The simple construction of the case allows you to easily attach it to your iPad 2--simply wrap the case around your iPad and you are ready to work.

The elastic hand band is tight enough to feel secure but not so tight that your fingers turn blue while using it. The rubber case holds your iPad 2 securely in place upside-down, while walking, and, of course, when actually using your iPad.

The HandStand2 also has a rotating base that … Read more

How to customize the function of the side switch on an iPad

Some people don't realize that the iPad's side switch can be customized, allowing them to set the switch to either lock the screen rotation or mute their iPad. This simple guide will show you how to set the behavior of the switch, and where to find a shortcut to the secondary behavior.… Read more

Get it straight

Not infrequently we see friends and family members sharing photos online that are sideways, often with the disclaimer, "Sorry, I don't know how to rotate it." If you're one of these orientation-challenged people--or if you're just looking for an easy way to rotate many photos at once--try Batch JPEG Rotator. This simple program doesn't do much, but it does make it extremely easy to rotate your digital images.

The program's interface is sleek and intuitive. A large open work area dominates the interface, with a menu down the side giving users access to … Read more

Fast photo tool

Big photo-editing programs like Photoshop are great when you need to do a lot of work on your images, but sometimes you just need a simple tool that can handle cropping, rotating, and other basic editing functions. ExifPro lets users edit, organize, and share images without a lot of hassle.

The program's interface is sleek and intuitive, with its major functions split into well-organized panes, all of which can be moved around within the interface or closed. The Folders pane lets users browse to specific image files, whereas the Images pane displays thumbnails of the images contained within selected … Read more

CG A-OK

AVLAN Design describes its AVD Graphic Studio as a "mini Photoshop," acknowledging that Adobe's software is the big dog in the CG yard and that the main goal of competitors is to offer Photoshop-like capabilities in less expensive packages that are easier for ordinary folks to use. At this, AVD Graphic Studio succeeds quite well. It's easy to use, it has most of the basic functionality of the pro-level applications, and it's much less expensive than the big packages like Photoshop.

This program will be familiar if you've used Photoshop or similar applications. Its … Read more

Orientation without loss

Digital cameras owners know that resizing huge snapshots inevitably reduces the image quality, but simply rotating a JPEG file 90 degrees can compromise an image's quality and strip it of important file information, such as time and date. Nico Cuppen's Lossless JPEG Rotator can reorient digital images without loss of image quality or data so that they stay properly oriented whether they're viewed in applications that can read image-orienting data or not. It can reorient single pictures or whole folders of images automatically.

The program's interface is nothing more than a small dialog that's pretty … Read more

Little big pic

Digital camera owners will love Mihov.com's Image Resizer, a tiny, efficient bit of freeware that resizes your digital images, converts JPEG, GIF, and BMP formats from any one to the other, rotates images, performs grayscale conversions, and does a few more simple tasks related to getting your digital pics into the right size, orientation, and image quality for whatever you want to use them for: posting online, saving in a scrapbook, printing them out as snapshots, or emailing to friends and relatives.

At 363KB, Image Resizer is about as small a bit of software as you'll encounter … Read more

No-loss rotation

Digital camera owners typically use image-editing software to rotate their JPEGs for proper display. Unfortunately, many image editors are "lossy," which means they decode and recode JPEG files as they are rotated, with a slight but inevitable loss of image quality. JPEG Lossless Rotator is a small, simple, yet effective bit of freeware that will rotate your JPEGs without decoding them, preserving the image quality, or, if the image can't be rotated without losing some pixels, it will ask you if you still want to rotate the image and tell you what it costs in pixels. JPEG … Read more