Posts Tagged ‘software’

Here are tips and a brief review of freeware for easy photo edits or taking screenshots for the benefit of my small business clients. Real estate agents are often faced with uploading photographs of new listings to their website. The file size of high resolution digital pictures is usually impractical for websites, yet I see many sites with 1 megabyte and higher photos of real estate property. These may look great, but visitors on dialup will not appreciate the 20 minute load time.

Here are reviews of two programs for doing photo edits or taking screenshots that have worked well for me and they are easy to use, plus they are freeware (cost nothing).

ScreenHunter 5.0 from Wisdom-Soft.com
This program is great for taking screenshots, as in clipping portions of something you view online like your website, that you may need as a JPG file to forward to someone. This works in the background and takes up very few resources, so it shouldn’t slow down your pc performance. Visit www.Wisdom-Soft.com to learn more.

IrfanView from IrfanView.com
This freeware program has screenshot capability, however, advanced edit features may be perfect for clients who need to crop photos, convert to greyscale as in black and white, plus more. Personally, this is my first choice for opening graphic files in My Documents. Once installed, right click on files in your directory, choose “open with”, and then select IrfanView.

Like any new program, the best way to learn is jump right in, and then open the help files for advanced tips. Please provide feedback on your experience with either of these freeware products. If you are looking for royalty free photos, please check out my 5 Star Stock Photo Directory with links to over 200,000 photographs.

It happens, especially for small business owners. Hard drives crash, and for me the inevitable took 10 years to rear it’s ugly head for the first time. Surviving a hard drive crash usually means long hours attempting to recover what you may have taken for granted. The computer gremlins hit me last year, and I lost months of custom graphic art because weekly backup of my new computer manually seemed unnecessary. What a mistake that was!

Fortunately, all the client website designs were online and recoverable through ftp. Recreating custom business card artwork and post cards was another matter. Clients looking to make changes have sent me their originals, and recreating cards simply took time. After researching backup software and external drives, the $250 that I spent was worthwhile insurance.

My system now executes automatic daily backups using Genie Backup Manager Home 7.0 software for less than $100, and a Western Digital 250Gb external hard drive WD2500B007 for less than $150 purchased from newegg.com. Each was selected after more long hours searching through product reviews. The hard drive has cool neon light effects that may be turned off, and after testing a few times for overheating, it fits snugly kept in a desk drawer.

The hard drive crash could have been worse. Don’t let this happen to you. If you are at risk and do not have a backup system on your small business computer, do it today. After a few months of manual backups to DVD, I realized the effort could be easily automated. Check out the combination of software and hardware I chose by searching in Google, or visit a local retailer for advice.