Designer's Depot » Search Results » label/cool+programs

WorkRave

noelevz — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 14:08:00 +0000

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.

For more cool programs, click here.

ColorSchemer ColorPix

noelevz — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 04:15:00 +0000

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!

For more cool programs, click here.

FastStone Image Viewer

noelevz — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 14:14:00 +0000

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:

For more cool programs, click here.