Any program to edit photo with "unique" special-effect?

Question

hope you guys can recommend some nice programs except photoshop. thanx

Answer 1

Microsoft do a free program called Groupshot. Its very unusual. It lets you combine several similar photos into one, to include or exclude several poeple, eliminate objects you don't want to be there etc. It does an amazing job of stitching the photos together itself automatically.

The 1st link is to the website.

The 2nd link is to a list of all the free microsoft programs. Search down the page for group shot and click the channel 9 video link to learn quickly what its all about and reasons why you might want to use it.

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There's a photo-shop compatible plug-in (which many photo editors accept) called Focus Magic, which does a good job of recovering more detail in low-res pictures. You can tweak up or down the number of pixels it interpolates together 3 4 5 etc.

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Have you tried making 360 degree panoramic photo yet? You go somewhere outdoors and take about 8 overlapping shots, turning say 45 degrees to your right each time. You then use a program like Realviz Stitcher to stitch them together. Some cameras come with similar software, but I find Realviz does a better job. You can save the panorama as a Quicktime VR (Virtual Reality file). To view it, you need to download the free QTVR player.

You click on the picture and then drag left/right, up/down to see the whole scene. Some scenes only let you drag left/right but the best ones let you go up/down as well.

I did some for my front and back gardens and by a river and pub. They looked really good. If you took sets of photos while on vacation, you could do some really nice QTVR files to remind you of a place. Being able to pan round gives you more of a sense of 'being there'. You can add music that reminds you of the place too.

See the amsterdam at night example etc.

You can make horizontal scenes with shots from an ordinary camera. People with better gear can make full spherical scenes where you can look straight up and down as well. see palma baptistry examples.

There are loads of other panoramas online by other people.

There are lots of QTVR tutorials and articles and utilities on the net.

My camera Canon Ixus II comes with a 'stitch assist' mode to keep the whiteness levels the same between all 8 shots. It helps for indoor shots using flash.

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Colorization of old Black and White photos (family ones or interesting ones off the net).

I found a good program called AKVIS Coloriage to colorize old B&W photos of my family as part of doing my family history. It has a much simpler and quicker method of marking out area to be colorized with a particular color than other software.

I found the easiest way to pick a color was not from a palette, but to pick it up from a color photo of a similar subject e.g. If you're coloriing a photo of a victorian lady in a dress, get the color for the dress from a modern color photo off of google image search of someone in a victorian dress for a movie or something.

Answer 2

pictureproject

nero photosnap