Get Started With Paint.NET

Dave Johnson, PC World

I routinely use high-powered photo editing programs like Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop, and Corel Paint Shop Pro. But you can get away with spending a lot less on photo editing software. You can spend nothing at all, in fact. In the past I've mentioned GIMP--a popular free, open source program. This week, I'll show you how to get started with Paint.NET as well.

Paint.NET got its start as a senior design project at Washington State University, where it was envisioned as a replacement for the Paint program in Windows. It has evolved significantly since then, though. It remains free, and today has all the basic rudiments of photo editing programs, like layers, effects, and even support for Photoshop-like plug-ins. You can download the latest version of Paint.NET from PCWorld, but you'll want to bookmark the official Paint.NET Web site as well, since there are forums, tutorials, and plug-ins available there. (You can also get to the Web site from Paint.NET's help menu.)

A Quick Tour

The interface should look pretty familiar to anyone who has used a program like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. Nothing, though, is locked in place. The standard toolbar, for example--usually located on the left side of the screen--can be moved around anywhere in the program window. In fact, if you don't maximize the Paint.NET window, you can drag toolbars and tool palettes out of the program window completely.

The toolbar has all the basics. You'll find selection tools, a magic wand, and a clone tool, for example. When you choose a tool, look at the toolbar at the top of the screen for options to customize it, such as controlling the size of the brush. But making a complex selection with Paint.NET can be tricky, since there's no "magnetic" selections--just a freehand lasso.
As you make changes to your photo, you might notice the Undo window at the top right. It tracks everything you do, so you can undo edits one at a time, or undo a slew of actions all at once--all the way back to the first thing you did to the photo, if you want to.

Working With Layers

Like any full-featured photo editor, Paint.NET gives you the ability to combine photos using layers. There isn't an "adjustment layer" tool for making edits to a photo, but you can simulate Photoshop-like adjustment layers pretty effectively. Just duplicate your photo in a new layer (choose Layers, Duplicate Layer) and then choose one of the options from the Adjustments or Effects menus. You can choose Adjustments, Curves, for example, and tweak the photo. Then, in the Layers palette at the bottom right of the screen, click Properties and use the slider to adjust the opacity of the top layer. (Note that Paint.NET uses the geeky range of 0-255 instead of 0-100, but the effect is the same.)

Play With Plug-Ins

You can use plug-ins to add a wealth of new capabilities to Paint.NET. To get to plug-ins, choose Help, Plug-ins from the menu in Paint.NET, which opens your browser to the Paint.NET Web site's plug-in page.
For example, if you shoot using your camera's RAW mode, the first plug-in you'll want to install is a RAW plug-in so you can open those images in Paint.NET. To get to that quickly, choose Plugins Index, show the Alphabetical List of Plugins Q-Z, and scroll down to the entries for RAW tools. There are a few to choose from, but I've had the best luck with RawReader. To install it, download the RawReader zip file, which contains three DLL files. Then open the program location for Paint.NET (probably c:\program files\Paint.NET) and drag those DLLs to the folder called FileTypes. Restart Paint.NET and you should be able to open most RAW files. Installing any plug-in is basically that easy--just drag the DLL to the Paint.NET folder or one of its subfolders like Effects or FileTypes.


SOURCE :pcworld.com

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Five Reasons It's Time to Switch to Windows 7

1. Hardware Support. Windows XP is archaic, and it is designed to run on outdated hardware. As new technologies are introduced, it is unlikely that Windows XP will be compatible or able to take advantage of them. Windows 7 provides support for multitouch displays, and also has greatly improved memory and power management features.

2. Improved Drivers Installation. Windows 7 has a superior system for automatically detecting and installing drivers. Windows XP sort of has this capability, but more often than not the search for drivers yields nothing and requests that you insert a driver disc from the vendor. Install a new piece of hardware in Windows 7, and most of the time it will automatically be added along with the correct driver without any additional user interaction.

3.Security. Windows XP lacks many of the crucial security controls that have been introduced in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Looking at the vulnerabilities that have been discovered since the launch of Windows 7, the Windows 7 operating system is frequently unaffected, or when it is affected by the same flaw as Windows XP, the result of an exploit is minor while the Windows XP system will be completely owned by the attacker.

4. Performance. One of the complaints against each new generation of Windows is that it seems to get slower and more bloated with each iteration. Windows 7 certainly adds new features--some of which may be frivolous or unnecessary--but it manages to boot faster and run snappier than its predecessor--Windows Vista. Windows XP users should not experience any significant lag in boot time or performance, and some may even see an improvement over XP.

5. XP Mode Virtualization. This is the Windows 7 trump card. With Windows XP Mode virtualization, Windows 7 runs a full Windows XP SP3 system in a virtual PC. It enables you to continue using hardware and software that are not compatible with Windows 7 from within the Windows 7 operating system. And, XP Mode virtualization is fast--somehow much faster than other Microsoft virtual PCs I have created. The caveat for this feature, though, is that it is only available on Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise.
Granted, moving to Windows 7 may not be cheap for some businesses. Many are running Windows XP on hardware that is more or less obsolete by today's standards, which means upgrading to Windows 7 must include replacing the hardware as well.

Windows 7 is not the only solution, though. As I stated up top--companies can simply upgrade from Windows XP SP2 to Windows XP SP3 and still have Microsoft support through 2014. It is also possible to migrate off of Windows XP SP2 by switching to some variation of Linux rather than moving to Windows 7. The XP hardware would most likely support it, but IT admins must also consider the learning curve of adopting a new OS culture--both for the users and for the technicians that have to support the desktop environment.



SOURCE:pcworld.com

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IE9 Preview Delivers New Features and Impressive Performance

Microsoft is progressing to the next phase of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) development today with the launch of Platform Preview 3 (PP3) of the next generation Web browser. Developers can download the latest preview to get a sneak peek at what's in store with IE9 and what new functionality Microsoft is incorporating.

IE8 is the reigning king among Web browsers--it leads in market share and in market share growth rate--but, IE9 is generating considerable interest. The IE9 Test Drive site has had more than 16 million visitors, and Microsoft reports that the IE9 Platform Preview has been downloaded over two million times.

With the latest release of the IE9 preview, the Microsoft developers have added support for HTML5 Canvas, and HTML5 audio and video tags. The new HTML5 functionality enables IE9 to deliver interactive content and online video on compatible browsers--similar to what you might expect from Adobe Flash, but without the need for any third-party application or browser plugins.

I spoke with Rob Mauceri, principal group program manager for Internet Explorer at Microsoft, and he walked me through the improvements and capabilities of IE9. Microsoft also put together a short video you can watch, demonstrating some of the capabilities of the IE9 PP3. The video shows some joint development effort with IMDB, and with Amazon illustrating how seamlessly IE9 can scroll through the available options and play video clips natively within the browser.


Aside from fun bells and whistles, this latest release in the IE9 development process shows off some speed and performance improvements as well. According to the SunSpider benchmark test, IE9 PP3 comes in at 347 milliseconds overall--outperforming both Chrome 4 and Firefox.

IE9 also includes support for CSS3 Font Face and Web Open Font Format (WOFF)--rendering a wider range of fonts with better clarity. The IE9 demo video shows a page in IE9, and a similar page rendered in the Google Chrome Web browser in which the fonts are all jacked and misaligned. The Acid3 score for IE9 has gone from a 68 with PP2 to an 83 with PP3.

IE9 combines the Chakra JavaScript engine, with support for multicore CPUs, dedicated GPUs, and hardware video acceleration to deliver exceptional performance. Microsoft is able to deliver flawlessly smooth animation at very high frame rates with IE9. Throughout the demo video, Microsoft does side by side comparisons demonstrating how IE9 looks and performs compared with competing browsers, and the results appear to be compellingly in Microsoft's favor.

I asked about an ETA for a public beta of IE9. Mauceri was predictably elusive--essentially saying that Microsoft is working as fast as it can, but is also focused on ensuring a quality product and is not prepared to announce availability dates which might force developers to march to the beat of artificial deadlines that could compromise quality or performance.


SOURCE:PCWORLD.COM

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How HTML5 Will Change the Web

Many folks who are just tuning into the HTML5 saga because of the battle between Adobe and Apple are surprised to learn that the push to create a fifth official version of the HTML specification began six years ago. And that's just the first half of the story because the latest implementations, while nice, are far from standards. The HTML5 demos from Apple, for instance, are impressive, but they only run well on Safari.

That's how slowly committees can work. The browser creators and other stakeholders have a big collection of ideas for improving the browser and the Web, and these are gradually coalescing into a fifth generation for the standard. But agreement takes time. Many of the new tags and JavaScript functions exist already as experiments on some of the browsers, but interoperability and standardization are still to come. That's why the Flash groupies joke about HTML5 being a time machine to take you back to 2000.

While the jokes may sting and waiting for more general adoption is tiresome, it would be a mistake to simply ignore HTML5. There are not only powerful companies behind it, but there's also the standard process of technological development. The software -- both browsers and tools -- tends to absorb all of the orbiting extras, incorporating them into the main standard.

HTML5 will change many aspects of life on the Web. It will not displace Flash or Shockwave: One glance at the games on Miniclip.com, such as Jet Ski Racer, shows how much ground the HTML5 committee must cover. But HTML5 will still remake the Web and enable basic Websites to do much more -- from tracking our location to storing more of our data in the cloud. HTML5 tags will displace plug-ins for simpler jobs, at least some of the time, and it will open up advanced capabilities to a larger audience. It might even make the Web more secure, more efficient, and more adaptable.

To see where this new standard may take us, I collected the opinions from a number of developers, programmers, and designers. Here is an unordered list of ways that the Web may change as HTML5 is gradually adopted and standardized.

HTML5 will reduce the importance of plug-ins HTML5 will enable more interactive graphics HTML5 will allow applications to tap local file storage HTML5 will simplify scraping with cyborg data HTML5 will add location to the mix HTML5 will smooth the way to Web video HTML5 will produce chattier widgets HTML5 will improve security (maybe) HTML5 will simplify Web development

HTML5 will reduce the importance of plug-ins Once upon a time the Web world liked the idea of a browser plug-in or add-on because it encouraged creativity and experimentation. Sounds, moving pictures, and other neat tricks appeared on the Web first through plug-ins built by Sun, Adobe, RealAudio, Microsoft, and many others. The plug-in interface was open to all, and everyone experimented with adding new features to the old, text-based world.

The battle over Flash may be the most famous skirmish, but the newer expanded powers of HTML5 also threaten other coding silos. JavaFX may be wonderful, but who wants to learn another syntax when JavaScript and the Canvas object will do the job? Who needs the Real ecosystem when the video tag will synchronize audio and video? Plug-ins like these are destined to be forgotten.

Will the idea of a plug-in disappear or fall into disfavor? Perhaps, but it depends on what you want to do. If drawing images is your goal, then the Canvas object may be powerful enough. But if you want to build specialized 3-D worlds like the ones found in the more sophisticated Flash and Shockwave games, you may be pining for the old days when a plug-in could get direct access to the video hardware or run a 3-D game world.

HTML5 will enable more interactive graphics The old Web loaded images by downloading a GIF or a JPG file. The new Web can build an image on the fly in a Canvas object. A number of good graphing libraries have appeared, and all of them make a Website's graphics much more interactive.

Now the JavaScript layer can compute values and draw pictures with the data. Everything can become more alive and much less textual -- if the developer has the time and talent to create the solutions. Adobe is just beginning to make it simpler to develop sophisticated graphics for HTML5. The emergence of such tools will unlock additional capabilities, and the sophistication of the graphics will only improve as the tools mature.

There is a legitimate danger that all of this sophistication will overwhelm the poor client-side processors. In the past, some developers deliberately disabled the Flash plug-in to avoid the headaches and overhead of rendering heavy Flash content. That won't be an option in the future. Everyone who's been complaining about Flash may learn that the troubles had little to do with the technology itself -- the problems came from the designers battling for our attention.

HTML5 will allow applications to tap local file storage Web programmers have always been able to store a surprisingly large amount of information in cookies (300 cookies of up to 4,096 bytes in IE), but to do real work you need more room. The early versions from the Dojo toolkit used the Flash plug-in to commandeer a section of the hard disk, but now the tools can simply use HTML5.

This storage can be used for anything the programmer wants, including undermining the entire cloud paradigm by storing data locally on the hard disk. This makes it possible to deliver and install applications that behave just like classic applications. Applications load their JavaScript code from the HTML5 offline application cache and start right up whether or not the Web connection is working.

The technique does not need to undermine the hard work of cloud proponents, though, because the local databases can act like smart caches. Game programmers might store descriptions and artwork locally, saving the time of downloading the information again and again.

On the downside, these databases are buried deeply in the system folder, so making backups may not be the simplest step. Users who may want to move their local data from machine to machine will pull out their hair. Or perhaps we'll just see a hybrid cloud/local approach appear where the local machine caches the data but the cloud maintains a definitive version that can be accessed from different machines.

HTML5 will simplify scraping with cyborg data Anyone who's scraped data from Web pages knows that the structure offered by HTML does little except tell the browser where to place the information. There's no insight into the data itself, something that would help a programmer make sense of the information. The so-called microformats in HTML5 provide a mechanism to introduce more sophisticated markup into the HTML that makes it easier to analyze the data.

No one can predict just how much change the microformats will bring to the Web, but it's easy to see how they will empower programmers to whip together solutions. If there's one nice, standard way to represent dates and times, for example, then programmers can knit together the time-related information from Websites without bothering to write sophisticated parsers that guess at the format one person chose. Calendars, timelines, and schedules drawn from multiple sources become much simpler to craft.

HTML5 will add location to the mix To the Web server, we were once just IP addresses, relatively anonymous numbers that had only a rough correspondence to the real world. The HTML5 standard now lets JavaScript ask the browser for the latitude and longitude of the user. It typically doesn't work with a desktop system (GPS or Wi-Fi required), but it works quite well with handheld smartphones.

No one knows what clever programmers will create with this location information, but it's bound to integrate cyberspace with meatspacein unpredictable and amazing ways.

HTML5 will smooth the way to Web video The HTML5 video tag makes it easier for Web developers to integrate video with the information on the rest of the page, opening up the bag of tricks to jQuery and PHP developers, not just Flash, Silverlight, or JavaFX magicians.

Despite this vision, there's little coherence, as everyone wants to be the ones distributing the codecs for unpacking the moving images and the corresponding sound. The HTML5 standard is codec-neutral, which means that we're replacing the old world where the add-on software was called a plug-in with a new world where the add-on is called a codec. So there's a standard video tag, but the browser may or may not know how to interpret the data.

Erich Ocean, a HTML5 application development lecturer who teaches in Los Angeles, believes the codec wars are already won. "Computer programmers (and Mozilla) are fooling themselves if they think they can dictate video standards to video professionals," he said. "Google's new format will see some usage, for example in YouTube, but will never reach anywhere close to the ubiquity of H.264."

Despite the confusion and the lack of complete agreement, the new video tag will unlock more of the power of video and make HTML less and less of a textual jungle and more and more of a video playground. It's too soon to stop teaching our kids to read, but maybe the handwriting -- er, the Webcam video is projected on the wall.
 
HTML5 will produce chattier widgets The widgets that run in IFrames have enabled sites to embed information from other sites for years, but they've always been limited by the security boundaries that keep each widget in a separate sandbox.

HTML5 offers a standard mechanism for these widgets to talk with each other. They still won't be able to reach into each other's sandbox, but they'll be able to send messages back and forth, coordinating their work and maybe even gossiping about the person typing at the keyboard.

Advertisers will drool at the chance to coordinate the behavior of disparate rectangles scattered across the page, and developers will surely find other practical uses. For instance, a tennis tournament might synchronize players on the left and the right of the page, an effect that may be so maddening that some will go running back to HTML 1.0.

However, this mechanism for sending messages is just a start. There's still a need to set standards for the information that's passed, so widgets stand a chance of speaking to each other even when they haven't been developed with a specific conversation in mind. In other words, they need more of a standard vocabulary.
 
HTML5 will improve security (maybe) Each browser plug-in is a separate program built by a different team of programmers with different standards, different release schedules, and different models for security. Naturally, some plug-ins are more secure than others. And as plug-ins proliferate they increase the complexity of keeping track of the security faults. Was it the plug-in or the browser that had that nasty hole at the end of last year? Was it fixed by updating the browser but not the plug-in or vice versa? Who can remember?

Replacing many plug-ins with features baked into HTML5 removes the dangers that any of these groups will make a mistake, or worse, that someone will use a plug-in API to deliberately install malicious code. If the security team auditing Firefox, Chrome, or IE does the job -- granted, that's a big if -- then the dangers will be fewer.

This claim of better security, though, is a bit of a wild guess. The devious minds may use their malice aforethought to take advantage of the nice integration, perhaps drawing PayPal logos with the Canvas object from scratch to impersonate the PayPal site. No one can predict what the dangerous minds will discover in the new capabilities of HTML5.
 
HTML5 will simplify Web development Bill Mill, a developer who works at Lookingglass Cyber Solutions, explains the change succinctly: "I mainly like HTML5 because it allows me to work in one unified environment, the browser plus JavaScript plus DOM, without having to switch back and forth between the Flash world and the HTML5 world. There is one language and one set of tools, not different ones for each plug-in."

He adds, "I think this is noticeable to the user too, where Flash blobs seem to exist in their own world within a Web page."
HTML5 offers one language (JavaScript), one data model (XML and DOM), and one set of layout rules (CSS) to bind text, audio, video, and graphics. The challenge of making something beautiful is still immense, but it's simpler to work with a unified standard.
Now, if only HTML5 came with the nice collection of tools that Adobe makes for Flash.


 SOURCE:pcworld.com

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