In the days of film cameras, what you shot was what you got. You took your film, had it developed and that, was that. Unless of course, you were one of the few photo hobbyists who had the equipment, and the skills, to manipulate and improve captured images.
The development of the digital camera has changed all that. Today, you are not necessarily stuck with what you shot. The tech world is full, to overflowing, with photo applications; from low end programs with few capabilities to very high end commercial programs with countless editing capabilities. And from complex applications with high learning curves, to dead simple applications with a point and click interface.
Back in my High School days, I was lucky enough to be hired by a news photographer who taught me camera skills, film development and printing techniques, which have stayed with me. So much so, that even now, I use my camera virtually every day (seriously).
If you’re like me, and you consider yourself a geeky photographer, then Image Analyzer 1.31 (latest release – September 22, 2009), could be just the program you’ve been searching for. This small (1.24MB), free, advanced, feature-rich image editor, comes complete with serious enhancement and analytical tools.
While the program includes all the usual features found in most photo editing tools, such as red-eye removal, resizing, rotating, image cropping, image warping, scanner, camera and printer support, the advanced features would generally be used only by sophisticated users, or professional photographers.
For example, this program excels at a number of higher level tasks including refocusing an out of focus image. As well, using the fractal interpolation plug-in for resizing, even low resolution images can be printed at larger sizes with acceptable quality.
Fast facts:
Automatic brightness, contrast, gamma and saturation adjustment
Build-in conventional and adaptive filters for noise reduction, edge extraction etc.
Retouch tools
Retinex filter for reducing shadows and increasing local contrast
Deconvolution for out-of-focus and motion blur compensation (see below)
Easy red-eye removal
User specified filters in spatial and frequency domain
Resize, rotate, crop and warping of images
Scanner, camera and printer support
File format support:
Read/write BMP, ICO, CUR, WMF, EMF, PNG, MNG, GIF, PCX, JPEG and JPEG 2000 images
Read CR2, RAS, PNM, PGM, PPM, HIPS and Matlab filesMorphological operations
Color model conversion: RGB, CMY, HSI, Lab, YCbCr, YIQ and PCA
Distance, Fourier and discrete cosine transformation
Math expression module for creating and transforming images and advanced “pocket” calculator with equation solver
Plug-in system for adding more specialized features.
Available Plug-ins:
Combine for High Dynamic Range (HDR)
Microscopic imaging
3D modeling
Batch processing
Fractal interpolation
Add text and vector graphics
Raster Export
JPEG 2000 file format handler
TIFF file format handler
Profile line
PCA Color Stretch
8fb Plug-in Interface
Developers’ information
Requirements: Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows NT, Windows 98
Language pack: Danish, Dutch, French, Finnish, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian
There is no tech support for this free application but there is an active forum.
Recommendation: This is a terrific free program for those those who are familiar with, or interested in, the more technical aspects of image analysis/processing. Considering the high end abilities of this application, it is surprising that it is freeware.
Download at: Download.com
There are additional free graphic software reviews elsewhere on this Blog, including download links. Check out the category Graphic Software on the sidebar.
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