Digital Camera Tools

Graphics Converter Pro is an easy-to-use and powerful batch image viewer and graphics converter, that can import 500 graphic formats and export 100 formats including BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG and many others. The program comes with 50 image filters, including Blurring, Sharpening, Embossing, Diffusing, Color Balance and more as well as 12 image effects, including Flip, Wave, Noise, Arbitrary Rotation and more. In addition, Graphics Converter Pro includes a simple screen capture tool and a slideshow feature.

eIMAGE Recovery is a tool to recover digital photos and multimedia from media that is defective or damaged, as well as images that you may have accidentally deleted from your storage card. This program works with most types of digital camera storage including SmartMedia, CompactFlash, Sony Memory Sticks, IBM Micro Drives, Flash cards, and others. The interface is easy to use and offers a fast scan, as well as an in-depth scan, and displays the images that can be recovered as thumbnails, while marking the ones that appear damaged. We took eIMAGE Recovery to the test with a freshly formatted 1GB FlashCard, that contained 80 images before formatting (via camera). The program did not only recover all the recently deleted files, but found a total of 440 files, many of them gone through multiple (previous) camera formats. Supports all popular image formats, including Canon Raw (CRW), Kodak Raw (DCR), Nikon Raw (NEF) and several other specialized formats. If you have lost your images due to accidental deletion or damage, eIMAGE Recovery may be your best chance of getting them back.

cPicture is a software to view and work with your digital photos. It offers support for thumbnail browsing, EXIF display, histogram view, as well as various features to resize, rotate, crop and more. You can also remove red-eye effects, create a HTML gallery or picture index, and batch process images to perform selected operations on multiple photos at once. The program supports all popular images formats, and even view/convert various RAW formats as well. The interface is easy to use and provides access to the features with non-technical commands (I want to ...) and a modern look. cPicture offers several other handy features like mouseover image zooms, lossless rotation, image slideshow, command line options, color profile support and more. The program comes as standalone executable, and does not require installation - it can be run from a USB drive.

Turbo Photo is a very easy to use yet powerful image editing/processing software that is designed for digital camera owners. It offers professional image enhancement options without requiring you to have any technical knowledge of digital imaging. The program starts out with a wizard dialog that ask you "what is wrong with your picture?" and offers you to choose the option from an example dialog. From then on, it takes you step by step through correcting or enhancing your image while constantly offering you previews of possible options as well as the original to compare to. You simple select which suggested version of the image looks best or adjust the settings to further improve it. In many cases, you will be able to turn an average photo into a great one within a matter of minutes while others may need some fine tuning, which can be easily done, regardless of your experience. Exposure, color, composition, sharpness, and the contrast can be easily mastered and controlled by you. If you are a more advanced user, you can use the manual adjustments and bypass the wizards to totally control the photo quality. Turbo Photo offers many types of enhancements, including color balance and HSB mode adjustment, noise reduction, skin beautification, rotate, crop and much more. The skin beautification mode allow you to instantly remove blemishes by simply clicking on them, soften the skin tone and more. In addition, you can add frames, insert text, batch edit and print, view slideshows and more. Turbo Photo can automatically select the best format for the file when you re done. The program supports JPG, TIFF and other formats as well as EXIF. It allows even complete newbies to create perfect pictures and provides plenty of features to satisfy even advanced users.

Neat Image is a digital filter designed to reduce visible noise in digital photos. Often, photo noise is the result of high ISO settings acquisition device like a scanner. Neat Image goes far beyond the common noise reduction features found in most photo editors, and uses device noise profiles - reusable analysis of noise properties of an image acquisition device (a digital camera, scanner, etc.) working in specific mode, which in effect makes Neat Image noise reduction custom-tailored to this imaging device. It offers automated detection and optimization, as well as manual adjustment options to tweak the results. You can preview the results and compare a before and after version before saving the changes. Additional features include built-in calibration target together with batch profiler and more. Supports all industry standard image formats.

RoboGEO is a tool to geo-reference digital images with latitude, longitude, and altitude information. It can print this information onto the actual image (small footer on image) and also add it to the EXIF headers, allowing you to permanently link the photo to the GPS coordinates. RoboGEO works with any digital camera and includes direct support for Garmin GPS units and can also import G7ToWin tracklog files, so you can use it with other models as well. It can also be used to launch online maps, that show you the geographical location for images that have the geo data added. RoboGEO does not require the use of a GPS, since you can also enter the Langitude/Lattitude information manually, but it works most efficient if used in conjunction with a GPS unit.

TimeToPhoto is a simple program that enables you to add an overlay with the date the picture was taken, as well as the file name and photo name (optional). It uses the EXIF date information which is saved to the file by most digital cameras. You can choose the color and size of the overlay text and also customize the placement within the photo. TimeToPhoto can process a single file or an entire folder.

Quick ePics is an easy to use, yet powerful tool for preparing and optimizing your images. It can be used to process single images or multiple images in a batch, all at once or one at a time. It provides full "What you see is what you get" control over every image in the batch. You can see all changes in real-time as you make them without changing the original file. The image, as well as the displayed file size, size savings, and download time are immediately and dynamically updated as the compression level is changed or other aspect of the file are edited (color levels, size, brightness etc.). A handy peek button, allows you to quickly switch between the original image and the optimized version, so you can easily identify even the smallest compression quality losses. Additional features include send email, copy or drag to other programs (e.g FTP client), thumbnail options, batch renaming with support for prefix/suffix, cropping and more. Quick ePics Batch can also create backups of your batch images, so you can be sure that you always have a copy of your original images. The program can just as well be used as an image editor for single images.

RAW PhotoDesk is an image viewer and editor for RAW image files, used by upscale digital cameras. It allows you to view popular RAW formats (including CR2 of EOS-20D), make adjustments to white balance, RGB, brightness, hue and saturation settings and then develop them to JPG, JPEG 2000, TIF, PSD or BMP format. It can also batch process multiple raw files and apply specified adjustments to all of them, and in addition add image frames and watermarks. You can also create photo galleries from your photos, using the built-in web gallery tool. RAW PhotoDesk is easy to use and less expensive than most other RAW editing packages, however it does not provide nearly the professional capabilities of those, and is probably most suitable for casual users, that are not looking for all the advanced features.

EyeBatch is a powerful and intuitive batch image processor. The program supports most popular image formats as well as full transparency and EXIF, and comes with over 50 functions built in - including resizing, converting, text and image overlays (watermarking), image slicing, autocrop, color levels, and much more. You can preview each of the effects and see what your original image will like like before you apply any of them. EyeBatch may be used for single or multiple image processing (batch processing). Additional features include conditional IF statements,Enhanced text watermarking, Input filtering and more. The program is perfect for preparing images for the web and making thumbnails. It has a great interface and is suited for pros as well as beginners.

Noise Ninja allows you to reduce noise in your digital images, often caused by high ISO settings in your camera or scanner import. The program can optimize the noise removal process for your camera, by offering noise profiles for many popular camera and scanner models. In addition, you can further tweak the settings with the help of a real-time preview. Unlike many other noise reduction methods, Noise Ninja is optimized for high-quality results without softening or blurring your images. It also includes a noise brush tool that allows you to process only small portions of an image, as well as control over color and luminance channels. Noise Ninja supports JPG, 16-bit TIFF output (48 bits per pixel), batch processing, and multiprocessor execution.

Noiseware enables you to restore image quality by eliminating digital noise and unwanted artifacts, often caused by high ISO settings and low light conditions. It offers several ready-to-use profiles, that let you remove the most common noise problems instantly, without further configurations. In addition, you can also tweak the settings and specify your own, custom profiles or use the self-learning feature to create noise profiles automatically. Noiseware supports batch processing EXIF data support, JPEG/TIFF output, and embedded ICC support.

InAlbum provides a fun and easy way to turn your digital photos into a stunning photo show, that can be exported to standalone EXE file, VideoCD to play on your TV or published to the web in Flash format. The program offers a variety of templates to choose from and you can also create your own, decorate them with clipart, buttons, photo frames and transition effects, speech bubbles, animated Flash objects, background music, sound events and much more. It makes it very easy to create unique photo presentations that look professional and are easy to distribute. In addition, you can print photos, make screensavers, wallpapers and burn directly to CD and create a DVD or VCD. The registered version also includes free online hosting for your album. Overall a quite impressive program to create unique photo shows, portable albums and more!

Clarific helps you reduce noise and grain patterns in your photos, often resulting from low resolution captures or high ISO settings, or both. It offers an unsophisticated interface with simple buttons that let you select from preset parameters, based on the type of noise that is present in your image. You can also manually adjust the settings to customize the results.

FrameShow allows you to easily frame your digital photos, using a large collection of realistic and stylish frames. You can resize the photo or frame, using sliders and browse the frame gallery by category to find a frame that matches the picture and purpose. The image can then be saved to file in popular formats, embedded in your desktop wallpaper (cool), sent via email or printed. Additional frames can be downloaded from an online gallery.

SetNameToTime is a handy utility for digital camera owners, that allows to easily rename digital photos (jpg/tiff) based on the EXIF information that is included with nearly all digital cameras. You can rename each photo based on the date it was taken, but also include any other part of the EXIF data into the file name, as well as custom prefixes or other additional text. The program provides a preview of the new file names, and you can customize the date formats to be used, set file attributes, view EXIF data and save renaming schemes for later. Supports drag and drop.

Photolightning is a software package to print, email, and share your digital photos. It works directly with your digital camera, allows you to view, select and process your photos quickly and easily. It uses a 3-Step interface that lets you select, edit and process your images from easy to use menu choices. You can also fix your photos by adjusting backlight and red eye errors and perform color corrections. In addition you can sharpen, rotate and crop your images as needed and also label them with comments. You can then choose to print your photos, email them , transfer them to a memory card, create a photo album or create a HTML slideshow that can be viewed or emailed to friends. Photolightning offers support for ShutterFly, Snapfish, Walmart.com, EZ Prints and FlipAlbum and offers easy to use print templates for common picture sizes (wallets, 4x6, 8x10 etc). Some additional features include CD/DVD burning, posting to photo blogs, built-in thumbnail browser and batch processing including resize, change format, captions/watermarks, remove EXIF, rename, and change timestamp.

AKVIS Retoucher is a Photoshop compatible plugin that can help you restore images, remove scratches, unwanted texts and dates, dust and more. The plugin works with a selection in your Photoshop compatible image editor and offers an automatic process that uses intelligent cloning methods to cover the selected areas, so that they blend into the rest of the image. It is easy to use, and works very well on most image defects. It may require the use of additional Photoshop brushes and techniques in order to add the finishing touches.

PhotoCleaner is an easy to use tool for one-click correction of common scanning or digital camera problems like color shift, lack of dynamic range, unwanted softness etc. In addition, you can also rotate and resample pictures to a different size using advanced algorithms, sharpen the photos and add a nice-looking framing and optional caption. PhotoCleaner can also process multiple images at once. Easy to use and good results for a small price.

Downloader Pro is an advanced downloader for digital camera images that offers many features to speed-up and optimize your workflow. It enables you to automatically download, organize, and rename images and image data directly from your camera, or any USB card reader. It can be configure to run fully or semi-automatic, with many options to customize actions and file renaming schemes. Downloader Pro can also tag your images with GPS data (if available) while downloading them to your PC. Additional features include profiles for different cameras, allowing you to apply custom processing based on the camera model that the pictures are downloaded from, as well as support for Photoshop color profiles and dpi settings.

Blaze ImgConvert is a batch image conversion tool that supports over 140 formats (gif, jpg, jpeg 2000, TIF etc.) and offers additional features including resize, rotation and renaming of the output files. The program supports various format-specific sub-types as well as support for multi-page files. The converted files can be saved to the same folder, or a new location, and naming templates can be used to add incremental numbers, prefixes and more.

Opanda PowerExif Editor enables you to view and edit EXIF information in digital images. Unlike most EXIF editors, this program not only allows you to edit existing information, but also add new EXIF data to the image. It supports all EXIF 2.21 tags, as well as some extended tags and GPS information. Additional features include batch editing and removal, import/export and support for template files. No documentation.

DxO Optics Pro offers fully automatic, professional image enhancement based on analysis of the camera and lens that was used to take the pictures. In the automatic mode, the program can process and enhance images without any user intervention, applying custom processing options to each image based on the camera and lens information contained in the EXIF data. If you prefer more control, you can also choose from 2 manual modes that allow you to apply a variety of manual image enhancements including color and light adjustments, sharpness, noise removal, perspective corrections and more. A side-by-side preview allows you to compare the original image with the optimized version. Other features include color optimization, RAW conversions as well as exposure and dynamic range adjustments. DxO Optics Pro comes in 3 versions that differ in camera and lens support. This (Standard) version includes support for high end digital cameras as well as selected amateur and expert amateur Digital SLRs and their lenses. An Elite version with support for professional cameras and lenses is also available ($299). - Elimination of distortion, vignetting, and lens softness through specifically developed camera and lens modules - Removal of camera noise and purple fringing - Optimization of exposure and dynamic range - Color optimization - Perspective correction - RAW conversion and highlight recovery For Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Mac OS X. The Mac version can be downloaded from www.dxo.com.

AKVIS Noise Buster is a Photoshop compatible plug-in for noise suppression in digital photos and scanned images. It offers a fully automatic filtering mode that does a good job in eliminating most common noise, and you can further tweak the settings to achieve results that meet your personal preference. The program offers a before and after view that allows you to compare the results with the original (not side by side though, but indifferent tabs). Overall we saw decent noise elimination, but very slow interface and performance. AKVIS Noise Buster is compatible with Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Jasc paint Shop Pro and other editors that support Photoshop plug-ins.

Archive Creator simplifies the task of archiving large numbers of (image) files to CD-R or DVD. It supports automatic disk spanning if the files do not fit onto a single CD and also creates an HTML thumbnail index of the entire archive. In addition, the entire CD content is verified to the source files at a bit for bit level. The Photo Index is created from most popular image formats including JPEG, TIF, PSD, as well as RAW file types from Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Minolta, Fuji, Sigma and others. The support for these RAW formats allows you to view previews of the images, even on the CD. Additional features include drop shadow support, file filters, auto-launch of CD index, HTML index preview (with optional EXIF data), Burn-Proof support and more. Archive Creator does not require additional burning software.

RoboImport can automatically import and organize your images from your digital camera or card reader. It offers a very high level of customization that allows automated file sorting into various folder structures based on simple or complex templates. You can automatically download your images to a folder named after the month and date, the season (or both) and select from professional templates that include camera model and other EXIF information as part of the output path. You can choose from a list of tokens that come included or customize the configuration and include your own. RoboImport can fully automate the image download and import and optionally start downloading as soon as you insert your memory card into the reader (or connect your camera). In addition to organizing of the files, it can also perform various actions including auto-filling of IPTC data, image rotation, set a custom DPI value, change file date and more. If you have the Adobe DNG converter, it can even convert RAW files to DNG format. Other features include auto backup copy to a second folder or drive, GPS tagging and more.

STOIK Noise Autofix provides an easy to use and effective way to automatically clean digital noise in photos, which is often caused by high ISO setting in low light environments. The program can automatically target the noise reduction level based on the ISO settings contained in the EXIF data and will attempt to reduce the noise effect to a more acceptable level, while maintaining the image details and natural appearance (it will not make skin look unnaturally smooth or plastic-like). STOIK Noise Autofix is great for novice users as it provides very good results with fully automatic settings. Unfortunately it lacks batch processing and some more options that would appeal to more seasoned photographers.

Hide Hellion Eye can automatically remove red-eye effect from your photos. Using the program could not be any easier, you can simply open (or drag and drop) the images that you want to correct and the program will automatically scan for the face, detect the eyes and apply the correction. You can preview the finished image and then save it as a new file or replace the old one. The red-eye detection was very accurate and properly detected and fixed the effect in all our test images - without any user interaction. If you run into a tricky image, you can also apply the correction manually by simply selecting the affected eye area.

STOIK Cameraphone Enhancer is a tool for novice users that is designed to improve the quality of photos that were taken with camera phones. It uses a special algorithm, optimized for low resolution with common defects such as poor contrast, incorrect white balance, color artifacts, noise and other flaws. The program offers a one-click solution that analyzes the image and attempts to correct it. Unfortunately, it uses a take-it-or-leave-it approach as it does not offer any fine tuning or adjustments. Even though the enhanced image is often an improvement over the original, we would have expected a little more control over the final result.