Useful Tools for PhotoImpact Users

As with all programs, a little extra help is nice. These links will lead you to useful utilities, third-party programs, and other information that will enhance your PhotoImpact experience.

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Bruce Beards Hair and Skin Color Charts

These color charts give you swatches showing variations in both hair and skin colors. They are invaluable for those who do faces. Save the charts in your Easy Palette and drag to the workspace when you are working on an image, then use the magic dropper to select the perfect color. THe chart also included both the RBG and Hex values.

Color Cop

Another one of those wonderful little color pickers.. and it's free! Just point the eye dropper where you want to pick a color and that's it! Gives you both RGB and hex values as well as a small color palette of colors in the same range. Very nice tool to have when you're doing graphics!

David Crowell Software

When using files copied from a CD, things like images, do you get that annoying pop-up message saying the file is "read-only"? If so, then you need CROA! This is a totally free program that will remove the the attribute bytes in a folder, and all subfolders. Is fast and easy and another of those "must have" utilities.

Delphi Glass

Delphi is America's largest art glass supplier and has tools, supplies, workshops and more for stained glass, hot glass, mosaics and jewelry. They have a lovely selection of free patterns. These can easily be traced and used in your PhotoImpact Stained Glass projects.

Digital Camera Tools

Media Chance offers some excellent free tools for those who use a ditital camera. Their site is loaded with camera information, hints and much more. A must-visit for every digital camera owner.

Dot Color by Inetis

Another nice little free utility. This one is a tiny eydropper that lives on your task bar. When you see a color you like and want to know exactly what color it is, just click on the tye dropper and point it at the color. It will give you both the RGB and Hex values for the color.

HarmWare

Harm's sTile is a freeware graphics application. It creates seamless tiles, for use as web page backgrounds or windows wallpaper. It can also be used to create buttons and banners, or even photo re-touching. It has a rich set of filters and effects, and currently supports bmp, jpg, and gif file formats. You'll even find tutorials on how to use the program. Another Freebie!

Lone Wolf Software

Having trouble creating java rollovers? If so, you need Lone Wolf's free program java rollover button creator. You create the buttons, tell the program which one is the normal, which is the high and what it links to and the progam generates all the necessary code for you. It couldn't be easier!

Mayura Draw

You don't need expensive programs to create those .ai shape files for PI. Mauyra Draw is an easy-to-use vector graphics program that can be used to export your creations in .ai format, then import into the PI Shapes library. Download the 30 day trial version ($15 to register) or the freeware version (formerly PageDraw). Import: AI and WMF formats. Export: EPS, PS, AI, PDF, WMF, GIF, BMP and TIFF formats.

Micro Fox Software

If you design web pages or do graphics, you will love this screen ruler. It overlays whatever is on your screen showing you exactly how wide it is. The freeware version measures only in pixels but the registered version gives you a choice of inches, pixels, centimeters, etc. This tool is a great graphics companion.

Screen Shot Tips and Tricks

If you're just starting to write tutorials, this site is a must. Sue Chastaine at about.com gives you some excellent advice and tips on how to capture those screen shots so they give the best quality while using the smallest possible size. She backs up her words with pictures to show the differences.

Simple Filters

This site offers a group of 10 very simple filters that can be used for making tiled backgrounds and other tiling effects. An example of each filter is displayed so you know what you're getting before you download it. If you like patterened backgrounds, be sure and check these out.

Spectrum Glass

A great source for stained glass tiles. The tiles are grouped by color and type so you can find exactly what you want. They also have a good selection (over 140) free patterns you can download! These patterns have the suggested glass color numbers printed on the various sections to make it easy for you to create a masterpiece. To make things really easy for us, Spectrum has made their tiles available via FTP which means, you can grab a whole bunch with one click! If you want more, they even have a CD with all their color samples.

The Font Thing

The Font Thing is an excellent freeware program for managing TrueType fonts in Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0. You can browse installed and uninstalled fonts, print font samples, install or uninstall any number of fonts at once, load fonts for temporary use, and much more. A must for font lovers.

TreePad

If you're one of those people who take notes then forget where you put them or have little post-its pasted all over your monitor, you need Henk Hagedoorn's TreePad! This is an excellent program and it's free! It's one of those "can't live without" utilities.

Visicom Media

If you're looking for a nice FREE HTML editor, you might want to look at AceHTML 4. It handles forms, frames, Cascading Style Sheeds, Java, Java Script, DHTML, etc. It includes 20 templates to get you started. The download is 3.7 meg. The downside is you have to fill out a form with your name, e-mail, etc before you can download it. Once you have the program installed, you then have to fill out another form with basically the same info to get the free registration code which is sent to you via e-mail.

Warner-Crivellar Stained Glass

This site is an excellent source for stained glass samples. They have a large selection of tiles in just about every color imaginable. Not only that, they have over 125 FREE patterns that include holiday selections, kitties, clowns, Pennsylvania Dutch Designs, things for Valentine's day, bears, and a whole lot more! If you're one who loves stained glass, this site's for you!

Wayne Fulton's Scan Tips

Got a new scanner but aren't sure what all those fancy terms mean? Don't know what resolution is best for the job? Wayne Fulton's Scan Tips covers it all! You can view the tips on-line or purchase his book. Either way, you'll learn how to get the very best out of your scanner.

WebDeveloper.com

This site offers an excellent script for making rollover buttons - so simple that a total beginner could do it. Just type in the names of the buttons, the url's and the program will generate the script for you! It doesn't get any easier than this.

Xenu's Link Sleuth

Nothing drives traffic away from your site faster than broken links. This little freeware link checker will check all the links on your site and let you know which ones are bad so you can fix them. it's fast and it's free and it's efficient. A must for anyone who has a web page.

Zoicks Three Layer Tables

Here's a great way to design and preview a nested table for your website. Select three backgrounds by using the radio buttons for your 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices. Click 'Preview It!' at the bottom of the page and like magic, you'll see your creation as well as the code needed to put it on your web space. The output includes code for setting up a page for E-Bay!