The EXIF data also contains the RAW conversion settings, stored when a photographers digitally process their pictures. These RAW conversion settings can contain details such as brightness, contrast, vignettes, white balance, temperature and several other options that can totally transform the images. So, if you copy this data from one picture to another, you can actually, in some way, give the second picture a similar ‘look’ like the first one.

Using this idea, photographer and web developer Joe Smalley created an easy to use tool that will allow you to give a particular ‘look’ to a picture, sourcing the EXIF data from a Flickr photograph. This is how he explains the process:

After quickly getting tired of copying settings across manually, I developed a tool which will output a Lightroom or Photoshop preset file based on the metadata found for that Flickr photo. Simply enter the full URL of the photo into the tool below and you’re away!

It is limited to photos which have metadata publicly available. Also custom point tone curve information isn’t converted- as the Flickr metadata page unfortunately doesn’t show all it.

The tool can be used to create dramatic transformations of pictures. If the look of the downloaded preset doesn’t suit the picture well, you can always tweak each individual setting manually.

Note: If the preset downloads as plain text or in a txt file, simply change its extension/save it as .LRtemplate (for Lightroom) or .ACR (for photoshop)

Convert Flickr Metadata to Lightroom/Photoshop presets

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Thumbnail creator is a freeware application, which will allow you to create thumbnails from a single image, or create thumbnails of all the images in a folder. Once you download and install the software, you can create thumbnails by clicking on the load button.

You can specify the height and width of the thumbnail and also add a watermark to the image. To process multiple images in a folder, you will have to click on the Batch process button.

The thumbnail images can be saved as either Bitmap or JPEG files.

Techie Buzz Verdict

Thumbnail generator allows you to generate thumbnails from multiple images inside a folder. In addition to that, it also allows you to add watermarks to your images to protect it further.

The only problem with this application is that it adds the watermark to the middle of the image, it would be good if it allowed to change the location of the image. Another interesting feature would be to allow for images/logos to be used as watermarks.

Ratings: 2.5/5 (Good)

Download Thumbnail Generator

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If you are looking for a desktop tool to upload images to Imageshack, you can use the Imageshack uploader, which is a freeware application based on Adobe Air.

Once you have installed the software, you can drag and drop your images on the uploader area to upload the image to Imageshack. You don’t have to register or login to Imageshack.

Imageshack uploader also provides you with an option to crop/resize the images before uploading them online.

Also see: Localhostr Screenshot tool and uploader

Techie Buzz Verdict

Imageshack is widely used by forum users to upload and share images and screenshots. A desktop tool to upload images will definitely make things much more easier.

Imageshack uploader also store a history of all your uploaded images. You can easily view your history to find links to the images.

Download Imageshack Uploader

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Multi Image Downloader is a freeware and portable software which will allow you to download multiple images from Google Image search at once, using a handy desktop interface.

To download all the images from Google search, you will need to copy the URL of the image search and paste it in the input box provided. If you want to start downloading images from the first page of the search results, make sure to add “&start=0” to the URL. The application will throw an error if the start parameter is missing from the URL.

Tip: If you only want to download stock images, checkout the options you can use to download copyright free images from Google Image search.

You can choose to download images from multiple pages, by changing the page counter and also select the type of images you want to download. Once you have selected the options, click on the “Get Image links” button to begin scanning for images to be downloaded.

Also Read: Download and Save Images Quickly and Easily in Firefox 

The application will scan all the pages and show you the links for the images, you can double click on the URL to open it in a web browser. If you do not like a image, you can download it from the list by using the delete button. To download the images select the folder and click on the Download button.

Techie Buzz Verdict

Multi Image Downloader would be a really good software if it had an option to preview images within the software itself. Right now, you need to double click on the images to view them in a external web browser. A preview option would make it much more easier to choose images you want to download.

Another annoying thing about this app is that, it is set to stay on top, which means that it remains in front of other windows, even if another application is active. The only way to hide the download window, is to minimize it.

It would also be good if the developer would assume that start is 0, if it is missing, this would save users from having to type it out everytime they want to start downloading images from the first page.

We are going with a low rating for the software as it misses a much required preview pane, it would be really very useful once that feature is added to the app.

Techie Buzz Rating: 1.5/5 (Average)

Download Multiple Image Downloader

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An easy alternative is a specialty freeware that can easily convert your images into thumbnails. Moo0 ImageThumbnailer is a software that allows you to create thumbnails in HTML format. Once you have installed this Windows based software on your machine, launch the Thumbnailer and simply drag and drop the image files you want to re-size.

The software would create a thumbnail folder on the same path and store the newly created thumbnail image in there. You can change the desired thumbnail size anytime by clicking the advanced options button. The image formats currently supported are png, gif, jpeg and bmp.

Techie-Buzz Verdict:

The software does a pretty neat and quick job of creating thumbnails, however, the fact that there is no support for batch resizing makes it a little less useful. The image formats supported is also very limited and need to be increased for a better performance. However, if all you want to do is create a thumbnail from a few images, it does a perfect job.

Average Rating: 3/5

Download it here.

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If yes, keep your designing and flash programming instincts aside. PhotoJoy is a really cool software that will allow you to create your own 3D Screensaver and Wallpaper collages for free.

Once you install PhotoJoy, it will take you through a process, where you can import photos into the software. Once the photo import is completed, you will be given an option to create Photo Collages, using PhotoToys or create screensavers.

You can either choose to use one of the options provided, or skip the screen entirely. All the provided options are also available as tabs in the main software window.

You can also import Flickr photos and online gallery photos from PhotoJoy to your library. If your images are not stored in My Pictures, you can also import images from a different directory.

Creating a screensaver of your images is effortless, just go to the screensaver tab in the main software window and choose the style you want to use as a screensaver. By default, on the the first style is pre-installed. You can download the rest of the screensaver styles by clicking the download option.

Once you are satisfied with a screensaver, click on the “Set as Screensaver” button (Which will appear, when you hover on a particular style), to set it as your default screensaver. You can also control the screensaver options by clicking on the Screensaver options button in the toolbar.

In addition to creating 3D desktop wallpapers, PhotoJoy also provides users with an option to create some really cool collages using pre-defined styles. PhotoJoy also includes some other tools called as PhotoToys, which allow you have fun with your photos.

Overall, this is an awesome software that is a must-download and is a recommended software by Techie Buzz. And best of all this software is a Freeware. We hardly see free softwares that are packed with so many feature, and this definitely deserves a Techie Buzz recommended software stamp.

P.S. The installation process is a bit slow. It may take up-to 5 minutes to get PhotoJoy up and running. However, once you install it, everything is literally a piece of cake.

Download PhotoJoy

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Dropresize is another freeware tool, which will resize all the images in a folder. However, in this case, it will resize the images automatically, whenever new files are placed into the directory.

Also Read: Compress Image Size on the Fly

Once you download Dropresize, double click it to run the software. Once it is running, choose the “watch folder”, where you will drop images for resizing. The software will then monitor the folder and optionally sub-folders for any new image files, and automatically resize them.You can also choose the maximum size and quality of the resized images.

Dropresize is a portable software and does not require installation, once you run the software it will run in the system tray monitoring for new images.

Overall Dropresize does its job pretty well. However, the only limitation right now is that it works with only JPEG images. The author has promised to add support for other image formats in future though.

Download Dropresize

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However, it looks like Adobe wants to take it a step further. You can now edit images and pictures on your iPhone using the Photoshop.com app.

This is definitely a good move from Adobe. Since more and more people are using their mobile phones to click and share images, a tool that will allow them to edit images before sharing is really cool.

Right now, the app is only available for the iPhone. Hopefully, they should make it available for other mobile platforms soon.

You can download the Photoshop.com App for iPhone for free using iTunes. For more information on the app visit the mobile site.

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This dream has come true now! A group of brilliant students from China have created an application, which allows you to create a simple sketch, then convert the sketch into a real picture. Isn’t that amazing?

The name of the application is Photosketch. The principle or the idea behind the working of this application is, you draw a rough sketch of something in your mind and label the objects you have placed. For example, if you want an image of birds sitting on the tree, take a pencil and write a rough diagram of tree and the birds sitting on it. Name the objects you have palced like, “Brown Tree” and “Crows”. That’s it. Process it and you will get a real image of the idea you had in your mind.

What this app does?

It searches the web for the words that you had placed like “Brown Tree” and gets the images that suit your position. Then it arranges the images in such a way that it should look real.. Oooh!!

It merges the “Brown Tree” with “Crows” and adds suitable background for the picture. Isn’t that like artificial intelligence?

This is what is the developer’s abstract says about the application:

We present a system that composes a realistic picture from a simple freehand sketch annotated with text labels. The composed picture is generated by seamlessly stitching several photographs in agreement with the sketch and text labels; these are found by searching the Internet. Although online image search generates many inappropriate results, our system is able to automatically select suitable photographs to generate a high quality composition, using a filtering scheme to exclude undesirable images. We also provide a novel image blending algorithm to allow seamless image composition. Each blending result is given a numeric score, allowing us to find an optimal combination of discovered images. Experimental results show the method is very successful; we also evaluate our system using the results from two user studies.

Here is a video for your clear understanding.

PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage from tao chen on Vimeo.

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What’s interesting to note about Tineye is that it can identify images without using keywords and metadata. Tineye can be used in two ways.

Visit the Tineye website : Visit the homepage and upload an image from your computer. After the upload is complete Tineye shows you copies of your image found in other web pages. You can also add any image URL and check for similar looking images.

Install the browser plugin : The second method requires installing the proper Tineye browser plugin. The browser plugin is available for Firefox, Google chrome as well as Internet explorer. Once the Plugin is installed you will have a new entry in your right click context menu so that you can search for copies of an image on the web.

How it works ?

Now let’s see how the tool works and how accurately it can figure out similar looking images. I did a search on the moon landing image and the results were pretty accurate.

As you can see Tineye was able to accurately find different copies of the image. This includes cropped images and images of different colors. Even heavily edited images were also presented in the scanned results.

The tool supports JPEG,PNG and GIF images and works best if your image is at least 300px in either dimensions. The maximum allowed file size is 1Mb.

If you get a large number of search results you can sort the similar images according to ‘best match’, ’biggest image’ and ‘smallest image’.

How Tineye can be useful

In brief,Tineye can be a really useful tool.You can use it to :

• Track whether anyone is using images from your website/blog without your permission.
• Find similar copies of an image on the web.
• Find modified versions of an image with a higher resolution or a different color.

Note that you can easily block the Tineye crawler from crawling your website’s images. Just add disallow “TinEye” to your robots.txt file.

Want more? Check out other image manipulation tools.

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