Like having a stash of beautiful wallpaper images on your computer? Dream Desktop has several thousand to choose from, and their free Desktop Agent program makes it easy to download and enjoy your favorites.
Install the Agent and head to its configuration screen. There you can choose which images you want to display — either random selections from those you mark as favorites in the search view (above, left) or anything Dream Desktop has tagged within the categories you choose — or both!
You can also specify the interval between wallpaper changes, customize the maximum size of your local image cache (the default is 100MB), and enable or disable updates and notifications. Desktop Agent can also be set to launch when Windows starts up, and you can select which category you want to appear first when opening the main program window.
There are plenty of stunning images available, though I do have two small gripes. Resolution could be higher (scaling leads to some predictable graininess on my 1920×1080 display) and there’s no support for dual-monitor configs. Still, I’d much rather see this on a customer’s desktop than Webshots…
Downloadr is a photo downloader for Microsoft Windows. It provides a simple interface to download large sized images from Flickr to your computer. You do not need a Flickr account to use Downloadr, though you do have even more functionality (like the ability to do a complete backup of all your photos) if you register at flickr.com. For a comprehensive overview of what Downloadr is able to do please watch the Screencast.
Here is a short list of what Downloadr can currently do for you. This is not a complete list of all features, only the major ones are listed here. New features are added from time to time and you will automatically be able to use them thanks to Downloadr’s update function. Please be aware that Downloadr is still beta software: Use it, but do not rely on it. It may harm your PC or your flickr account, even though it has been tested many times.
Searches photos by
Fulltext
User
Tags
Place
Set
Date
Interestingness
Group
Favorites
Automatically downloads largest avaiable size
Authenticates with flickr to download private photos
Can create a backup of all your photos with just a few clicks
Writes EXIF and IPTC data so titles, tags and location are preserved
Designers often need to use meaningless images as placeholders. Creating these images in Photoshop or Fireworks is not hard but still takes a few minutes. RandomImageGenerator is a free placeholder image generator that does this for you within seconds.
Simply go to RandomImageGenerator and specify the number of random images you want in addition to the desired dimensions of the images. You can also select from 8 different styles for your random images. Once the images are generated you can simply download them to your computer. A maximum of 20 images can be generated in a single request and each image can have a maximum width and height of 999 pixels. One thing that would make the tool even more slick is to embed these images online or at least downloading them together as a zip file.
Features:
Generate random images quickly.
Specify the desired dimensions and number of images.
Adobe’s working on some new selection and masking tools for the next version of Photoshop. Ever since the Extract filter was removed in Photoshop CS4, Adobe has had plans to bring its various parts back as built-in tools. The first part of that is a new selection tool that’s already being demoed over at John Nack’s Adobe blog. The future of selection in Photoshop looks pretty bright, because this tool grabs edges really accurately.
In the demo, the new tools makes a great-looking mask from a low-res photo of a cat and a baby. There’s tons of detail, but the tool differentiates between hard and soft edges. They even manage to grab a cat whisker with a little extra brushing. Nice! With all the heat Adobe’s taking over Flash video right now, it’s easy to forget the really impressive tools they’ve built for the Creative Suite apps, and it looks like they’re only getting better.
Check out the demo video at high resolution on Facebook.
Digital photos are great, but often times we just post them straight to a website page or let them languish on our computers. For several years now,however, Big Huge Labs has provided some awesome and practical photo related projects that can be done in a short amount of time, with very little computer skills needed.
The site includes over two dozen projects that can be printed and/or posted on the web. Projects include various custom poster ideas, custom trading cards, calendars, desktop wallpaper, a pocket album, a CD Cover template, slide show generator, and much more.
There’s something magical in the absence of color and there is something unbelievably inspiring in black and white photography. This is the oldest type of photography and still the most inspiring one.
Multicolr is a Flickr-based image search engine that allows you to search by color . To see only black and white photography, all you need is to pick colors from the last row:
Yahoo Image Search : Only few people know that Yahoo can be the best Flickr image search engine you’ve ever tried; mainly, because it has some useful search option that Flickr doesn’t. One of them is actually Black&Whit photos. Both options are accessed via Advanced search; there you can set the image color (black and white) and image source (check Flickr to only include photos from Flickr). Right there, you can also set the license filter to only search for images available for distribution:
Corbisimages is my preferred stock images search engine that both contains a high-quality selection of creative photography and offers a robust search feature with lots of features. I first learned about it from this image search engines overview by Edward Khoo and it has been my personal favorite since then.
Besides setting it to search through black and white images only, you can filter:
By Type (photography or illustration);
By distribution rights (royalty-free or “rights managed”);
By editorial type (current news, documentary, fine art; entertainment):;
By orientation (horizontal, vertical, panorama);
By date when the photo was created;
By photographer.
Bing Image Search : As an avid Googler, I feel bad listing both Yahoo and Bing and not mentioning Google; but here’s the truth: I love Google general search, I hate Google images search. It is both limited and irrelevant. I prefer Bing Image Search engine.
It has plenty of great search options (including a black and white filter):
Search by size (small, medium, large, wallpaper);
Search by layout (squire, tall, wide);
Search by style (photography or illustration);
Check special people search filters: just faces or including head and shoulders.
Besides, it offers a similar search option if you hover your mouse cursor over an image.
Picsearch is a good alternative image search engine to have by hand. It doesn’t have any extraordinary search options to mention. The only reason I use it from time to time is that it provides totally different search results – something I’d never be able to find using ordinary tools like Google or Yahoo.
“Picsearch uses its own technology to crawl the web and has created a searchable index of images…. Picsearch image search technology has three main features that make it unique. It has a relevancy unrivalled on the web due to its patent-pending indexing algorithms. Also, Picsearch has a family friendliness that allows children to surf in safety as all offensive material is filtered out by our advanced filtering systems. The site is also very user friendly as it’s designed to be simple, fast and accurate.”
Besides searching for black and white photography, the tool offers a few other nifty features like:
Filtering by size;
Filtering by type (landscape versus portrait for example);
from, and their free Desktop Agent program makes it easy to download and enjoy your favorites.
to your computer. You do not need a Flickr account to use Downloadr, though you do have even more functionality (like the ability to do a complete backup of all your photos) if you register at flickr.com. For a comprehensive overview of what Downloadr is able to do please watch the Screencast.
not hard but still takes a few minutes. RandomImageGenerator is a free placeholder image generator that does this for you within seconds.
The first part of that is a new selection tool that’s already being demoed over at John Nack’s Adobe blog. The future of selection in Photoshop looks pretty bright, because this tool grabs edges really accurately.
Digital photos are great, but often times we just post them straight to a website page or let them languish on our computers. For several years now,however, Big Huge Labs has provided some awesome and practical photo related projects that can be done in a short amount of time, with very little computer skills needed.
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