Where do you want IT to go?: May 2012

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Ed/ITLib Digital

Digital Educational Library (Ed/IT Library Digital) is moving up the ladder in importance in education.
Read more at: http://editlib.org/

Bhattacharya, M., Mach, N. & Moallem, M. 2011. Emerging Technologies in Learning: Impact on Cognition and Culture. AACE.
Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/39252.

SoftOrbits Photo Retoucher

Software Review by Faridah Abdul Rashid

This is a simple software program that does not require any knowledge of high technology to clean up photos and make them look like professionally touched-up photos. This program is a great help for cleaning up old portraits and making them look great again. This is my first time using it and I'm writing this review after the first usage.

When I first opened the program, I tried to touch up a portrait for one of my books for publication. It was a photo which I artificially created from two photos of the same person but the photos were at different times. I made a composite portrait but I did not know how to proceed after that. I thought of all the other software programs I knew, but none could do a good job this quickly. They all took time and required a lot of hard disk space for installation, and also needed a lot of RAM. This new program is very different and much easier to use. All the tools for tweaking are in one window. There are new tools in this program, which are not present in all the programs that I have used in the past. The one that I particularly find very useful is the Scratch Remover. I did not know what it would actually do but I tried that first and it did wonders! I kept pressing on Remove Contrast repeatedly till the portrait became perfect without scratch marks and ugly lines. I still had a problem with the portrait as it was artificially created. I then used the Concealer brush. I am not an English user, and I was not too sure what that word meant. Anyway I tried that intuitively and it worked.

The tools mean and do what they are supposed to do. I have not tried all the features but so far, most are easy to learn and use right away. There is the last icon/button which I tried but I did not see anything different – this is the Image Correction. I don’t know what it is supposed to do. There is also the Marker tool, which I tried, but I didn’t know how to proceed after that. I will need to try many times more before I can write a better review. This is surely a good program if you really need to get your job done.

http://photoretoucher.org/index.php