Colour management software

I'm reviewing a pair of products here that I like to use in conjunction with each other. Each is perfectly capable of acting as a stand-alone program, but there are certain features I prefer in the one over the other. These are also useful for website colour management.

1. ColourCache

Full-featured palette management in a small package, this allows for creation and saving of multi-tabbed palettes, working with the format of choice (interchangeable), a palette builder that creates a set of related colours based on colour theory, configuration of various keyboard shortcuts plus the expected dropper tool (with magnifier) to pick up a colour from any pixel on the screen. There's also an option to work with only web-safe colours. This would be my first choice software - sadly, it's gone shareware now, but I still have the free version ;-)

2. CPick

Offering a similar set of features to ColourCache above but on an even smaller GUI, this is slightly biassed towards making icons (the magnifier doubles as an image capture tool). The click-and-drag colour capture shows a preview of the current pixel colour as a decent-sized patch rather than a small square in the corner of the magnifier, plus slider controls are always visible and the web-safe closest match is displayed alongside the latest capture. No palette builder, but ability to manually create and store palettes and six 'stacks' to act as temporary holders.

Desktop/screensaver - Drempels

Forget stunning-but-boring photo-sets for your desktop and screensavers: this is a new concept, a living desktop image. The program takes images from a folder of your choice (it provides its own defaults), renders them blurry and then morphs and cycles them in a funky, trippy kaleidoscope. Another treat for fractalists. Not a huge memory footprint considering what it does.

Background texture generator - GenTex

One for the fractalists; this program generates random textured blocks (based on fractal-type algorithms) in whatever size you specify. When you've found one you like, the image can be saved, plus the properties of this one then apply themselves to the other 12, and the process may be repeated.

Image manipulation - The Gimp

The name is acronymic: GNU image manipulation program. This is an Open Source application, i.e. anyone with the right skills may contribute towards it - new versions appear quite regularly. Although it claims not to be a Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro replacement, it does a pretty poor job of failing (count those negatives!).

So, to the program: it does all the basics and has some very nice built-in features as standard (e.g. a pretty good genetic flame generator), plus it accepts other filter types such as Filter Factory plug-ins. Its M.O. may seem a little strange at first: it works as a series of small windows on the desktop rather than all within one big window, and all menus and submenus may be detached and left floating. A bit of a learning curve, but if digital imaging is your thing, its well worth getting to know the Gimp.

Image Software - IrfanView

Excellent free picture viewer, supports most file types, allows you to create and save slide slows, batch-converts and renames groups of files, allows resizing (up and down), creation of HTML pages with thumbnail links (see Garden and Fractals for examples) plus special effects and more; this is probably the best freeware image software around. PLUS, there's loads of plugins available as well as shell-incorporation (via Explorer context menu). This is essential!

Screen Capture - MWSnap

Nifty tool for capturing screens - most images on this page were prepared using this tool. More fully-featured than previous similar tools reviewed here. Saves to 5 different file formats, comprehensive hotkeys, built-in screen ruler, zoom, colour picker... I've yet to find better!

Image management - Picasa

Google come in for a fair bit of stick from some quarters, presumably because they have the most powerful and popular search engine but are also a commercial organisation. Yet this piece of software comes out of the Google stable and it's absolutely free, no spyware or other nasties, and its performance and features are breathtaking. Sure, I could suggest a raft of improvements but I really like the features it does provide. It's the speed department that ensures Picasa wipes the floor with other software. If you work with images in any great numbers, give this a whirl - you can always uninstall it if you don't like it!

Image manipulation (signing) - Picture Shark

I had tried this ages ago, but hadn't realised its potential. Then I found a review on Fractal Visions that made me look into it further, and I saw its capability. Instead of just adding text, you can create a suitable graphic (in another program - I made my signature as a button with de Knop) then add this in whatever position you prefer (adjustment possible by the pixel). But the best part is that you can fully control the level of transparency and 'feathering' (edge blurring) to completely and unobtrusively integrate the signature graphic into the picture. Plus, the program will run the process on any number of files at once and saves settings on exit - it saves a good deal of valuable time if you have many pictures to sign. Check out the pictures in any of the galleries.