Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Free Programs of great use!
I am always amazed when I come upon a website which offers free programs, and even more astonished when some of those programs turn out to be extremely useful! A friend asked for a "simple" program for printing out multiple pictures on one page. It had to be suitable for Windows 98 as well. Most of us have plenty of print programs---either those provided by the printer, or various graphics programs (I won't take the trouble to enumerate my favorite graphics programs---read earlier entries for that). Suffice it to say, that none are what you might call "simple," and the good ones aren't free. And even my favorite "XnView" and Irfanview won't print out multiple different pictures on a page. Picasa 2 will, but it's hardly a "simple program."
So the little jpeg printer program on this site is a welcome addition. And it seems to work. Mind you, to get 4 goodly pictures on a regular sheet of paper requires you to re-insert the page to print the second two---but that's a simple straightforward task.
While I was looking, however, I found several other very useful free programs. The most noteworthy was a .pdf file authoring program. For those of you who wonder what-in-the-heck? let me tell you that the "portable document format" (or Adobe Acrobat file) has become a sort of de facto standard for sending a document to another when it's important that the recipient be able to see that document just as it was originally: even if they don't have the necessary fonts installed in their own computer.
So, you can combine fancy fonts, pictures, layout, etc. and send this file to another electronically, on CD or however, and it will almost certainly show up as you intended it to. Not an easy task in this complex computer world! Adobe makes its own .pdf writer, but it costs (alas, Adobe, you take yourself VERY seriously) many hundreds of dollars.
This program installs simply and masquerades as another printer. So, from any program, you simply elect to "print" the file. However, instead of using your regular printer, you choose this program (Primo) from the dropdown printer list, hit a couple of "okay" buttons, and away it goes. Quick. Even launches your own version of Adobe Acrobat when it's done so that you can view your results.
I'll be using this program! Nifty.
I am always amazed when I come upon a website which offers free programs, and even more astonished when some of those programs turn out to be extremely useful! A friend asked for a "simple" program for printing out multiple pictures on one page. It had to be suitable for Windows 98 as well. Most of us have plenty of print programs---either those provided by the printer, or various graphics programs (I won't take the trouble to enumerate my favorite graphics programs---read earlier entries for that). Suffice it to say, that none are what you might call "simple," and the good ones aren't free. And even my favorite "XnView" and Irfanview won't print out multiple different pictures on a page. Picasa 2 will, but it's hardly a "simple program."
So the little jpeg printer program on this site is a welcome addition. And it seems to work. Mind you, to get 4 goodly pictures on a regular sheet of paper requires you to re-insert the page to print the second two---but that's a simple straightforward task.
While I was looking, however, I found several other very useful free programs. The most noteworthy was a .pdf file authoring program. For those of you who wonder what-in-the-heck? let me tell you that the "portable document format" (or Adobe Acrobat file) has become a sort of de facto standard for sending a document to another when it's important that the recipient be able to see that document just as it was originally: even if they don't have the necessary fonts installed in their own computer.
So, you can combine fancy fonts, pictures, layout, etc. and send this file to another electronically, on CD or however, and it will almost certainly show up as you intended it to. Not an easy task in this complex computer world! Adobe makes its own .pdf writer, but it costs (alas, Adobe, you take yourself VERY seriously) many hundreds of dollars.
This program installs simply and masquerades as another printer. So, from any program, you simply elect to "print" the file. However, instead of using your regular printer, you choose this program (Primo) from the dropdown printer list, hit a couple of "okay" buttons, and away it goes. Quick. Even launches your own version of Adobe Acrobat when it's done so that you can view your results.
I'll be using this program! Nifty.
