Isaac Online

I’m a Windows user. I haven’t touched a Mac since “digital imaging” meant you still used film and then scanned the images onto a computer… and scanners weren’t cheap. I’ve never had major OS issues. I kept my original install of Win98 running up to the day I installed XP. I have had to reinstall XP once… so far i’d have to say my luck has been excellent, and even better than a mac user…

…anyways. I’m not trying to start a Windows vs MacOS war….

What I want to do is to show some other Windows XP people out there some cool things they might have not known about.

Microsoft, back when XP was launched, has a few utilities made that can help us photographers out. These tools have been left to their own devices and got little attention. These awesome little mods are called XP PowerToys. PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released.

As I mentioned, PowerToys are nothing new. I installed my first PowerToy the same day I installed XP. Some of the PowerToys have been updated, and some all together new ‘Toys introduced. Some of these are aimed directly at photographers… Lets go over a few key PowerToys

Color Control Panel Applet: This awesome little tool gives us everything we’ve lacked with ICC color profiles. The Color Control Panel Applet gives you a central interface for controlling ICC Color profiles from a selection in your control panel. You can compare different ICC profiles, assign profiles to specific devices (one profile for your monitor, one for your printer, one for digital picture frames etc), setup calibration reminders and more… This is a must have tool for people that are nuts over color correction.

RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer: This applet is fairly self explanatory, and I have had it installed since I got my DSLR and started shooting RAW. This allows your computer to display thumbnails of RAW images just like XP shows JPEGs. It will also allow full size views, printing and shows metadata.

HTML Slide Show Wizard: This fun little PowerToy helps you create Slide Shows via HTML code that you can upload to your websites. The HTML Slide Show Wizard has two different formats with or without slides and will resize images. It creates a new HTML page with buttons for each image you load. A 31 image slideshow can be created in as little as 4 seconds.

Image Resizer: The image resizer has been a favorite of mine since I installed it. With a simple right click you can resize an image. It has a few preset sizes or you can set a custom size. One image at a time, or you can select multiple images. I use this easily resize images to load onto my Zune player. You have the option of creating new files with appended file names (default) or overwrite the existing files.

SyncToy: I recently installed and started using SyncToy to backup my photos. It is an easy to use copier system that I have set to backup my main photo drive to a second and third harddrive in my computer. There are many options available for the copy funtion.

There are many other PowerToys available. The ones I mentioned here are just a few select that target photographers. I’d suggest checking them out. You will likely find something very useful.

You can find all these tools, and more from Microsoft
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/Downloads/powertoys/Xppowertoys.mspx