Category Archives: Free Software

Batch Conversion/processing in Irfanview – a general guide

October 10, 2012 Computers Made Simple Leave a comment

Irfanview, available here: Irfanview , is our favorite ‘free and fast’ photo software. While we don’t use Irfanview to manipulate images (retouching, etc.), we depend on it for cropping and resizing. One thing that we really love is the batch conversion feature. Our post today is a short guide about how to use this menu:

1. Download and install Irfanview. Accept the screen that asks you if you want Irfanview to associate itself with your image files. You can always change that later but there is no reason to do that.

2. For this lesson, double-click on one image in a folder of many images. Irfanview will open the image.

3. On the top left, look for File and click on it. The menu that comes down looks like this:

Photo of Irfanview File menu — ***Look for Batch/Conversion Rename***

4. Click on Batch/Conversion Rename and this menu will pop up:

Photo of batch menu — **Make sure you’ve opened one photo in a folder of many photos.**

5. First, let’s ‘Add’ some photos from the top right box to the bottom right box. Either choose a few or choose ‘Add all’. The bottom pane will fill up accordingly as shown here:

Photo of Batch menu with photos added. — ***The box is full.***

6. Those are the images that we will work on today. Next, look for the Advanced button shown here:

Photo of Advanced button highlighted. — **Click on the Advanced button.**

7. Once you hit the Advanced button, this menu pops up:

Photo of Advanced menu in Irfanview — **This looks complicated but it’s not too bad.**

8. With this one menu, you can crop, resize, flip, convert to grayscale and so on. Today, we’re going to resize all of the photos in the selection box to 90% of their original size. Make sure that Resize is checked then choose a percentage of the original, in this case 90%. Then, make sure that you have selected Preserve aspect ratio (proportional). We don’t use the Resample function but you can judge for yourself if this is necessary. Once all that is done, click on OK.

TIP: The most important thing in the previous menu is the ‘Overwrite existing files’ selection. Make sure that you uncheck this if you don’t put the processed results in another folder. If you don’t, you’ll lose the original files. Not a good plan, Stan.

9. Back to the main Batch/Conversion menu. In the ‘Output directory for result files’ , create another folder for the smaller files. We have named this ‘102_fuji SMALLER’ in this example. Doing this means that you keep the originals as they are and you’re putting the smaller versions in a completely different place. Smaller images are handy when you are uploading an album to Facebook, for example. Then, look for the Start Batch button.

Photo of Start Batch button — ***Click the Start Batch button to start the processing***.

10. Here’s what you see when Irfanview is processing the images:

Photo of batch processing menu in Irfanview. — ***Irfanview has finished the processing with no errors. Yay!***

11. Depending on the speed of your computer, the size of the original photos and some other variables, this process might take a while. As long as you have chosen a different directory for the output files, as opposed to replacing the originals, you’re safe. If you’ve made an error, usually done when cropping a group of photos, then you can simply delete the process folder and start over again. Whatever you do, don’t overwrite the originals.

If you have time, play around with this menu. Someday when you have 100 pics to adjust, you’ll be ready.

Thanks for reading!

Free Software, Irfanview

How to Crop a Photo Using Irfanview

October 9, 2012 Computers Made Simple Leave a comment

As you may know, we’re working on another blog, http://ww1diary.com/ . That blog requires us to crop photos of a 100 year old diary. Some of the text isn’t legible or decipherable, meaning that the photos of the original words are necessary in case there is a mistake. Hopefully, as the blog becomes more popular, readers will point out our mistakes. Here’s how we crop the photos that we use in our blogs.

1. Download Irfanview and install it. Make sure you download it from Tucows, fourth or fifth down the list here: http://www.irfanview.com/main_download_engl.htm . The other download sites often insist on downloading a special program first, which it total bunk. Head to Tucows and get it there.

2. When you install Irfanview, it will ask you if you want to associate your image files with it. This means, “Do you want to allow Irfanview to be the default program for image files”. We always say yes to that but you may have different preferences. Irfanview is fast, free and very dependable. We have relied on it for years.

3. Choose the photo that you want to crop. Here is one that we will work on today:

Photo of original diary page — ***This is the full page that we have to break up into day to day sections.***

4. When you are cropping a photo, you’re essentially cutting out everything except the part you want. That could involve taking people out of a photo that aren’t part of the final image that you want, for instance. Drag your cursor across the image while holding down the left mouse button. You will see a box shape forming as you move from left to right. Practice this a few times to get it right. If you don’t get the right section, click once outside the rectangle to start again. You want something that looks like this:

Photo of crop rectangle on original photo. — **We are cropping the first entry. You see the faint rectangle shape here.**

5. Once you have the box formed around what you want to save, release the left mouse button and press the Control key and the y key at the same time. Instantly, the box that you formed will become the full photo.

6. Press the Control key and the s key at the same time and the Save dialogue will come up. Make sure you change the name of the image file to something else, otherwise the original photo will be replaced by the cropped image.

Tip: Just as you can crop a photo by hitting Control/y, you can keep the original but cut out sections by hitting Control/x instead. You’ve seen the photos of someone with a rectangle around the spot where there eyes would be, in order to disguise them. This is done using Control/x instead of Control/y. Here’s an example of that:

Photo of image with sections cut out. — **This photo has had sections cut out of it.**

We use GIMP for fine photo editing, using its cloning tools, etc., but Irfanview is our go-to tool for cropping, cutting, batch resizing, etc. Try it. We guarantee you’ll wonder what you did without it.

TIP: Although it is a bit more difficult, you can use Irfanview for batch photo cropping as well. You have to make sure that your photos are all EXACTLY the same except for some partial content, a series of screen captures comes to mind. We will deal with bulk processing in another post.

Thanks for reading! Check out our Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/ComputersMadeSimple?ref=hl Remember to like it, OK?

Cloud Storage, Dropbox, Encrypt Dropbox Folder, Free Software, Privacy, Security, TrueCrypt

Protect Your Privacy with TrueCrypt – Part 3

October 4, 2012 Computers Made Simple Leave a comment

In our last post, we created an encrypted volume using Truecrypt. This volume could be thought of as a folder but it’s a bit more than that. If you think of this thing that you created as a separate drive on your computer, you will have a better picture of what it really is. When you add a new hard drive to your computer, you have to mount it before you can use it. Before you can use your newly created folder, you also have to mount it. Using Truecrypt, we’ll show you how to mount the new volume in order to make use of it. 1. The new volume (folder) should be on your desktop. It may or may not have a three digit file-type designation, depending on how you chose to name it. If you didn’t use a three letter name, such as .avi or .mp3, Windows will not use an icon to give you an idea of what it thinks it is. Here’s what our volume looks like:

Photo of Truecrypt folder — **Windows knows there is something there, it just doesn’t know what.**

Just a simple, generic page icon. Windows does not associate a program with this volume/folder. You can’t double-click it to open it, right? Don’t forget that. Open Truecrypt now. 2. When Truecrypt is open, you’ll see this screen:

Photo of Truecrypt opening menu — **You are looking for ‘Select File’ then ‘Mount’.**

This is a standard Windows dialogue/menu, nothing different from most other programs. You open the program first, then use it to open a file that it can handle. Click on Select File, find the volume that you created then click Open to go back to the menu shown below. 3. Here is what you should see next :

Photo of Truecrypt menu — **The path to the file is there in the window and a drive letter may or may not be highlighted in blue.**

You will see a number of drive letters in this menu, everything from G to Z. Choose a letter that isn’t currently being used by your computer. You’re pretty safe with anything past O or P. We have chosen T for this drive. Click on the word ‘Mount’ on the lower left of the menu. 4. Make sure you have the password that you used to create this volume. Truecrypt will prompt you for the password:

Photo of Truecrypt password menu. — **Type in the password that you used to create this volume.**

If you forget your password, there is nothing that you can do to retrieve it. Whatever volume you created is lost for good. Don’t lose your password. You’ve been warned. 5. Once you enter the correct password, Truecrypt will mount the volume. In other words, it will allow you to access it. It’s not open yet but it is accessible. This is what you should have on your screen now:

Photo of mounted Truecrypt drive. — **There it is by the letter T. Note the size difference of the folder.**

This drive is now accessible in two different ways. You can either double-click it now on the Truecrypt menu or navigate to it through Windows Explorer. In our case, it is listed as ‘Local Disk T’. Once you open the drive/volume/folder, drag and drop something into it. We chose to keep our encrypted text password document in ours. In this way, our passwords are protected by two walls, one through Notepad ++’s encryption and the other through Truecrypt ‘s. TIP: After you put the files into this volume/folder/drive, make sure that you dismount it before you close down Truecrypt. The process is this: Mount the drive, add or subtract files into it, dismount it. You can’t open the volume without mounting it and you should not close it without dismounting it. This is the only way that Truecrypt can guarantee to keep its contents safe. Two long and fairly convoluted posts, right? Keeping your data safe isn’t simple but we feel that using Truecrypt doesn’t require much tech savvy. If you follow our simple step-by-step instructions, you’ll be fine. What’s next? Moving this folder around inside of Dropbox. One more post on this topic and we’re done. Thanks for reading!

Cloud Privacy, Cloud Storage, Encrypt Dropbox Folder, Encryption, Security, TrueCrypt

Protect Your Privacy with TrueCrypt – Part 2

October 3, 2012 Computers Made Simple Leave a comment

In this post, we’ll describe how to encrypt a small folder using TrueCrypt, a free and very powerful encryption tool. You can put anything you want in this folder, of course, but the point of this exercise is to have something that is extremely safe from prying eyes that will allow you to keep your passwords or online account numbers private. Once you create this folder, you can put text files, documents…basically whatever you want to, as long as the total size is not larger than the folder you create. We’ll explain that later.

1. Download and install Truecrypt. You can install Truecrypt or run it from a folder. You could even keep the Truecrypt folder inside your Dropbox folder in order to make it available on every computer that you access Dropbox with.

2. Run Truecrypt. Here is the window that comes up at the start:

A volume is something that only Truecrypt can open. As you will notice later on, there is no three letter file designation to the folder/file/volume that you create. No other program will recognize it, not Windows, not Notepad, only Truecrypt.

Menu for TrueCrypt — **For the next few screens, you’ll just accept the default settings. Here, choose ‘Create an encrypted file container’ then click Next.**

Menu for TrueCrypt 3 — **Click Next to start creating a Standard TrueCrypt volume.**

Don’t get confused here. You’re not choosing a file or folder, you are really creating a volume somewhere you are on your computer. We chose our Desktop but you’re on your own here. All you do in this menu is simply type in a name, make up anything you want. You can even use a three letter file name to make this Truecrypt volume look like another kind of file. The default program for that type of file, .avi or .mp3 for instance, will NOT be able to open it, remember? Only Truecrypt can open this file.

Photo of TrueCrypt — **You’re on your own here but we chose a 1 MB file, lots of room for our password text file.**

10.

11.

12.

Move your mouse all over this menu for a minute or two then click Format. Truecrypt will then format the volume that you just made, creating, more or less, a separate drive on your computer. That drive is controlled by Truecrypt, nothing else. Windows doesn’t know anything about it, other than it takes up space. It cannot open the volume and will not even suggest a program that might open it.

13.

14.

That’s it for now. This post is long enough but we’ve accomplished a lot. You now know how to create a locked volume that can be opened only by you. Even if someone gets access to your computer or your cloud folder, they will not be able to see what is inside this folder. Cool huh?

Next time, we’ll show you how to use this volume. Basically, you just mount it using your password, open it then drop files into it and then dismount it. Once you dismount it, it is locked again.

Thanks for reading!

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Dropbox, Encrypt Dropbox Folder

Encrypt your Dropbox folder with TrueCrypt

October 1, 2012 Computers Made Simple Leave a comment

In our last post, we encrypted a text document. Here’s that article in case you missed it: Using Notepad ++ to Encrypt a Text File This post is a continuation of that theme, keeping your cloud files safe from prying eyes. Whose prying eyes? The employees and management of the various cloud companies, that’s who. Now that Microsoft has banned photos containing nudity in their SkyDrive folders, you can be certain that employees/managers/bots scan your files for offending data. Hell, your government is probably scanning those folders as well.

TrueCrypt is free. You can get it here: TrueCrypt . Once you download TrueCrypt, install it. While it is a very powerful program, Truecrypt is mostly based on passwords. If you lose your various TrueCrypt passwords, you’re totally out of luck so anything you do with this program must be done using a password that you won’t ever forget. You’ve been warned.

The concept of this whole thing is to make an encrypted folder on your computer which will become your Dropbox folder. Since that folder is synced with your online Dropbox folder, it is automatically encrypted. TIME OUT! In the middle of writing this post we discovered that the guide we were using simply doesn’t work. We managed to encrypt the Dropbox folder on one of our computers but not the online Dropbox folder. We’re back to square one here but we’ll update this post a.s.a.p. Yes, this is a short post but it’s been three days since our last one and we didn’t want anyone to think we’re sleeping on the job. We’re not. Things get in the way every now and then!

We’re back!

OK, we figured it out. Although the system we started to describe is in different places all over the Internet, it does not work. What follows is the only way to secure your Dropbox contents from prying eyes. You can use the same technique on other cloud services, SkyDrive for instance, and rest assured that no one but you can access your material there…provided you remember the password.

Before we get into the how-to section of this post, we want to explain some principles about what we’re going to do here. You have to know how Dropbox works before you can understand this whole thing.

The Basics

1. There are as many Dropbox folders as there are computers that access the same account…plus one. There is one folder on the Dropbox site itself plus the same folder, more or less, on every computer that you use for the same Dropbox account.

2. If you put a file, let’s say a photo or a video, into your Dropbox folder on one computer, that computer uploads the file to your online Dropbox folder.

3. When you turn on another computer that has access to the same Dropbox account, the file that was just uploaded to the online Dropbox folder is downloaded to the current computer’s Dropbox folder. If you change a fileThis is what syncing is all about, right?

The Problem:

1. When you change a file, Windows notes the change by telling us that the file was modified at such and such a time/date. If you modify a file, Dropbox notices this and updates that file all by itself. The next time you start your other computer(s), Dropbox sees that the version of a file isn’t the same as the one that it has in its online folder. As soon as it sees the discrepancy, Dropbox downloads the newer version of the file to whatever computer you are currently using.

2. When you are using Truecrypt, any folder you open is hidden, more or less, from Windows. In effect, that file is open only in Truecrypt, as if it was another operating system. You open Truecrypt then open the encrypted folder, add or subtract data from it and then close it before you close Truecrypt. When Truecrypt closes the folder (called dismounting), it does not update Windows on what changes have been made. As far as Windows knows, nothing has changed.

3. Do you see the problem? If Windows doesn’t tell Dropbox that the folder has changed, Dropbox doesn’t know to sync that file with either its own online version of that folder or the other versions of the same folder on any other computer that you use. Ah, there’s the rub.

The Solution:

1. There’s only one step to this solution. Instead of letting Dropbox sync your encrypted folder by itself, you have to send the folder to Dropbox each time you add or subtract anything from it. Basically, you copy and paste the changed folder into your current computer’s Dropbox folder. Only then will Dropbox feed the newly changed folder up to your online folder. In theory, this is how it should work. While you’re mulling all of this over, we’re trying to check that this is exactly what happens. Next post, we’ll let you know if our theory worked. Wish us luck!

Thanks for reading!

a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun