Here’s a new video that describes making a PDF (Portable Document Format) with Irfanview. Have we ever mentioned that we love Irfanview? Well, we do. It’s free and does a million things with no muss, fuss or flashy ads. Here’s the video:
Thanks for reading and watching! Comments, questions and suggestions are welcomed. Fill in the form below or, better yet, ‘Like’ us on Facebook. Here is the link:Computers Made Simple on Facebook.
____________________________________
Here’s a link that might help us if you are interested in hosting your own blog with Fatcow Hosting. We’ve signed up to become an affiliate and we make a bit of money if you sign up for hosting via this link: FatCow Hosting Thanks!
If there is one piece of software that we use everyday, it would have to be Irfanview. We’ve written about this amazing program many times. If you don’t have it on your computer yet, get it. You will never regret it.
Here’s the link to the site. You need two downloads to get the most out of the program. Download the software itself then download the plugins. Install the program first, then the plugins.
The Irfanview Website. Read about it on the main page then click the download button. Make sure you download Irfanview from the Tucows site, NOT any of the other sites? Why? Some of the others make you download some other software, helpers that don’t help you at all. Stick with Tucows, you can’t go wrong. Here is the link to Tucows: Tucows Irfanview download site
By the way, when you see something like this, don’t click on it. Many sites have these ‘helpful’ links, even Tucows, but don’t download any of this software.
The two links on the bottom are safe, the one at the top isn’t.
What can Irfanview do? Here’s a list:
1. Once you’ve installed it, Irfanview becomes your default photo viewer. Run through a folder of photos simply by double-clicking one photo then pressing the spacebar to show the next. Hit the backspace key to go backwards. Hit the Enter key to show the photos full-screen.
2. Screen captures. We use Irfanview for most of the screen caps that you see on our site. Here’s how you do it: Multiple Screen Captures
3. If you want to use Irfanview to play videos or music, it will do both. We use VLC for videos and iTunes or Windows Media Center for music but Irfanview works just fine for these.
4. Crop, adjust size, create negative images, rotate, resize….Irfanview does all of these and more. For basic image editing, this is all you need. For more complicated work, download and install GIMP. GIMP is equally as powerful as Photoshop, in our opinion. We’ve written many posts about GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) so search for it in the search box on any page on Computers Made Simple.
5. Create PDFs from photos and documents. There is no need for any professional software for this. Irfanview can save any photo or document as a PDF plus it can create multi-page pdfs quickly and easily.
6. Batch conversion. If you have a whole folder of photos that need to be cropped, resized, renamed, converted to negative, rotated, etc., Irfanview can do it.
7. Adding text to a photo. GIMP does a better job but for simple text, as in the photo above, Irfanview works well.
8. Highlighting parts of a photo or drawing a shape to emphasize something in a photo. Again, GIMP will do a smoother job but Irfanview is quick and easy, plus it loads much fast then GIMP, just because it’s a more basic program.
There are many more things that Irfanview can do but you’ve got the general idea by now. Together with our how-to guides, you’ll be using Irfanview every day, just as we do. If you have questions about it, use the comment space below. We’ll get back to you very quickly.
When we create a new post here on Computers Made Simple, we use Irfanview for our screen captures. Using this free and incredible software, we can capture multiple screen grabs with a simple keyclick (Ctrl and F11). Here’s how we do it:
1. Obviously you have to download Irfanview and install it. While you’re at it, download the plugin package as well as the main program. We recommend using Tucows for the download. Why? With a few of the other sites listed, you have to use a downloader which, more than likely, installs some kind of malware/adware/toolbar that you don’t need.
Tip: When you are installing free software, or any software for that matter, read each menu carefully. Many apps will want to install a toolbar (don’t!) and will ask to change your home page to their page (don’t!) and also change your preferred search engine (don’t!). Make sure you look for these lines in the menus and uncheck them.
2. Fire up Irfanview. What we’re looking for on the main screen is Options and then Capture/Screenshot. Here’s how it looks in Irfanview:
Click on Options then Capture/Screenshot
3. Once you install Irfanview, by the way, you don’t have to find the program to open it. Just double click on any photo on your desktop. We have Irfanview linked to all kinds of image files on our computers. It’s fast and simple, much faster than anything by Adobe.
4. Now we’re at the capture screen. It looks like this:
This menu looks confusing at first. No worries. We will explain it all.
5. There are three main areas of concern in this menu. First, on the top left, choose which part of your dekstop that you want to capture. In our case, we wanted to capture the screen where we were working (we have two monitors). We only had one window open so we didn’t need to check ‘foreground window’ and we didn’t have a big window open with a separate client window (that would be a program such as Photoshop or GIMP). You can also save a specific part of the screen, let’s say the video window of a webcam chat, for instance. Once you identify the area, Irfanview will capture just that section. This saves cropping later on.
6. The next part of the menu, up on the top right, decides what action will start the screen capture. In our case we chose the default ‘Ctrl + F11’ key combination. Any time we wanted to grab a photo of the screen, we hit the Ctrl key and the F11 key at the same time. Irfanview plays a little sound to let you know that the screen capture has worked.
7. You can also set Irfanview up for multiple timed captures. One second is the lowest amount of time for this but you can adjust that upwards to longer intervals.
8. Lastly, tell Irfanview what to name the file (default is fine with us), where to save the file (make a folder on your desktop and browse your way to it) and what kind of file you want to end up with. Jpg or Jpeg (same thing) is the norm for this but you might want a another file type. Here’s a list of the types available:
Many file types are available.
(You’ll note that you are able to use Irfanview to create PDF files from photos. Make note of that. That is one of the handiest file types when you’re dealing with large documents or photos.)
9. Once you have all of the screen captures you need, use Irfanview to crop them, if necessary. Draw a box shape around the area you want, click Ctrl + Y to crop, then Ctrl + S to save the image. Save it under a different name so the original is still there, just in case you made a cropping mistake.
Thanks for reading! Questions and comments are always welcome.
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:
Look for Batch/Conversion Rename
4. Click on Batch/Conversion Rename and this menu will pop up:
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:
The box is full.
6. Those are the images that we will work on today. Next, look for the Advanced button shown here:
Click on the Advanced button.
7. Once you hit the Advanced button, this menu pops up:
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.
Click the Start Batch button to start the processing.
10. Here’s what you see when Irfanview is processing the images:
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.
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:
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:
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 keyand 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:
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.
