RawTherapee is a little gem when comes to converting and editing your RAW photos. It also supports editing of jpg, png and tiff files, but with some features unavailable. Here are the features at a glance:
- Exposure and white balance adjustmens;
- Highlight recovery - works extremely well;
- Shadow/Highlights control;
- ICC Based color management;
- Color and Luminance noise reduction;
- Control thresholds to avoid color clipping in various operations;
- Color changes in CIELab space;
- Chromatic aberration and vignetting correction;
- Rotation/Crop/Resizing/etc.;
In RawTherapee you can also create “postprocessing profiles”, so it is very easy to apply the same settings to multiple photos.
One thing I found it lacking is a batch mode, but with the saved profiles this is not really needed. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the images produced. Very nice program to complement your image processing toolbelt.
Spybot Search & Destroy can help you with removing and preventing installation of spyware. I’ve used it for a long time and the program has helped me many times. Much has been written about the program, but I thought to include it here, since I find it very essential. It includes three parts:
- Main Interface to help remove and immunize (similar to SpywareBlaster) against malware and other useful tools;
- TeaTimer - to protect from unintended registry and system settings changes;
- SDHelper - to provide active protection against bad downloads in Internet Explorer;
Main Useful Features:
- Scans and removes various malwares;
- Provides immunization (which can be complemented with SpywareBlaster);
- System startup editor;
- Can be scheduled to do a system scan on system startup;
- Automatic updates of the program and malware database.
Excellent and strongly recommended tool in the battle against spyware. Of course using Mozilla Firefox also would decrease the chance of getting spyware :-).
I have always considered spyware much worse than viruses. SpywareBlaster can help you protect your computer by immunizing against known ActiveX based spyware, adware and other harmful programs. It works by creating special settings in your computer, so known harmful ActiveXs are blocked from installing.
Useful features:
- Protection against a large variety of spyware;
- No process to keep running and slow down your computer;
- Automatic updates of the malware database;
- Protection against ActiveX and unwanted cookies.
Overall a very nice and useful program. The makers provide regular database updates. The only very minor issue I have found is that when a new version is released the program doesn’t auto-update itself. Well worth a download and use.
Choosing a newsreader is a very subjective matter, but here is the one I like to use (and have used for a long time). RSS Bandit is an RSS and Atom feed reader, allowing you to subscribe, organize and read newsfeeds. It also allows you to merge feeds from multiple sources into a single page for easier browsing.
Main features include:
- Organize feeds in categories;
- Integrated search
- Comments viewing and posting;
- Import and Export Feeds;
- Customizable views;
- Many others;
Many customization options like:
- Update Interval (for each feed);
- Custom display formatters;
- Fonts and Colors;
- Treatment of attachments and podcasts;
- Various browser security restrictions (Images, JavaScript, ActiveX, etc.);
- Item expiration policy;
Overall a very attractive newsreader, deserving a look by anyone looking for the right newsreader. Adding feeds is very easy - I usually just drag the link from the browser and drop in RSS Bandit. Strongly recommended.
SpeedFan is a fast and small program for showing and monitoring various temperature sensors on your computer as well as reading S.M.A.R.T. values from your hard drive. It can also read and monitor voltages from most computers. I use it mostly to look at temperatures for my hard drive, for which I sometimes wonder if it overheats. Very valuable to read the S.M.A.R.T. values to see if there are any cluster reallocation, etc. The tool is a must have.
RawTherapee is a little gem when comes to converting and editing your RAW photos. It also supports editing of jpg, png and tiff files, but with some features unavailable. Here are the features at a glance:
