Power Downloader edits images for free

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Recently, Power Downloader received an e-mail at the Powerlair from his niece, Kitty Kilobyte. Kitty explained she was stressed out about a project for school. Her assignment was to make a Web site about a specific subject which would include writing out a lot of information along with pictures to illustrate the content. Though she had all the writing done, Kitty was having problems choosing from her high-res photographs and couldn't get them to fit in with the content. She was particularly frustrated that her folder full of images all had unrecognizable file names and she didn't want to have to open them each individually. She ended by saying she needed help with getting her pictures to a uniform size and hoped Power would have something which could help.

Thinking quickly, Power Downloader did a search through the image editing category at Download.com to see what he could find. With only a few clicks of his mouse, Power was able to download FastStone Image Viewer. With this free program installed on Kitty's hard drive, she would be able to open her confusing folder full of images and search through thumbnails to find the pictures she wanted. Once she found a picture that fit her written content, she could crop her images to any uniform size or specify the precise dimensions she wanted to resize each image. In addition to FastStone Image Viewer's simple cropping and framing features, Kitty could color-correct her images so they showed up better on her Web site project. When she was happy with her pictures, she could save them as JPEGs to make sure they were Web-friendly and would load quickly.

The thumbnail view makes it easy to pick out photographs.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

After sending the e-mail off to Kitty and telling her everything would work out, Power Downloader decided to open a folder of his own images. Using FastStone Image Viewer's slide show features, Power put together a group of images from his travels around the globe. With a favorite MP3 as background music, and several different transition effects, Power created the perfect slide show. Thinking about how helpful this program would be for Kitty as pictures flashed across his desktop, Power wondered how this program could possibly be free.