software

PhotoDemon – a small, featured-packed portable photo editor

I’m always on the lookout for a decent, free image editor. Especially one that I can recommend to web clients who are looking for something simple to editor and resize images.

I often recommend IrfanView, a small, free image viewer that packs in a number of useful features. But for cropping images, it’s a little fiddly.

This week I came across PhotoDemon which describes itself as a 100% free, 100% open-source portable photo editor. And while I’m not thrilled on the name, I have to say, I am very impressed with its ease of use and features.

Resizing images is simple. Cropping images is intuitive. Saving images to other formats is a breeze. It even supports layers and has a variety of visual effects.

For many tasks, this gives my usual photo editor, Corel PaintShop Pro, a good run for its money. It also looks more user-friendly than GIMP, the usual go-to for a free photo editor.

So, if you need a simple to use photo editor that you don’t even need to install, I can recommend PhotoDemon.

Goodbye WinZip, hello PeaZip

This week I said a sad but necessary goodbye to a faithful Windows utility that I have been using for the last 35 years or more, WinZip.

WinZip was just getting too bloated, too unfocused and too slow for me. And crucially, at times it no longer did the one simple thing I wanted from it: unzip a zip file.

So this week, I uninstalled WinZip and moved to the free, open source PeaZip. And I wish I had done it sooner.

Keeping your PC apps up-to-date with Winget and WingetUI

*WingetUI (soon to be UniGetUI) — the simple way to keep your applications up-to-date*

Installing multiple applications on your Windows PC or laptop can be a tedious exercise, for example after a Windows reinstall or on a new machine. First you need to search the web for the application website, nagivate to the download page, download the installer, run the installer, wait for the application to install, repeat.

Thankfully, there are easier ways to do it now using package managers such as Microsoft Winget, Chocolatey and Scoop.

I’ve been using Winget for a while now with good results. And recently I’ve added WingetUI to the mix to automate keeping my applications updated.

Hurrah! Vertical tabs are coming to Microsoft OneNote

Microsoft has just announced a forthcoming change to OneNote that has made me very happy.

For the past 10 years or so, Microsoft OneNote has been an integral part of my personal organisation and productivity system.

I store almost all my life admin in OneNote. This can be everything from documentation to meal planning. It is really useful if you’re involved in a road traffic collision, for example, and quickly need access to your car insurance documents. Or you are in the supermarket and can’t remember what you’ve planned for dinner at the weekend.

Screenshot of my OneNote showing meal planning for December. Three vertical columns from left to right - categories, pages and then a table of information about food. — *Screenshot of my OneNote showing meal planning for December.*

DevToys—an open-source Swiss army knife for developers

DevToys is like a Swiss Army knife for software and web developers to help with everyday development tasks such as comparing and converting text and images, testing RegEx, formatting JSON and XML data, compressing images, etc.

It is available for free for Windows from the Microsoft Store.

I wish I’d had this years ago.

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