Photops Blog

TwitterGram is a service that allows you to have your posts made on various services displayed as Tweets on your Twitter profile. Their Flickr function allows all users of the popular photo sharing site and Twitter to combine the two into something fabulous.

Firstly, signing up take just a few minutes and you deal with the majority of your preferences there. For example, if you only want a few of the photos you upload to be sent to Twitter, you can create a special tag for these photos such as ‘ForTwitter’ or ‘Tweet’.

Once you enter in your Twitter and Flickr details and click ‘Submit’, the rest will simply work by itself. There is little or no need to re-access the service again unless you want to change your preferences. All of it is done via the normal uploading method on Flickr.

As you can see from the example below, what’s posted on your Twitter account is neat and tidy with order; unlike some of the links you see done manually. There is plenty of room for a title and the program uses Bit.ly, the URL shortening service to save on space.

For those who enjoy photo sharing this is a great web tool that really requires next to no effort to get your favourite snaps on Twitter for your followers to enjoy.

Visit: flickr.twittergram.com

PhotoSnack is a new online picture slideshow maker that lets you create professional looking picture sideshows in no time. All you have to do is upload images, customize them using provided templates and then share with others by embedding of forwarding a link. That’s it!

The application provides free and premium account options, free account supports all the features except that it’s restricted to 250 MB storage limit and has a company watermark.

Features:

• Create professional picture slideshows online.
• Create as many slideshows as you like.
• Currently lists 6 templates to choose from, more will be added.
• Free account is limited to 250 MBs of space.
• Clean interface and easy to use.
• Share by forwarding a link or embedding.

Visit: www.photosnack.com

Google’s image search is one of the fastest ways to find a picture of just about anything, but that doesn’t mean you can use all of the images you find on your website or blog. We’ve shied away from finding images for Download Squad on Google Image Search in the past, because it’s hard to find and credit the creator of the image and be sure you have permission to use it. Google just made it a lot easier, though, by adding the option to search for Creative Commons-licensed images.

The terms of Creative Common licenses vary, but if you go to “advanced image search,” you can choose to filter images by the reuse and modification privileges their licenses allow. If you search for Creative Commons images, Google will also throw in other images that are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation license or in the public domain. Google says it’s still a user’s responsibility to click through and verify that the licensing information is actually correct, but that’s still a lot easier than sifting through thousands of image results yourself, looking for one you can use.

If you’re expecting online image editors to be anemic, you’ll be surprised by the extensive features of many of the nominees like Sumo Paint. Sporting a toolbar, image navigator, swatches, and layers, Sumo Paint does more than just crop and rotate images. In addition to having layers, as some other editors do, Sumo Paint has support for blending modes and other advanced layering magic like drop shadow and outer glow. The brushes and ink tools offer a wide variety of shapes and textures. If you like some of the paint-centric features of Sumo Paint, you’ll definitely want to check out the Gravity tool, which creates some pretty interesting abstract paint effects. Sumo Paint also supports drag and drop image opening for pictures you have stored in your Sumo Paint account. Sumo Paint doesn’t require a login for use, but if you sign up for a free account you can store images online and participate in the Sumo Paint community by submitting your work and ranking the work of others.

Visit: www.sumopaint.com

StripedBGs is a simple online tool, which lets you make striped backgrounds with 5 colors. Just fill in the RGB color codes below each stripe and see the effect immediately. If you are not sure which colors you need, just click “Randomize” to get randomly generated striped backgrounds.

When you are done, select an image resolution and download the background to your computer.

Features:

• Striped background generator.
• Generate backgrounds with 5 stripes of different colors.
• Download stripes for a wide range of screen resolutions (from 128×128 px up to 2560×1600 px).
• Free and no sign up.

Visit: www.stripedbgs.com