Video and Photo editing the Web 2.0 way
If you have any experience with video and photo editing and use software like Final Cut, Premiere and/or Photoshop, you know there are some simple jobs you would rather not have to open your power app to complete. Who wants to fuss with Final Cut to convert a .mov to an .mpeg or Photoshop to resize or crop an image for posting online, emailing or tons of other uses.
I've kept my eye on a few web 2.0 sites and have used a few extensively to do these exact types of jobs for some time now. After putting together and editing a video recently, I wanted to post it in several different formats for mac and pc users to view without having to download additional software, so I used both Zamzar and Media Convert to get the job done and post copies of the video in .wmv, .mov, .xvid and .mp4 formats.
Zamzar will let you convert image, document, audio and video files smaller than 100 mb in size whereas Media Convert also converts ringtones, vector documents, office documents and compressed archives. Media Convert has a much wider range of files to convert and you can either upload a file or point to a url, but the limit is 50 mb. Both web 2.0 services are completely free to use and while they do take some time with bigger files, it's a lot better and faster than having to wait for your favorite video app to encode each different format.
If you want to do more than converting formats for photos, the serices I've been using are Quick Thumbnail and Snipshot, formerly Pixoh.
Quick Thumbnail does exactly what it says. I've used it for making thumbnails for my personal blog and for emailing smaller copies of images I've taken from my digital camera. Usually the images I download from my camera are 1024x768 pixels and a few megabytes each. As you probably know if you have a digital camera and use it, people will always ask if you can email copies of the photos. While I use an Automator action now to batch process and resize many photos, I used Quick Thumbnail to make my photos into 640x480 and decreased file size quite a bit so they were much easier to send and easy to view as well.
According to Quick Thumbnail, it is "the fastest way to resize your pictures and images. Choose an image file, select some resize options, and hit Resize it. Your image will be uploaded to the server and resized, and then any or all of the resized images will be provided in a single convenient view. Not only can you get simultaneous generation of different sizes but you can enlarge your images too."
But what if you want to do more than resize and make thumbnails. How about cropping, rotating, and enhancing photos on the fly as well. That's where Snipshot comes in. With Snipshot, you can edit photos that are up to 10 mb or 25 megapixels by uploading or opening from a url. From there you have four options including resizing, cropping, one-click enhancing and adjusting (brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and sharpness).
Once you've made your edits, you can save to Flickr, as a gif, jpg, pdf, png, psd, or tif. Any edits you make are also non-destructive since there is an undo button in the editing interface. Snipshot is completely free to use and you don't have to signup to use it. It's definitely one of the better web 2.0 apps I've used and continue to use quite often.
Hopefully these give you a few options next time you need to do quick edits or file conversions without taking a load of time and system memory.
I've kept my eye on a few web 2.0 sites and have used a few extensively to do these exact types of jobs for some time now. After putting together and editing a video recently, I wanted to post it in several different formats for mac and pc users to view without having to download additional software, so I used both Zamzar and Media Convert to get the job done and post copies of the video in .wmv, .mov, .xvid and .mp4 formats.
If you want to do more than converting formats for photos, the serices I've been using are Quick Thumbnail and Snipshot, formerly Pixoh.
Quick Thumbnail does exactly what it says. I've used it for making thumbnails for my personal blog and for emailing smaller copies of images I've taken from my digital camera. Usually the images I download from my camera are 1024x768 pixels and a few megabytes each. As you probably know if you have a digital camera and use it, people will always ask if you can email copies of the photos. While I use an Automator action now to batch process and resize many photos, I used Quick Thumbnail to make my photos into 640x480 and decreased file size quite a bit so they were much easier to send and easy to view as well.
According to Quick Thumbnail, it is "the fastest way to resize your pictures and images. Choose an image file, select some resize options, and hit Resize it. Your image will be uploaded to the server and resized, and then any or all of the resized images will be provided in a single convenient view. Not only can you get simultaneous generation of different sizes but you can enlarge your images too."
But what if you want to do more than resize and make thumbnails. How about cropping, rotating, and enhancing photos on the fly as well. That's where Snipshot comes in. With Snipshot, you can edit photos that are up to 10 mb or 25 megapixels by uploading or opening from a url. From there you have four options including resizing, cropping, one-click enhancing and adjusting (brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and sharpness).
Once you've made your edits, you can save to Flickr, as a gif, jpg, pdf, png, psd, or tif. Any edits you make are also non-destructive since there is an undo button in the editing interface. Snipshot is completely free to use and you don't have to signup to use it. It's definitely one of the better web 2.0 apps I've used and continue to use quite often.
Hopefully these give you a few options next time you need to do quick edits or file conversions without taking a load of time and system memory.
 Add Comments
|
Shared on
|
Comments (1)
