Free Tools

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Here are a number of free tools that I have found to be very useful.

Backups

  • Mozy Easy automatic online backups with 2GB of free storage (a little more space for both you and me if you sign up using referral code K292GA).
  • Directory Compare This handy utility will compare and/or synchronize folders including network shares and can be used for simple backups. Visit the author's home page for more handy tools: http://tp.lc.ehu.es/jma.html
  • CDBurnerXP Burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs for free.

Photography

  • GIMP GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package.
  • CopyTrans HEIC View HEIC files from iOS and easily right click to convert to JPG when needed.
  • Hugin Panorama photo stitcher. You'll also want the autopano-sift-c.exe file which is no longer included with the Hugin installer due to patent concerns.
  • Jpegcrop Fast, lossless image cropping (scroll down to find the program on the page)
  • jhead Exif Jpeg header manipulation tool (can use -autorot flag in conjunction with jpegtran to automatically rotate images based on orientation data stored by cameras that support including many Canon Powershots).
  • jpegtran Lossless jpeg manipulation including rotation (direct link for .exe version is here).
  • ImageMagick I mainly use this for batch picture resizing (mogrify -resize *.JPG 1600x1600)
  • gPhotoShow Photo screen saver with support for multiple monitors
  • Slideshow Slideshow application with support for multiple monitors (not a screen saver, but useful for cycling through images on an extra display for example)
  • Nameexif A tool to automatically rename photos with the date they were shot (Useful for putting pics from multiple cameras in chronological order).

Video

  • OBS Open Broadcaster Software for switching, streaming, etc
  • DaVinci Resolve Video Editor
  • youtube-dl Command line tool for downloading video files
    • For embedded videos: right click on the video, view frame source, copy the frame URL from title bar, add quotes to any & characters (&="&"), then pass to youtube-dl
  • HandBrake Open Source video transcoder
  • MPEG Streamclip Simple video editor that can read multiple formats and export them to QuickTime, DV, AVI/DivX and MPEG-4.
  • VLC media player The cross-platform open-source multimedia framework, player and server
  • VirtualDub Video capture/processing utility mainly geared towards AVI

Networking / Connectivity

  • Firefox Web browser (favorite add-ons include Copy Plain Text, Auto Copy, ShowIP and SwitchProxy Tool)
  • Skype Encrypted text & video chat that just works (even through firewalls)
  • PuTTY Free telnet/ssh/serial client which supports tunneling and much more.
  • FileZilla FTP client which also supports SFTP
  • UltraVNC Remote control software
  • IPerf Command line bandwidth test tool (a graphical front end is also available called JPerf although I haven't used it much).

IT Infrastructure

Security

  • KeePass Password Safe Secure, encrypted password storage with cross platform support including mobile apps.
  • TrueCrypt Should migrate to BitLocker (which comes with Windows) or other tools now instead.
  • RansomFree Free behavior based ransomware protection for your PC.

Other

  • 1-4a-rename A file renamer which renames many files at once (handy for combining pictures from multiple sources and prepending numbers to keep them in order).
  • MSYS2 is a collection of tools and libraries providing you with an easy-to-use environment for building, installing and running native Windows software.