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When the good people at Roxio asked if we wanted to take a look at Roxio Creator 2011, I jumped at the chance and tagged Dylan to do the honors for us. His work is solid, and I knew he’d give an honest review. From what I’ve seen in this video, Roxio Creator 2011 is a fantastic overall application that will fit most of your media needs. We’ll tell you later in this writeup how to win one of three copies for yourself!

Roxio Creator allows you to edit in 3D, and create standard-definition and high-definition Hollywood-style 3D movies on DVD from 2D and 3D input. Free 3D glasses are included with your purchase!!!

Easily edit your standard and HD videos. Add picture-in-picture effects, titles and scrolling credits. Rotate video with one click, auto-adjust color, brightness and contrast. Access and share the videos and movies on your PC from the Internet virtually anywhere, anytime.

Trim unwanted parts, combine multiple tracks together, normalize the volume across the mix and add fun effects. Create advanced playlist projects with crossfades, transitions and audio mashups. Dylan reports that this software is quite good at audio editing. He would know, as he’s a professional podcaster and works with audio files every day.

The photo-editing portion of the suite is not one that Dylan felt comfortable enough to do an in-depth review of. He admits to not being a photo editor. However, he found the software to be intuitive and simple to use… yet allowed him to make photos look very VERY good with just a few easy clicks.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one suite, Roxio Creator 2011 just may be the one for you! If you’d like to win one of three copies for yourself, make sure you’re following me on Twitter. Send me an @ Tweet and include the hashtag #RoxioCreator before noon eastern time on Friday, December 17th. Three people who do this will be chosen at random to win a copy for themselves. That’s all there is to it!

How to Edit Audio and Video with Roxio Creator 2011 (and a Giveaway!)

Beginning today, Picasa users can choose to edit their photos in-line using Picnik. You no longer have to leave the site to edit your pics using your favorite (and mine!) photo editor. Simply choose “Edit” on any picture in your album, and choose “Edit in Picnik.” This announcement comes just a few short months after Google purchased the popular photo-editing giant, and is one that many of us have been waiting for.

When you save your edited photo back to your PWA album, you can either replace the old image or save a new copy. If you’re not a fan or user of Picasa, never fear! Picnik “will retain its own branding and web presence.” The application remains free to use. However, subscribers who pay a small fee will receive access to more advanced editing tools and additional stickers, fonts and photo effects. Picasa will automatically detect whether a user is a subscriber or free user. Your capabilities will adjust accordingly – without your having to do anything.

It will be interesting to see what else Google has in store for Picnik. Will we be seeing this integration on other Google-owned properties?

Google Introduces Picnik on Your Picasa Albums

Aviary has long been one of the best online photo editing services. Up until now, people were required to pay about $25.00 a year in order to take advantage of everything the site offers. However, thanks to recent funding increases from outside sources, the service is now 100% free! Existing paying customers will no longer be billed, and those that signed up in the last 30 days will get a full refund.

Aviary is quite powerful, yet simple to use. It allows you to do so much more than apply simple edits to your pictures. There are vector editor, color editor, and even image markup tools available. You can use Aviary to create logos and websites, or try out your own color palette! There is no limit to what you can do with this excellent image site, other than your own imagination. Aviary has been compared with Adobe’s free online version of Photoshop. However, you are limited to only 2 GB of usage with Adobe. Why limit yourself in any way? You no longer have to with Aviary!

Go ahead and try it out, and let us know what your thoughts are. I’ve been playing around with some of my pictures, and I’m pretty impressed with the results. I’m thankful that someone in our community posted the news about this earlier. We have such a talented group of people on all of our sites! What have you been posting – and reading – today?

• Please! Buzz me! While you’re at it, grab your own unique Buzz URL.
• Is Microsoft replacing FUD with hype?
• How do banks fail to provide excellent online security?
• Attitude makes a human a human!
• How do you properly interpret the beeping codes on your computer?
• Do you think the iPad will be the laughingstock of Apple?
• What are your thoughts on government-run healthcare systems?
• Can Twitter search be made even better?
• What really happened to MySpace?
• Do you remember your first hard drive?
• How would you like to rent a Supercomputer?
• If you’re flying American Airlines, you can BUY a blanket and pillow to use.
• Attention Geek guys! Are you clueless when it comes to Valentine’s Day?
• Some junk doesn’t need any trunk.
• What software works best for converting video without carrying a huge price tag?

Make sure you stop by our Software Center to see what new deals we have for you today!

Edit Photos Online for Free

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You know I’m a software addict. I like all kinds of software, and I especially love software that does what it needs to do VERY well – and if it’s available on both Mac OS X and Windows. I believe I may be able to get you a coupon for the Tiffen Dfx.

The new version of Tiffen Dfx features multiple masking and layering capabilities with its Photoshop and Aperture plug-ins, previously only offered with the Stand-alone edition, plus more than 1,000 new filters and effects including: Ambient Light, Close Up Lens, Dot, Eye Light, Flag, Gobo, HFX Star, Haze, High Contrast, Ice Halos, Rainbows, Sepia, Sky, Soft Contrast, Soft Light, Warm Center Spot, Warm Polarizer, Water Droplets, Wide Angle Lens and 812 Warming.

There are 133 Tiffen filters included in the software, and hundreds of effects are sprinkled throughout the various filters. There’s a very wide array of them. Being the visual person that I am, it’s nice to see the thumbnails that the program will give you upon opening it up.

You can save your presets in order to use them again at a later date, with ease. This makes it nice if you have a project you have to go back and work on at a later time. It’s also great for graphic artists.

Masks are usually difficult to do. However, the EZ Mask (one of 7 different mask types) lets users create multiple masks with just a few quick clicks. With the multiple layering, people can easily add multiple filters on a single Photoshop layer. Filters and masks can be easily copied between Dfx layers.

I can’t get over how simple this is. If you do any kind of photo editing, you really need to check this out. It’s an amazing program… and cross platform!

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How to Create a Digital Photo Mask with Ease

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When you’re in front of your own computer, you probably have your favorite tools and programs installed. What happens when you’re away from your desk, or you can’t find a good desktop tool you can use. You can then turn to the Web. We’ve discussed some of these web-based apps before. Today, we’ll talk about a web-based photo editor.

PicResize is not only free, there are no accounts to sign up for. It’s easy to use. Simply upload your photo. Then click in the upper left-hand corner, where you want your new photo to “begin”. Move your mouse down and to the right, and click again at the bottom right where you want the box to end. Click “Continue”, and the picture is automatically cropped for you.

Once it has been cropped, choose a size to make the photo. You can also choose from one of many other options, such as sharpen, blur, fading, and several others. Once it is finished, you will see the following:

Success! PictureName.jpg has been resized.

Since we only resize your images and do not give you webspace to host them, you must Download and Save your resized image immediately! Your resized image will be automatically deleted from our servers within 20 minutes.

Click one button to view your photo and make sure it looks how you want it. Then you can save the image to your computer.

What other cool web-based applications do you use to make life easier? Which ones are the best… that you can’t live without?

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How do You Edit Images Without Installing Software?