Have I sung the praises of GraphicConverter lately? Because if I haven’t, then I’m long overdue. It’s possibly the coolest shareware graphic conversion and editing program out there for the Mac. Without Graphic Converter, I’d still be lurking around in Minnesota, working on the first days’ pictures for the Webcast.
GC is an incredibly cool program. I hope the program will excuse my use of the diminutive, but after working with it on over 9000 photos, I feel that we’re on a first-name basis. This $30 shareware program has two features that make the $500+ Adobe suite look weak.
First it has an incredible ability to browse whole folders of images with full-sized previews. Lots of other programs can do similar stuff, but GC is FAST. Just drag a folder full of pictures onto the program icon and you get a set of thumbnails down the left side of the screen, which you can page through with the arrow keys, and a screen sized image on the right, which you can double-click to open full size.
Second is an incredibly intuitive tool called “Rotate with Line.” Imagine for a minute that you’ve got a photo of someone diving for a volleyball that’s just been spiked over the net with incredible force. Everything is crisp and clear, from the seams on the ball to the little drops of sweat flinging off the ends of the athlete’s hair. Unfortunately, the photographer was shooting at a bizarre angle that makes the poor ball player look like she’s about to slide off of a tilted tabletop.
All you need to do is open the picture in GC, select “Rotate with Line” from the Picture -> Rotate menu and draw a line along the pipes that are supporting the net. Suddenly, the whole picture rotates so that the horribly tilted net support is straight up and down. Gravity restores itself, the player is safe, and a decent photo of an action event becomes one of your favorite pictures from the whole games.
