[Technical_1]

One of the sites I help at has a Folding @ Home team that does protein folding for Stanford U. They have a standard picture format for putting your stats in your signature (Kind of like the one I use in my signature here for the Trusted Helper) that is .png format. It looks like this:



It also has two pictures that overlay onto it. They are:



and



The first one is the background and is the old logo. I would like to add the text for Member, Points, WU and Rank and put it into this .png:



to make a new background. I may have to resize it a bit as it seems to be a different size than the others. I don't have Photoshop and this is probably the only time I'll ever need to edit one of these. Is there a cheap way to get it to work? I've downloaded a couple of .png editors and I haven't been able to make heads or tails of it (had my head in the Malware too long). I think the second and third pics are maybe transparent .png's and the first one is not. I'm not sure.

Any ideas?

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Irfanview "does" .png files, you can save them as a bitmap and edit them with Paint to include text and then save them as .png with Irfanview, or even Paint in some windows versions.

[Tyger]

Irfanview "does" .png files, you can save them as a bitmap and edit them with Paint to include text and then save them as .png with Irfanview, or even Paint in some windows versions.

[ghetto_smurf]

You can use a freeware program called Pixia. It handles layers pretty well, and you can save the final result in a .png format, as well as a host of other formats. It's not as powerful or detailed as Photoshop, but it works well. You can get it here: http://park18.wakwak.com/~pixia/

[dsenette]

if you wanna get real special you could also use "the gimp"...almost photoshop...but free (a little funky to use)...alternately you could attach the files here and one of us could do it for you...since this is a one time deal

Edit:...though...you being from NC..i think it might be against the tennessee constitution for me to help you in any way

[Technical_1]

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I'm going to try the pixia and the irfanview (though I think I've already tried that one, can't really remember). I have taken the paint advice and tried to modify it that way. Here's the result:



but for some reason the quality is not as expected when it's viewed in the actual signature. Here's a look at it in action.

I opened the .png in Paint, no problem. Even saved it as .png straight out of paint and no problem, except the quality.

As I said before, I'm going to give some of the suggestions above a shot and see if they work out.

@ dsenette, Thanks for the offer. I have had a suggestion of doing one in a white background that just has the B&W logo of the TCG part and the text, so it's easier to read, so this may not in fact be the only one after all. Plus, I don't want you to get arrested for treason.

I know how hard that must have been for you (being from kn-ARGH!-xville Tenn-ARGH!-see ). As long as your not a Duke fan we're good. I actually have a friend that works for Philips in Knoxville. He's a big time Vols fan.

Thanks guys/gals.

[JaceMan]

For anyone else who comes across this thread seeking similar information...

List of free graphic editors and viewers for Windows...

Paint.NET
GIMP
Pixia
Irfanview
XnView
DrawPlus
PhotoPlus
VCW VicMan's Photo Editor
ImageForge
Ultimate Paint
PhotoFiltre
ArtRage (look for link for "Free Edition"
Brush Strokes
Painter 25
Artweaver
Picasa
Project Dogwaffle (updated very seldom as the author concentrates mainly on a commercial program now)
PaintStar
Image Analyzer

And there are many, many more. This is merely a list of the programs that are now, or have been at one time or another, been installed on one of my own systems. Also note that while I say that these programs are for Windows that several of these packages are also available for Linux, BSD, and/or Mac OS X.

Hope it helps! Cheers!

- Jace

P.S. I'll append to the list as I come across other packages that I demo myself that I think are worth mentioning, because for 90% of us paying for professional image editors is not necessary since we aren't... well, professionals! And this certainly beats piracy!

[Dragon]

Jaceman:

Another good one is Photobie, I am entering a partnership with the creator of this program, it's layout is similar to Paintshop Pro In my opinion. It's great for image manipulation.

you can get it here:
http://www.photobie.com/

here is the general info on it.

a complete image editing software customized for photo retouching. supports Photoshop filter(.8BF) plugins, provides an advanced screen capture tool, the simpliest gif animation tool, and a photo framing tool.