Top
Freeware For Creatives
Mike
de Sousa, Director, AbleStable
The
freeware that you'll find listed on this page have
all earned their place as great software products,
and all are downloadable today from AbleStable.
Each of the ten freeware titles carry out their
job elegantly and efficiently, and together, this
collection of freeware provides the computer creative
with an essential toolset.
Backup
your data
Perhaps
the single most important function that software
can perform is to backup and restore data. SyncBack
is a powerful freeware program that helps you backup
and synchronise your files to: the same drive; a
different drive or medium (CDRW, CompactFlash, etc);
an FTP server; a Network; or a Zip archive. Apart
from a comprehensive array of options, SyncBack
also ships with an extensive help file.
Keep
your data secure
Advanced
File Security is a very simple and effective
file encryption and decryption program that ensures
your data is kept secure. The DES (Data Encryption
Standard) algorithm is the most widely used encryption
algorithm in the world and provides good security
for home users.
Open
files, folders, and programs fast
TrayBar
is a great program launcher for the Windows platform
that lets you launch your favourite programs from
a system tray menu. When Traybar is launched an
icon in the system tray appears. When you mouse
over the icon a menu pops up. From there you can
launch all your programs, fire up a particular Windows
folder, or open a file you define. A broad range
of configuration options allow you to change the
order, add separators, and anything else you'll
likely want to customise.
View
your email
Pimmy
Email is an outstanding email client that
allows the user to check multiple email accounts,
and to leave the original messages on the server.
The size of the program, and the fact that it can
be fired up from an exe file without the need for
instillation also makes this an ideal email program
to use when on the move.
Manage
Your fonts
The
Font Thing is a very well produced and
comprehensive font viewer and management. The program
shows a navigation panel where you select the fonts
you want to view or manage, and a viewing panel
where you define how you'd like to see the selected
font. Several font windows may be open simultaneously,
the screen layout and font browsing settings are
saved on exit and restored when you next run the
program, and there's even a great online help manual.
Make
Screenshots
MWSnap
is a small yet powerful program for snapping (capturing)
images from selected parts of the screen. The program
is capable of capturing the whole desktop, a highlighted
window, an active menu, or a fixed or free rectangular
part of the screen.
Define
Colours
Color
Cop is a multipurpose color picker for
anyone who works with colours on a computer. It
features an eyedropper, variable magnification levels,
3 by 3 and 5 by 5 average sampling, snap to websafe,
color history, and a complementary color palette.
In addition Color Cop will convert RGB decimal values
to Hexadecimal color codes.
Manage
your finance
PLCash
is a powerful personal finance program with a raft
of features to help manage your money. If you're
an independent creative professional who needs to
keep a track on your incomings, outgoings, assets,
investments, it's all here, and what's more, it's
free!
Measure
screen elements precisely
JRuler
can make vertical and horizontal measurements to
pixel accuracy, and can be one of the most frequently
used and essential software tools of a web or screen-based
designer. This is a well designed and well executed
ruler that provides flexible and robust features.
Find
the perfect colour
Color
Scheme Designer is a program that helps
you quickly create a colour scheme that can be used
in your web design and multimedia projects. The
program assists the user by grouping colours into
complimentary and tonally similar groups as defined
by colour theory.
Conclusion
Each
of the programs featured on this page show that
freeware can deliver elegant, robust, and powerful
solutions to everyday tasks that more than match
many commercial software programs. If you've never
used a freeware program before you'll not find better
examples of high quality programs than those featured
here. Congratulations and thanks goes to all the
developers for their generosity and skill in creating
such useful software that is free to use.
For more freeware that encourages creativity visit
our Freeware Area.
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