{rw_text}Giveaway of the day for November 10, 2008 is ImagePut.
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• Has built in screen capture tool.
• Supports multiple free image hosting services.
• Can upload in bulk.
• You can save images to make an album.
• Has a built in image editor.
• Has advance album displaying tools/skins.

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• No PhotoBucket.com support.
• Why do you need a program to upload images onto websites that you can just visit and upload directly?
• No “registered fine” confirmation.
• Flikr upload does not seem to work.
• I cannot find a way to manage pictures once they are uploaded (for some services).
• Can only upload 5 images at once.

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{rw_score}
{for=”Features as Described” value=”8″}Most features work as they claim.
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{for=”Ease of Use” value=”10″}Very easy to use. Great interface.
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{for=”Usefulness” value=”5″}Why would anyone need a program to upload images onto websites that you can just visit and upload by yourself? The only useful feature of this program is the album making tool.
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When I first saw this software, I thought “are you serious?”. The main feature of this program is uploading images or you onto select free image hosting services.

After you install the program, run it. Go to Help -> Enter License Key. Copy and paste in the following:

[Removed as per request of GOTD administrator. See Readme.txt that came in the .zip file for registration information.]

You will not get any message confirming that you entered a valid key. Nor will the “Enter License Key” option disappear from the Help menu. If you enter an invalid key, it will say “License Key is incorrect”. To make sure you entered the key, go to Help -> About and see if the key is listed there.

To use this program is pretty easy. Click the “+” sign that is located on the top bar and browse to whatever image you want, and click open. Any, and all, formats are supported. To remove a file just click the “-” sign. Once you have a file loaded into ImagePut, you can rotate it counterclockwise or clockwise (the 4th and 5th buttons from the left). You can also edit the image (the 6th button from the left). The image editor is just a step above Paint: you crop, resize, remove red eye, add text, lines, boxes, a pre-defined watermark picture, add filters (grayscale, negative, sepia, edge), and add effects.

Once you have all the images you desire loaded into ImagePut, you can do two things:

• You can upload your images
• You can save your images as an album on your computer.

Before you start uploading images, go to Tools -> Service Settings. From that window you can set your settings for all the services that are supported. You can also specify which service you want to be selected by default when uploading images. The following services are supported:

• ImageShack.us
• Flickr.com (if you have trouble getting Flick.com to work, read comments below)
• GlowFoto.com
• Picoodle.com
• Tinypic.com
• Xs.to
• ImageBam.com

When you upload pictures via ImagePut, you can select what service you want to use for each individual picture. Just click on the picture, and on the right hand menu there is a drop down menu called “Hosting”. Your default service will be selected but you can specify different services for each picture if you want. To upload a picture, just click the blue arrow on the top bar (7th button from the left).

Note one thing: When uploading pictures, it seems that ImagePut just uploads the pictures onto the servers indiscriminately since you have the option to enter an e-mail and create an account). What I mean is that, it does not upload pictures onto your, for example, ImageBam.com, account. It will just upload it onto their server and it will give you the link to your image. So I do not see any way of managing your pictures once you upload them. The only exceptions to this are Xs.to and Flickr.com where you can enter your email under Service Settings and any images uploaded will be set to that account. You can also only upload 5 images at a time. Once you upload an image, the location (URL) of the image will be given in the right hand menu at the bottom.

To save all the pictures you have inputted into ImagePut into an album on your computer, click the 8th button from the left on the top bar. Choose the title of your album and the location of your album on your desktop and click “Create”. All your pictures will be saved into one folder on your computer. There is one really great feature I like about the album making tool. The best feature of this program is there: the program has a lot of pre-customized “skins” that give your album a unique look – looks that you would otherwise need Flash to make (to check them out go to Tools -> Make Albumn -> Skin).

There is one extra feature that comes with this program: the screen capture feature. Its the third button from the left. You can capture a designated area, active window, an object, or an icon (by default the icon is set to designated area) . You can also capture the full screen by pressing F12 or going to Image -> Capture Screen. Each screenshot taken is automatically put into ImagePut and is ready to upload if you want.

Free Alternatives:

Just upload image directly from websites

If you need to upload your image onto a free web hosting service, create an account and upload your image directly to the website by going to the website in your web browser and manually uploading. For example, if you want to upload images to ImageShack.us, go to ImageShack.us, login to your account (or create one) and upload it via their uploading mechanism. That way, not only do you not have to pay for this software (even tho it is free today) but you also are able to manage your images, in case you want to delete them at a later time.

Jing

Jing is not a ImagePut alternative in the sense that is does not do everything that ImagePut does. But what Jing does do is give you the ability to take screen shots of capture your screen and directly upload it onto 1) Screencast.com 2)Flickr.com 3) An FTP server you designate.

For my earlier review of Jing:

With Jing not only can you take screenshots, but you can also capture video. Before I describe what this program does, let me tell you that the first time you open Jing you must enter an Email, Username, and Password to create an account with them. Otherwise you cannot use Jing. So if you are not willing to do that, just skip this program.

Back on topic, once you sign up with an account, Jing launches. It places a little circle at the top of your screen (you can drag this circle and dock it anywhere on the top/bottom/left/right). When you place your mouse over this circle, you can chose the options of “History” (screen capture history), “Options” or “Capture”. Once you click on capture, cross hairs appear on the screen and you click the area that you want to ‘capture’. Jing automatically detects active windows and their parts, so you can easily do one click capture of designated windows. Once you have captured an area, a small box comes up asking you if you want the designated area to be captured as an image or video (you also have the option of redo and cancel). At the same time, before you choose image or video, you can resize the capture area in case you did not fully capture what you desired. Once you click image, for a screenshot, the area you captured shows in a window. In that window, you can add arrows to the picture, text, a frame, or even highlight an area. At the same time, at the bottom of the window there are options to send the screenshot directly to Screencast.com, Flickr.com, an FTP server, or just save it to your desktop.

You just have to try this program to truly understand it. The learning curve is fairly small.

Paint.net

This again does not do all of what ImagePut does, but it is a free, open source, light weight, feature filled image editor in case you need one. It was originally designed to replaced Paint in windows but never did. It is an excellent program that is compared to the likes of Photoshop and GIMP.

Flash Slideshow Maker Now! (thx Joe)

This is a free program that makes flash albums/slideshows just like ImagePut does, but it has more templates to choose from. You can also customize/edit the templates if you wish.

***I think I was duped. On the website it said “download a free version”. I did, and now after some research it seems it is only an evaluation version. When you go to Help -> Register, under code it says “Evaluation Key”. I am not sure what this means, since the website claimed a free version, but if going by the traditional meaning of “evaluation” when concerning programs, then this program will expire sometime soon, probably after 30 days.***

Google Picasa (thx Stephen)

Google Picasa is one-in-all image management software. Picasa will scan your computer for images and add them to its menu. You can manage all your images directly from Picasa. You can also use Picasa as your default image viewer. You can make movies of your images, or collages. You can directly upload your images onto Blogger.com or Google Earth or Picasa Web Album.The interface is beautiful.

Picasa is an excellent program, even better then ImagePut in my opinion since it has more advanced options, but it is not really an alternative to ImagePut. Google Picasa has a bit of a learning curve as opposed to ImagePut. I find with Picasa you can only upload images onto Picasa Web Album and not other free image hosting services. The movies you make from your pictures are .wmv movies not flash movies, so they are “browsable” (meaning you can’t interact with them like clicking on pictures) like the ones you make from ImagePut.

PMnet Verdict: I have found only one need for ImagePut: to make albums. The album making feature is great, having built in abilities to make albums look like flash files. Other then that there really is no need for ImagePut.

If you want to upload your images onto a free image hosting service, load up their website, create an account if needed, and upload images that way.

Use external image editors like Paint.net if you want to edit your images.

You can use Jing if you need to be able to directly upload screenshots onto websites like Flickr.com or Screencast.com.

Google Picasa is an excellent software if you do not mind only being able to upload to Picasa Web Album, mind spending a few minutes learning how to use it, and do not need flash movies.

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