Akvis Noise Buster and Heros-journey.info Software for Windows

AKVIS Retoucher
$87 - AKVIS LLC

AKVIS Retoucher is an efficient software for photo restoration and photo retouching. Retoucher does not only remove dust, scratches, stains and other defects that appear on damaged photos but is also able to reconstruct the lacking parts of the photo using the information of the surrounding areas. The work is done automatically; you only have to indicate areas to be restored, push the button, and here you are - the surface becomes smooth and imperfections disappear. It looks like magic when you observe the scratches vanishing before your very eyes.

Use AKVIS Retoucher for the following purposes:
- restore old and damaged photos from your family archive by removing scratches, stains and other defects;
- improve the composition of your photos by removing the date stamp, small irrelevant details (wires, refuse bins, etc) and by extending the image;
- reconstruct the lacking parts of the photo (to restore a torn photo, to extend the borders of a photo (useful in polygraphy)).

AKVIS Retoucher is your reliable tool for increasing productivity!

Retoucher works with black and white and color images. The Retoucher plugin is compatible with Adobe Photoshop, Corel PHOTO-PAINT, Paint Shop Pro and other photo editing software supporting plugins.

AKVIS Retoucher is available as part of the AKVIS Restoration Bundle, packaged with AKVIS Stamp, an $49.00 USD value. AKVIS Restoration Bundle sells for only $109.00 USD, saving $27.00 USD over buying each plug-in separately.

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Whitenoise Computer File Security
$19.99 - Whitenoise Laboratories Inc.

Whitenoise Computer File Security is a fast, easy and secure application to encrypt sensitive files on your hard drive. This application is extremely simple to use and allows you to encrypt any of the files that you wish on your computer by simply pointing and clicking. The files that you select are securely encrypted. The original files are shredded after a quality check to ensure that the encrypted version is accurate. Download this encryption utility to your USB flash drive. You can send secure files to your home in an e-mail or carry them encrypted on the USB key. Files on your computer, should it ever be lost or stolen, will be impossible for a third party to read without your encryption key, and your password information. Computer File Security encrypts any data file including movies, music and photographs, on any storage media,on any Windows 98 or later PC. By a simple drag and drop operation you can select multiple files of various types and encrypt or decrypt them as a group with one simple click. This encryption software, free to try for 90 days, encrypts and pass-word protects data files that you select. You can secure your data on removable drives, flash memory, CD-ROMS, or any external drive, including USB and pen drives. Whitenoise Computer File Security uses the strongest encryption available, 240,000-bit (minimum) Whitenoise encryption. Read what experts say about Whitenoise. Whitenoise has been tested against other available products and is as much as 25-50 times faster in the tests conducted. So if the security is important and you don't want to waste time waiting for your files to be encrypted download the 90 day trial version of Whitenoise PC File Encryption. At the end of the trial you will be able to decrypt files that you have encrypted with the application but will be unable to encrypt any new ones without purchasing the full version. Visit and register for the $100,000 Whitenoise Security Challenge.

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Stress Buster
$18 - ThreadBuilder

Ergonomic software, or break reminder software, designed to prevent Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) and other computer related health problems such as back pain, neck, wrist and shoulder pain, carpel tunnel syndrome, tenosynovitis and tendinitis - often referred to collectively as "upper limb disorders". It can also aid in the recovery from such conditions. It runs quietly in the background, monitoring your computer activity and reminding you to take regular breaks. Stress Buster is easy to install and requires very little setting up yet is extremely effective. As Stress Buster reminds you to take your breaks, you will be surprised at how fast the time goes and how much work you are actually doing.  You can download and try Stress Buster for free for 60 days.

Key Features:

* Three levels of breaks: Short Pause, Short Break and Long Break
* Tailor the break timings to suit your own preferences and working environment
* Each user can maintain their own personal settings
* Monitors your activity and only advises breaks when they are necessary
* Keeps you informed of your computer usage
* Progress indicator shows break time remaining
* Does not store computer activity statistics. Cannot be used to "spy" on your work.
* Snooze or ignore breaks
* Disable the ability to snooze and ignore breaks
* Optionally lock the computer to enforce breaks
* Assign your own sounds to break reminders
* Can be set to run automatically each time you log on to Windows
* Comprehensive help

Make Stress Buster an integral component of your workstation ergonomics now!

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AKVIS Sketch
$72 - AKVIS LLC

AKVIS Sketch is software for conversion of photos into pencil sketches and watercolor drawings. Surprise your friends with realistic color and B&W drawings that imitate the technique of graphite and color pencil, charcoal and watercolor.

Now you do not need to handle a pencil to feel like an artist. All you need to create your original work of art is good taste and AKVIS Sketch.

AKVIS Sketch provides a convincing result and comes very close to hand-drawn works of a human artist. Getting a similar result with the standard tools would require expertise in image editing and extensive manipulation with layers, masks, brushes and applying filters.
AKVIS Sketch has a neat interface with a few sliders. At first you can process the image with the default settings and then touch up the photo adding color, or trying different techniques - from pencil to charcoal or watercolor. You can make the hatching denser or finer and change the pitch angle of strokes. It is possible to save settings as presets for future use.

Home users will be delighted by the neat result of the photo-to-sketch conversion. AKVIS Sketch can bring much fun: a pencil portrait can be a good present for your relatives and friends, a watercolor drawing obtained from your last nature shooting can decorate your room.

The program can be helpful to designers who need to quickly bring images to one style for a web-site or an advertisement booklet.

The program is available in two versions - as a standalone application and as a plug-in to a photo editor.

The batch mode support (only for the plug-in version) allows you to automatically convert a series of images. Just create an Action in Photoshop or Script in paint Shop rpo and apply the plug-in with the same settings to a folder full of images. You can even create comics from home videos in this way!

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AKVIS Enhancer
$69 - AKVIS LLC

AKVIS Enhancer is image enhancement software that detects detail in underexposed, overexposed and mid tone areas of a photo. You can improve detail on a single shot or use the HDRI mode to create an HDR image out of a series of shots.

The tool is extremely useful when a photo lacks detail. For example, when a picture has been taken with the background overexposed, the foreground is hardly discernible (especially annoying when it's a picture of a person.) Or, the background of a picture might be so washed out that you wonder what the scenery was like. If you try to reveal details in highlighted or overshadowed areas using exposure correction (e.g. levels) you run the risk of spoiling the parts of the image that you want unchanged.

The idea of Enhancer is entirely different. AKVIS Enhancer brings out details by intensifying color transition. It means that Enhancer strengthens the difference between adjacent pixels that have different color gradations and therefore reveals not only the details in the shadow but even the details in the overexposed areas and mid-tones.

AKVIS Enhancer is useful not only for correction of family and art photos, but can be effective as well in technical use. Publishers of technical literature can apply Enhancer to show equipment illustrations in detail; doctors can use Enhancer to increase the level of detail on roentgenograms, etc.

The stand-alone version of Enhancer supports HDRI. HDRI (High Dynamic Range Imaging) is a technology that expands the dynamic range of an image and shows details in both shadows and highlights.

The plug-in version of Enhancer supports Photoshop batch processing that allows applying the same settings to a series of images. The plug-in version is compatible with Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Corel (Jasc) Paint Shop Pro, Corel Photo-Paint, Corel Painter, Ulead Photo-Impact, etc.

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AKVIS Stamp
$49 - AKVIS LLC

AKVIS Stamp is a photo retouching tool for seamless defects removal and objects cloning. AKVIS Stamp allows enhancing portraits (as it brilliantly removes wrinkles, scars, scratches, porous skin) and retouching of different image flaws (stains, dust, scratches). Unlike common clone tools, Stamp boasts automatic adjusting of the "patches" to the color range, texture and brightness of the target background.
The stamp tool is similar to the Healing Brush, which first appeared in the 7th version of Adobe Photoshop and remained unique up to this day. Now the healing tool is available for users of other photo editing software, as AKVIS Stamp works under Jasc Paint Shop Pro and Corel Photo-Paint. The tool can be helpful to the users that stick to Adobe Photoshop of earlier versions (v5, 6) and Photoshop Elements.

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