What better way to add some color to someone's holiday than with a coloring book? With Kalle Svenson's Colorize your photos, converting your existing photos into ones with a coloring book effect is a simple drag and drop away. After dragging in your photos, you can make granular adjustments to the levels (fewer or more) of detail, as well as black and gray levels. In the above photo, my man Tobias Funke, originally covered up in Blue Man Group blue, has been colorized so that I can color him into whatever hue of blue my heart desires.
One thing missing in the app that I'd like added is the ability to compile a coloring book. But this isn't that big an issue, as one can compile PDFs using Preview.app. Also, if you already own Adobe Photoshop, you may find that some of its built-in filters achieve a similar effect.
These things aside, Colorize your photos is a straightforward and easy-to-use app suitable for both kids and the kids within us. Colorize your photos is available for purchase for USD $24.95, and as a free download trial.
TUAW has 2 free licenses of Colorize your photos to give away to TUAW readers. To enter, leave a comment about the pictures you'd most want to turn into a coloring book.
The rules:
Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.
To enter, leave a comment below.
The comment must be left by Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 11:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time.
You may enter only once.
Two winners will be selected in a random drawing.
Prize: One free license of Colorize your photos (retail value USD $24.95).
Funcom is trying to do all it can to get new customers to try their fantasy MMO Age of Conan and today they are giving new players a chance to play the game for free for an unlimited amount of time instead of the typical seven or 14 day trial offer.
Starting today anyone can download and play the game for free from level one to level 20 which Funcom states covers the entire Island of Tortage. Players can stay and play up to that level for as long as they want with as many characters as they want. The catch? You must download, register and begin playing the game before January 1.
As you can probably tell by looking at our front page, last night's Spike Video Game Awards show was a pretty prolific source of gaming news. From the big reveals of games like Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2, to new trailers for Crackdown 2 and Halo: Reach, to ... well, the actual awards, it was a pretty busy night for all parties involved.
We've collected all the stories, trailers, and winners of each award in this post to prevent you from hunting through our archives -- or our hateful, hateful liveblog -- to find what you're looking for. You'll find them all listed after the jump!
I always thought it would be cool if you could customize the background image of the Mac's login screen. That's the image you see behind the login panel when you turn your Mac on (if you have disabled Automatic Login in System Preferences). Why? Because if I could have the login image match my desktop image it would create a more fluid transition if, when I entered my password, the login box would fade away and my desktop and all its items would seamlessly appear. Necessary? No. Cool? Heck, yeah!
Until Apple gets around to building this functionality into the OS, I'm going to show you how to do it on your own.
Step 1: Set your desktop background image. Open up 'Desktop and Screen Saver' in System Preferences and select your desired desktop image.
Over the past few days, several patent applications by Apple have been unearthed -- here's a recap.
Universal Dock Apple flied a patent for a more "universal" dock for iPods and iPhones. This dock would be made of an elastic, sponge-like material, and would conform to any shape, instead of having to find a dock adapter. Silly putty? Spage-age memory foam? We're not sure what the magical morphing material would be, but not having to deal with bunches of little adapters for each iPod would be terrific.
Tamper-resistant indicators Apple also filed a patent for a "sticker" which would show evidence of tampering. If you would open the casing of an Apple product, the casing could be attached to a sticker, which would also be attached to a part inside the casing, and would indicate if the casing had been opened. This would be similar to the liquid sensors that Apple has been putting in iPhone and recent iPod models. It also sounds similar to the same sorts of stickers you see warning you that you'll violate your warranty if you break the seal. This warning is seen frequently on hard drives, but would Apple use this to preclude 3rd-party battery replacements? We hope not.
iPod motion controls Apple also filed a patent for controlling an iPod with motion. It would use an accelerometer, which is currently found in the iPod nano, iPod touch and iPhone. There's the "Shake to Shuffle" that's been a part of 4th and 5th generation iPod nano models, and the iPhone and iPod touch since iPhone OS 3.0, which allows to skip to a random song by shaking the device. Further motion-based controls may allow you to scroll by tilting, or move to the next song by "flicking" the device in your hand. Either way, you'll want to turn it off before you go dancing in an iPod ad.
As with all patent applications, it doesn't mean that these features could be released, it just gives a general idea on what Apple has been focusing on.
Before the dust settled on the beginning of this year's Video Game Awards on Spike, the first surprise announcement was the revelation that Batman: Arkham Asylum would get a sequel. Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 -- which is what we'll call it until an official title is revealed -- presumably continues where the original critically acclaimed Rocksteady title left off, and was revealed via diabolical plot from Batman's Nemesis The Joker. Attempting to gas those in attendance, Mark Hamill's threatening vocals reverberated throughout the audience revealing a sequel people "didn't expect." After smashing through sales charts and the assumptions that all licensed titles are crap, we expected nothing less. Take that, Joker!
Update: Hi-res video has been added above! Also, the official site is up at arkhamhasmoved.com.
I always thought it would be cool if you could customize the background image of the Mac's login screen. That's the image you see behind the login panel when you turn your Mac on (if you have disabled Automatic Login in System Preferences). Why? Because if I could have the login image match my desktop image it would create a more fluid transition if, when I entered my password, the login box would fade away and my desktop and all its items would seamlessly appear. Necessary? No. Cool? Heck, yeah!
