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Some readers may remember the flickering, old-timey, surprisingly three-dimensional GIFs that made a splash on the Internet back in 2008. Writer and artist Joshua Heineman created them from images of 19th and early 20th century stereoscope cards he culled from a collection placed online by the New York Public Library.

Heineman took the two slightly offset images on a given card, separated them, dropped them into Photoshop, and created animated GIFs that quickly "flipped" from one image to the other, over and over (a technique known as "wiggle stereoscopy").

Then, as part of a personal project called "Reaching for the Out of Reach," he posted the GIFs on his Tumblr blog, where they were discovered by the blogosphere and spread far and wide.

Now--thanks to that online fame, and to the New York Public Library's push to reinvent itself in the Internet Age--you too can breathe new three-dimensional life into these stereoscopic artifacts.… Read more

Sharing movies while mobile can be fun, but generally will eat a lot of your monthly bandwidth allowance.

Instead of sharing the entire movie while you're out, why not share a quick animated GIF instead? With GIFDroid for Android, you can take a new or existing video and turn it into an animated GIF that you can send off in seconds to a friend or family member.

First you'll need to install GIFDroid from the Android Market, then open the app.

Step 1: Press either the Select Video or Record Video button. Select … Read more

Media Converter for Android lets you convert images, videos, audio files, and more into just about any compatible format, from PDF to MP4 to you name it. It can even convert video files to MP3s.

Media Converter's interface is as straightforward as it gets. Just launch the app, then choose one of the converter options on the Home screen: Video Converter, Audio Converter, Image Converter, Document Converter, Ebook Converter, or Archive Converter. From there, browse for your file, choose your output format, hit Convert, and watch the magic happen. The app itself actually doesn't do much converting. What … Read more

The Mandelbrot set is a set of points that generates a particular two-dimensional fractal image. Mandelbrot Explorer lets you play around with images produced by both the Mandelbrot set and the similar Julia set. You don't have to be a math nerd to enjoy this program--it's fun to explore even if you have no idea what's going on.

The image created by the Mandelbrot set consists of a circular shape with a cleft in the right side, with several smaller circular shapes and fuzzy-looking bits attached to it. Once you start clicking on it, however, you realize … Read more

It's hard not to prejudge a program called Glitter Frame GIF Maker. We had visions of a program that would likely only be appealing to a 10-year-old girl, and indeed, our prediction wasn't far off. That doesn't make it a bad choice, though--just a program with a limited audience.

The application's interface is plain and fairly easy to navigate. It comes loaded with 10 animated GIF frames, most of which include some combination of flowers, stars, hearts, and bubbles. To apply a frame to an image, simply load the photo you want to use, crop it … Read more

It's not uncommon to have to wait for your graphics software to open and load just to look at a picture, but even dedicated viewers like Microsoft's built-in tools have limitations. Image Eye from FMJ is a free image viewer that doesn't pretend to be Son of Photoshop. Speed is its advantage; it opens high-quality, nondestructive, nonaltering, individual views of nearly 30 digital image types in what we can only describe as "lickety-split." For viewing images, it's all you need.

Image Eye is a compact, zipped download that offers the option to associate it … Read more

Pixia is a free image-editing and drawing program. It's essentially the English language edition of a popular Japanese application. Like many such tools, it offers Photoshop-like capabilities such as layers, multiple undos, and plug-ins; it will even accept Photoshop's plug-ins. The difference, of course, is that Pixia is free, something Photoshop certainly is not.

Pixia's installer is so polite, it even asked to be associated with its proprietary file format. The program's interface resembles similar applications' layouts. Pixia uses pop-ups to configure items like filters and masks, and expandable Palette, Color, Pen, and Layer windows that … Read more

Vectorization sounds complex, but in fact it's the fairly simple process of converting raster images, which we'll call "pictures," into vector sets that can be used in CAD, GIS, CNC, and similar digital design, control, and automation environments. Simple, yes; but elaborate in methods and processes. That's where WinTopo Standard enters the picture. It's a free tool for extracting vectors from JPEG, GIF, PNG, and other images. It's essentially a pared-down version of a pro tool, but its results are more than good enough for millions of users, apparently.

WinTopo's interface resembles … Read more

Uploading images is to Net newbies what parallel parking is to new drivers: it takes a lot of trial and error to get it right. And Megabyte-size snapshots hog Facebook bandwidth. Fileminimizer Pictures 3 from Balesio is a free tool that promises to help solve both issues. It resizes image files by up to 98 percent without zipping and without sacrificing quality. Its Facebook Uploader Module also makes it easy to post your pictures on Facebook.

Fileminimizer's interface is businesslike but attractive, with subtle but effective use of color and highlighting to differentiate the various icons and controls. Most … Read more