Black and white is fine. But I'm looking for something (hopefully free) that'll help me create romantic pictures for my wife. The less I spend on the software, the more I can spend on those flowers she likes.

Well, it's good to see Savio's a romantic, and we have just the program for him. We recommend you take a look at 2 Pic from Moor Computer Products. This program takes two images (one on the left side and one on the right side), and performs a wide variety of effects, including blends and filters.

As a test, we took two pictures from our trusty clipart collection and opened them in 2 Pic, as shown in Figure A.

FIGURE A


We took a nice romantic sunset and a picture of a pretty woman. Roll over picture for a larger image.

As you can see in Figure A, there's a series of tabs along the bottom. We tried a bunch of effects, but the one that generated the most romantic feel was on the Fade tab. We chose Radial, then hit the Start button, as shown in Figure B.

FIGURE B


We'll do a radial fade Roll over picture for a larger image.

You can see the result in Figure C.

FIGURE C


We've created a very romantic picture. Roll over picture for a larger image.

We've created a very romantic picture in a very short time, using a free piece of software. Ain't the Internet grand?

David Gewirtz is the author of How To Save Jobs and Where Have All The Emails Gone? For more than 20 years, he has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com and you can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/DavidGewirtz.