The site www.giveawayoftheday.com provides interesting utility programs for free.  One program is offered each day and the downloaded program must be installed within the day.  The software is licensed and free.  It is fully functional and is not a limited time trial.  The software vendors increase their installed base and get word of mouth publicity for their products long after the GOTD availability expires.  Programs would typically cost $15 to $60 if you were buying them from the publisher but for one day they are free.  Your license from the publisher does not include updates.

So the GOTD website is worth checking.  You will find some of the programs are not ready for prime time – but there are comments from users who have installed the program to help you evaluate before you download.  And there are, from time to time, some real gems on offer.  I include a GOTD summary on my Yahoo! portal newspage so I see the daily offering each day.

TODAY’S GIVEAWAYOFTHEDAY is Inpaint 2.0

Inpaint 2.0 does one thing – it removes an object from a still photo and fills in the space with “intelligent” pixels from the surrounding area.  Photoshop Elements users will recognize the Clone Tool application.  But this program claims to be quicker and more automated. 

I have not yet used the program, since I wanted to give readers the full 19 hour window to download and install.  But the comments from users were quite positive.  As you would expect, the larger the object, the less satisfactory the result – depending on the surrounding background.  It sounds like it may be necessary to work on parts of a larger object at a time – which begins to sound like the time consuming Clone Tool in Photoshop.  But the description sounds like the process can be more automated and the selection tool available can be a polygon ro accompdate an irregular shape.  You can UNDO and you can run the process several times to improve a result, according to the description.

If you find yourself spending a lot of time with the Clone Tool to remove an object from an image, you may want to look at Inpaint 2.0. If you look today, the price is right.