Corel has developed two touch screen applications compatible with Windows 7. These are Corel Paint it! Touch and Corel Digital Studio 2010.

Finger painting with a touch screen application - Photo by naHQun

Corel Paint it! Touch: With this touch screen application artists of all ages can draw, paint and even turn photos into paintings using just their fingertips. Corel Paint it! Touch is available for both PC and Mac. It has 20 different types of artistic media that includes watercolor, oil, acrylic, crayon, chalk, spray paint etc. You can even add fairy dust, among many others, as an effect to your paintings. With Corel Paint it! Touch drawing and painting becomes more fun and easy as you can move, zoom, rotate, and drag your canvas using your fingertips right on the screen. Turning your photos into painting has never been easier. With as few as 3 mouse clicks or taps on the screen you can watch your photo magically turn into a painting. The RealBristle Technology implemented in the software gives your painting an authentic look.

Buy Paint it! Touch from Corel.

Corel Digital Studio 2010: Corel Digital Studio 2010 is a fully integrated multimedia editing software. It contains Corel VideoStudio Express, Corel PaintShop Photo Express, Corel WinDVD, Corel DVD Factory, Corel Instant Viewer, Corel Digital Studio Gadget. It has an easy to use, sleek user interface. With a touch computer you can increase your work flow as it supports many multi-touch gestures to manipulate your photos and videos.

These gestures include: swipe from side to side to browse photos; pinch to zoom; swivel two fingers to rotate or drag images, photo book pages and slider bars. With these touch screen applications you can edit photos, edit videos, make photo albums, burn DVDs, and playback DVDs. After you are done editing your photos or videos you can easily share them on different internet sites like Youtube, Facebook, Flickr or email them to you friends and family using Gmail from the program itself. Corel Digital Studio also allows you to send your photos to Corel’s printing service to get them professionally printed. If you have a TV tuner on your PC, DVD Factory can record TV feeds directly to DVD so that you can view a favorite program when it suits your schedule.

Buy Digital Studio 2010 from Corel.

Technorati Tags: corel digital studio 2010, corel paint it! touch, mac, touch screen applications, touch screen softwares, windows 7

Materials:

• cardboard box
• piece of clear flat sturdy material (glass, plexiglas, …)
• paper (almost any paper)
• webcam or video camera
• computer

When fingers are placed on the surface, they create shadows. The webcam records the shadows and the image is sent to the touch software. For this to work room must not be completly dark. The results will be best when the room lighting is even.

Developed by David Wallen, Christian Moore, Laurence Muller and NUIgroup Community. Visit http://sethsandler.com/multitouch/mtmini/ for more information and download the software.

Technorati Tags: multi touch, touch pad, touch screen applications, Touch Screen Software, touch table

1. Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7

Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 is a collection of touch screen games and other touch screen software.

The Touch Pack includes:

• Microsoft Blackboard, a physics puzzle game.
• Microsoft Garden Pond, a tranquil game that takes place in serene Japanese water gardens.
• Microsoft Rebound, use your fingertips to control spheres with an electrical field between them to catapult a metal game ball into your opponent’s goal.
• Microsoft Surface Globe, application allowing you to explore the earth as a flat 2-D map or as a 3-D globe.
• Microsoft Surface Collage, explore and interact with your photos and arrange them as a desktop background.
• Microsoft Surface Lagoon, a screen saver and interactive water simulation, complete with playful, shy fish.

The best FREE touch screen software you can find.

2. Corel Digital Studio 2010

Corel Digital Studio 2010 is a multimedia content organizer. Organize, view and edit photos, videos and music in one place using your fingers. In addition to burning them to DVDs or CDs Corel Digital Studio supprots uploading and sharing to Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

Check out the video tour of Digital Studio 2010:

3. Corel Paint it! touch

MS Paint may give you the feel of fingerpainting. But for the true fingerpainting experience there is Corel Paint it! touch. Perfect for parents, kids and anyone who likes doodling and sketching. Corel Paint it! touch has a wide range of gesture support – move, zoom, flick, rotate, tap, drag and scroll—right on screen, using nothing but your fingertips. It also includes plenty of fun features such as realistic mixer pallete – a movable mixer palette, you can use to mix colors. I also supports different types of artistic media (such as oil, acrylic and spray paint) and various paper textures.

4. WinDVD Pro 2010

WinDVD Pro 2010 is the leading DVD player software for high-quality video playback. With fully enabled Windows 7 touch screen support, you can control playback, scene selections and browse media library

WinDVD Pro 2010

And the winner?

Sadly, selection of good touch screen software is still quite poor. BumpTop is no longer available for download and Asus is making their software only bundled with their computers (read the Touch Gate software review). With the exception of a few giants, like Microsoft and Corel, no major companies seem to be interested in developing touch enabled software for the PC…

Technorati Tags: touch screen applications, Touch Screen Software, touchscreen applications, touchscreen software, windows 7

Technorati Tags: Multitouch, touch screen, Whiteboard, Wiimote

Touch screen monitors are a device by which we give inputs and take outputs as information without using any other external device. Instead of using a keyboard or mouse.

A touch screen is a display which can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touch or contact to the display of the device by a finger or hand. Touch screens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus.

The touch screen has two main qualities. First, it allows you to interact with what is displayed directly on the screen, where it is displayed, rather than indirectly with a mouse (computing) or touchpad. Secondly, it lets one do so without requiring any intermediate device, again, such as a stylus that needs to be held in the hand.

Touch screen monitors are used in a variety of different applications including POS (point of sale) cash registers, PDA’s (personal digital assistants), ATM’s, car navigation screens, cell phones, gaming consoles and any other type of appliance that requires you to input and receive information.

Types of technology available in Touch Screen. The commonly used are underneath:

• Resistive Touch monitors

A resistive touch screen monitor usually has a coat of very thin electrically conductive and resistive layer of metal. When pressed, the change in electrical current can be measured and the input processed by a computer. While very affordable they only offer about 75% clarity, they can also be easily damaged by objects that are sharp. Resistive touch screen monitors are the most popular types of touch screen monitors used today. They are usually not effected by dust or liquids which make them very reliable.

• Surface Wave Touch Screen Monitors

Surface wave touch screen monitors use ultrasonic waves to process inputs from the screen. Ultrasonic waves flow over the touch screen, when a person touches the pad at a specific location, the wave is absorbed and immediately processed by the computer. While not as common as resistive touch panels, they are used in certain applications. Dust and water can contaminate a surface wave touch screen so it is important to keep the screens properly maintained.

• Capacitive Touch Screen Monitors

Capacitive touch screens are coated with indium tin oxide. This material provides a continuous current across the screen. The current is precisely controlled throughout the touch pad and can be measured by the computer processor, when touched; the screen is able to send the processor specific coordinates to input information correctly. It is important to note that specific objects can only be used on capacitive touch screens. You can not use a stylus or a pencil for instance; usually you will need a bare finger. Capacitive touch screens have high clarity and are not affected by dust or liquids.

• Infrared Touch Screen Monitors

There are two types of Infrared touch screen monitor screens, the first reacts to infrared or thermal waves (heat), unfortunately this technology is slow and does not work well with cold hands or objects. The second type of Infrared touch screen monitors use vertical and horizontal infrared sensors around the perimeter of the touch screen. Creating a grid, the touch screen is able to pinpoint the exact location of where the screen has been touched and send that information to the computer for processing. Infrared touch screen monitors are very durable and are used for industrial and military applications.

Technorati Tags: Touch Screen Computers, Touch Screen LCD Monitor, touch screen monitors

If you want to learn how to develop your very own touch screen applications, either for the iPhone or for the PC, the following quick guide should send you in the right direction.

1. Developing touch screen software for the iPhone

Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK is the best book for anyone who wants to start developing for iPhone and iPod touch.
It delivers a clear picture of the entire development process from registering as an iPhone developer through creation of complete applications.
It is written in a fun and easy-to-follow style and you only need a minimal knowledge of Objective-C.
Best practice coding methodology is used throughout the book and there is a huge amount of code samples illustrating each feature of the iPhone.
Beginning iPhone Development is the definitive guide for iPhone development, and anyone aspiring to develop for the iPhone should get this invaluable reference.

2. Developing multi touch screen software for Windows 7 using Visual Studio and C++.

If want to use iPhone like events (pinch, flip, zoom) on Windows, the best place to start is this Windows 7 online training course.
This unit explains the basics of Windows 7 touch screen software and its APIs: Exercise 1: Build a Multitouch Application. A basic knowledge of C++ is required.

Prerequisites (click on the links to download directly from microsoft):

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
• Windows 7
• The Windows 7 SDK
• A multi touch hardware device

Touch-based interfaces are no longer just a matter of using larger buttons. Since Jeff Han’s demo at the 2006 TED conference and introduction of iPhone, gestural multi-touch software, has spread both on hand-held devices as well as net-books and desktop PC. It’s time for developers to start preparing for the touch screen era.

Technorati Tags: Touch Screen Software