ObviousIdea

Obviousidea wishes you a Happy New Year 2025!

Fabrice ObviousIdea , , , ,

This year has been a remarkable one for Obviousidea: five years after the release of Light Image Resizer 6, we have finally launched version 7 of our software for Windows, Light Image Resizer 7.

However, we acknowledge some missteps. Specifically, some users felt it was unfair to pay again for this update. Similar to a new iPhone model or the latest version of a car, we opted to offer perpetual licenses rather than subscriptions. These licenses, referred to as “lifetime licenses,” remain valid: licenses for version 6 do not expire but are not valid for version 7 updates. The costs of maintenance, development, and storing previous versions are significant, preventing us from offering major updates for free. Nevertheless, we understand your frustration and have implemented discounts for existing customers.

Regarding Light Image Resizer 7, there is still room for improvement. Many new features lack sufficient documentation and will evolve in 2025 based on your feedback. Whether you are a personal or professional user, understanding how you use our software is crucial for us. This helps us deliver better tutorials and features tailored to your needs (e.g., for real estate agencies, photographers, bailiffs, or garage owners).

In 2025, we will continue improving PhotoLikr, our photo sorting software, which now supports new formats like JPEG XL and offers innovative features such as reading prompts from generative AI tools like Fooocus, Stable Diffusion, or ComfyUI. With the end of PhotoOnWeb, Photolikr will be updated to easily cull your best photos, and share them in online albums.

We are also delighted to see that GreenCloud Printer users are increasingly contributing to reducing their ecological footprint by saving paper and ink daily.

This year, we also plan to expand our services, particularly in the legaltech sector, by offering solutions for managing large volumes of documents, images, or audio files with OCR and voice-to-text transcription technologies. These tools are very useful in modern world legal investigation, when proof of evidence are deeply hidden in our large archives of Facebook Messenger or Instagram private messages.

We sincerely thank you for your support and encourage you to share your experiences with our products and your needs. Your feedback forms the foundation of our future development.

Fabrice Meuwissen
CEO and founder, Obviousidea

Light Image Resizer and PhotoLikr updated

Fabrice ObviousIdea
Light Image Resizer

New versions of Light Image Resizer 7.1.2 and PhotoLikr 1.4.1 are available in our download section.
Each software page contains the changelog and the updates are free. As a reminder, only a change of a major version could require an upgrade of the licence.

Light Image Resizer is a Windows software which can batch convert images. Convenient solution to change file format from JPEG to PDF, PDF to JPEG, JPEG to HEIC, HEIC to JPEG, JPEG to AVIF, AVIF to PDF, and more combinations. Change resolution of your photos, or convert the picture aspect ratio.

PhotoLikr is also a Microsoft Windows software to quickly (re)view a set of your pictures. PhotoLikr stands for photo liker. You can rate your pictures with stars and then sort them in your local hard drive. Once you have done your selection of your best images. Share photos on Dropbox.

Resize images

Obviousidea software and antivirus

Fabrice greencloud printer driver, Light Image Resizer, ObviousIdea , , , , , , ,

Since this morning, several users reported a virus issue with GreenCloud Printer. After investigations and the first reports, it is a false alarm from some antivirus solutions, and the main one seems to be BitDefender.

What is a antivirus False positive ?

Security software sometimes unintentionally identify a program or file as harmful if it has code or behavior that resembles known harmful programs. This is known as a False Positive. A False positive means the antivirus wrongly identify the app as a virus.

Action from Obviousidea about false positive

We reported the false alarm. In the meantime, please don’t deinstall / reinstall the GreenCloud Printer package, as it won’t solve the problem. The only solution is to turn off the antivirus or flag it as safe. You can also report the false alarm at : Bitdefender false positive report . The BitDefender form is weird and won’t confirm by email if the ticket is created. You can contact support of Bitdefender, this page contains the list of the phone numbers.

Another method is to “restore” the binary GCPrinter.exe, in notification, watch the history and find the entry about the software infected. Then Restore the program.

We are sorry for the inconvenience. Especially because the latest version of GreenCloud Printer hasn’t been updated since a few months. It may happen also with Light Image Resizer. To fight against virus, we are using VirusTotal, a well known service in the industry to check URLs and setup package available in our download page.

Here the link of the VirusTotal report for GreenCloud Printer :
november 11th, 2024 : 10/73 vendors are reporting a problem
november 12th, 2024 : 4/73 vendors are reporting a problem
november 13th, 2024 : 2/73 vendors are reporting a problem
november 14th, 2024 : 1/73 vendors are reporting a problem ( https://www.deepinstinct.com/ didn’t reply to our report )
november 19th, 2024 : webroot solution was not in the virustotal report but cause issues, it’s fixed now.

How to report a false positive ?

Don’t hesitate to contact Obviousidea, to report any issue with antivirus, it’s the best and safest way to let us know and report and investigate the problem.

there is no rule to report a false positive you need to fill a form ( when it works ) or contact by email one by one the antivirus vendor. This list from VirusTotal can save a lot of time.

Light Image Resizer 7.1 / .JXL native support

Fabrice Light Image Resizer, ObviousIdea , , , , , , , ,

Spoiler alert, the new Light Image Resizer version 7.1 has a native read and write support for JPEG XL / JXL, but also improvements for the AVIF format.
Both JPEG XL and AVIF are performant for compression and quality. In WordPress these formats are considered as modern. Apple is supporting JPEG XL in Mac OS, and you can create .DNG that LIR 7.1 supports.

Download Light Image Resizer 7.1, it’s a free update for users with a valid v7 license key.

You can see the full list of changes in the history page.

JPEG XL support

The collage feature (underestimated IMHO) has been fixed for High DPI screens.

We will do another YouTube video tutorial about how to make a collage of your photos but you can still look at this one.

About Light Image Resizer 7.1

The new version is a cumulative update of customers feedback and the support of modern formats has changed the internal engine with the introduction of the Imagemagick Plugin. LIR7 could support more formats in the future, as soon as a WIC codec extention is available.

Obviousidea Antivirus policy

Another topic, recently one of our users reported a false alarm with an antivirus. At Obviousidea we use VirusTotal to make sure our software is virus free.
See one of the samples for Light Image Resizer 7.1:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/346fa64e916b0f26f9efb971f87b0b993ccf421015ea4fa2f1d48d6ebd818ff9/detection
As you can see, it’s almost green but sometimes Antivirus products try to scare you doing their job with a zealous method. We need to report these cases one by one and check with the antivirus vendor. We understand customers can be reluctant, and the best you can do is to contact us to speed up the notification and validation process. Of course, security is important to us and we need your report.

In short, don’t hesitate to contact us, your voice is important to improve Light Image Resizer 7.1