PolyVision Whiteboard Software Alternatives

September 2, 2010 9:40 AM

Are there any alternatives to PolyVision's Whiteboard Photo software? Perhaps something that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?

EverNote is close, but not all the way there.

posted by NotMyselfRightNow to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Most of the photos show horrible pictures taken of the white boards, and some photo manipulation done to fix it through the software presumably.

I would think that with a camera set on a tripod, and care taken in the lighting so that the board would appear correctly you would not have much needs for this software.
You could adjust the saturation level of the image once it was taken to brighten the colors.

You could make the adjustments you needed in pretty much any photo package like Lightroom, but you could also use Gimp which is free.
posted by digividal at 10:09 AM on September 2, 2010

You don't state your tolerance for manual labor, but you can vectorize with Inkscape for free.
posted by rhizome at 10:18 AM on September 2, 2010

Response by poster: digividal: I would think that with a camera set on a tripod, and care taken in the lighting so that the board would appear correctly you would not have much needs for this software.

But that's the point - you don't need a tripod, or ideal lighting environments, or anything else. The value of the software is that it takes the rather crappy picture of the whiteboard (or whatever else) and gives you something clean and usable, adjusting for odd angles, poor light, or whatever else. And, it doesn't require manual effort from the user.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 10:53 AM on September 2, 2010

Well since you asked "Are there any alternatives", I figured I would try to highlight an alternative that would give you much the same results, with just a bit of effort.
Certainly it would be easier than manually adjusting a crappy picture in software.
posted by digividal at 11:19 AM on September 2, 2010