Recommendations by Dr Avi Mor - Concrete Expert for Construction Defect Litigation

Avi Mor

Over the years I have accumulated tools that make my work much more efficient and effective. Below I will share the most important and useful ones.

My photo organizing process is:

Download the images from my camera into a raw storage where the original is kept unchanged.
Copy all images to a working directory.
Use a free software program (Lupas Rename) to rename all the images. My practice is to use a project name and date appended to the image number as its new name. Several other excellent renaming programs can be found by searching the Web.
Next I use another free program (FastStone Image Viewer) to resize the images to 1600x1200 which I find optimal for my use. It also imprints on every image some basic information including the project name, address, date, and my copyright notice (see example).
The final, and in my opinion probably the most important step, is backup. I use a program called SyncBackSE which allowed me to create multiple backup scenarios that run automatically. Every file is copied into an external hard drive and into a second internal hard drive daily. Weekly backups of active files is done with DVD writer. The DVDs are saved in a safe.

Amazon.com Widgets

Picasa from Google is a great (free) tool for image organizing and uploading to secure website. I also own the latest Photoshop Album but find Picasa to be a better and easier to use tool. It has the ability to optimize multiple images automatically.
PDF-XCHANGE Viewer - is a free alternative to Acrobat reader. Much more powerful and friendly!
Adobe Photoshop Elements is a lightweight alternative to Adobe's Photoshop program. I have been using the Adobe Photoshop CS2 for a few years but find its price tag of over $600 to be prohibitive. Elements 7 gives me almost everything I got before at a fraction of the price ($59.99 or less).
An amazingly capable FREE alternative is a program called Photo.net. It has many of Photoshop's functions at an easy to use package that will satisfy most users.
My browser of choice is Firefox. For years it has been the most advanced and friendly browser available. Microsoft's IE 8 is getting closer, but still has a way to go. Firefox users enjoys the hundreds of useful plug-ins that make surfing a joy instead of an annoyance. My best plug-ins include Adblock (eliminates all annoying ads), Better Gmail (integrates GMail into the browser), FireFTP (a FTP manager that is incorporated into Firefox), and others.