DEV Community: All Done Tools

How to Calculate Discounts and Spot Real Deals (Not Fake Ones)

All Done Tools — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 05:40:04 +0000

A big red sale sign does not always mean a big saving. Sometimes the price was quietly raised first, sometimes two smaller discounts are dressed up as one large one, and sometimes a deal that never ends is simply the normal price. The safest habit is simple: work out the numbers yourself before you buy.

Disclosure: I made All Done, the free tools site linked below.

The basic formula, without the jargon

Every discount comes down to three numbers: the original price, the price you actually pay, and the percentage taken off. If you know the original price and the percentage, multiply the original price by that percentage to find the saving, then subtract it from the original price.

For example, a $60 coat at 25% off saves $15, so you pay $45. Going the other way, if something falls from $80 to $60, the $20 saving is 25% of $80.

Why 20% plus 10% is not 30%

Stacked offers are a common trap. An extra 10% is usually taken from the already-reduced price, not from the original price. So 20% off, followed by 10% off the sale price, gives a total saving of 28%, not 30%. Always apply each discount in turn.

Working backwards to check a claim

If you only see the sale price and the percentage, divide the sale price by what remains after the discount. For instance, a $70 item sold at 30% off means you paid 70% of the original price, so the original was $100. Use the same check on a crossed-out price: if the store's claimed original price does not match the sale price and percentage, the deal is weaker than advertised.

Seven tricks to watch for

Inflated "was" prices that were raised just before the sale.
Endless sales that never actually end.
Countdown timers that reset instead of expiring.
Suggested retail prices no shop ever charged.
Loss leaders: one bargain item that fills the rest of your cart.
Bundle deals where the per-item price is no better.
Limited-stock warnings that stay on screen for every visitor.

Quick mental math in the aisle

Ten percent is easy: just move the decimal point one place. Ten percent of $80 is $8. For 20% off, multiply the price by 0.8, or find 20% and subtract it. And do not forget tax and delivery: a discount can look smaller once those are added.

Check it before you buy

Do not trust the tag blindly. Punch the numbers into the free Discount Calculator to see the true percentage and final price.

The full guide is on All Done at https://all-done.xyz/blog/discount-calculation-guide-spot-real-deals — this post is a cross-post of that guide, with the introduction rewritten here.

How to Optimize Your Resume for ATS (2026 Guide)

All Done Tools — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 05:39:02 +0000

Disclosure: I built all-done.xyz, a free collection of online tools. This post is a rewritten version of the guide on that site, with the same structure and main advice.

Many large employers screen applications with software before a recruiter ever opens them. If your resume is hard for that software to read, a strong application can be overlooked for a purely technical reason. The goal below is not to game the system. It is to present your real experience in a clean, readable, honest way.

How an ATS actually reads a resume

An applicant tracking system collects, sorts, and ranks applications. In most online applications, it reads your resume first and pulls out your contact information, work history, education, and skills into separate fields. It then compares that information with the job description.

That first pass is literal. The software does not know that two different phrases can describe the same work, and it cannot read words trapped inside a picture or a graphic. A polished design that looks great to a person can therefore be unreadable to the system, while a simple, well-organized resume can pass through easily. Think of optimization as removing friction, not as tricking the reader.

Formatting rules that keep you machine-readable

The rules are deliberately plain, and that is their strength:

Use one column, reading from top to bottom. Do not put important information in a sidebar.
Use familiar headings such as Experience, Education, Skills, and Certifications.
Make sure all text is real, selectable text. Do not put key words inside images, logos, charts, or graphics.
Use standard fonts and ordinary sizes, and avoid tables or text boxes for your main content, because parsers often read them in the wrong order or skip them.

None of this makes a resume look less professional. Readability comes first; without it, the rest of your application may never be considered.

Keywords: mirror the job description, do not stuff it

Keywords help the system connect your resume to a role, but the match is usually for exact phrases. Read the posting closely and use its wording where it honestly describes your work. For example, if a posting asks for customer onboarding, use that exact phrase in a bullet about work you actually did, rather than a near-synonym in a general skills list. Use the same approach for job titles and certifications when they genuinely line up.

The dividing line between mirroring and stuffing is truth plus context:

Put keywords inside achievement bullets, not only in a long skills list.
Lead with hard skills named in the posting, such as tools, certifications, and measurable results.
Only include a keyword if you can defend it in an interview. If you cannot, remove it.

A keyword shown once in a real achievement is more persuasive than the same term repeated many times with no evidence behind it, and it will also hold up when a human reviews your resume later.

The sections every ATS-friendly resume needs

Keep the sections in the order parsers expect: contact details, a short summary, Experience, Education, and Skills. Add Certifications as its own section when relevant.

In Experience, list roles in reverse chronological order, with job titles, company names, and dates in a consistent format. Start each bullet with an action verb such as built, automated, led, reduced, or shipped, and pair the action with a result when you can measure one. Match the posting's language for titles where your actual title genuinely fits.

Avoid functional formats that hide dates. If you have a gap, explain it briefly instead. Parsers handle that approach better, and a short, honest explanation reads better to a human too.

PDF vs DOCX: which file should you upload?

When you have a choice, DOCX is usually the safer option. Major applicant tracking systems parse Word documents reliably, and a text-based DOCX rarely loses content in that process. A text-based PDF is also widely accepted, but a scanned or image-based PDF is not readable at all.

A practical approach is to submit DOCX when the system lets you choose, and keep a text-based PDF for sending directly to recruiters or posting in a portfolio. Before you submit either format, test it: open the file, select all the text, and check that everything you wrote is selectable. Never send a photo or screenshot of your resume.

The mistakes that get resumes filtered out

The most common avoidable mistake is over-designing: two columns, icons, skill bars, and graphics that look impressive in a portfolio but break in a parser. Next is keyword stuffing, such as listing dozens of tools you barely used. That looks dishonest to the human reviewer who eventually sees the file.

Typos are quieter but just as costly. A misspelled keyword will not match, so proofread every version, including titles and company names.

Finally, do not believe promises of a universal ATS score. Employers configure different systems in different ways, so no tool can guarantee an interview or a job. Good optimization removes the mechanical reasons a qualified candidate might be filtered out. Your experience, presented honestly, still has to do the rest.

Your ATS optimization checklist

Run through this list before you submit:

Single-column layout with standard headings: Experience, Education, Skills.
All text is real and selectable, with nothing important baked into images or graphics.
Keywords mirror the job description exactly, are used in context, and are true.
Bullets start with action verbs and pair actions with measurable results.
Hard skills named in the posting appear near the front, not buried at the end.
The whole document is proofread, including keywords, titles, and company names.
DOCX when you can choose it; a text-based PDF as a backup copy.
Read it once as a human: every claim is true, every bullet is clear, and nothing is stuffed.

Try a free ATS-friendly builder

If you want a quick starting point, try the free ATS Resume Builder. It creates a clean, single-column resume with standard section headings and text-based formatting that applicant tracking systems can read.

The full original guide is at https://all-done.xyz/blog/how-to-optimize-resume-for-ats

How to Calculate Your Exact Age in Years, Months and Days

All Done Tools — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 06:34:53 +0000

Maker disclosure: I am the maker of all-done.xyz, a collection of free online tools that you can use with no signup. This is a cross-post adapted from the full guide on the all-done.xyz blog, so you can read the method here and use the free tool there.

Asking someone their age sounds simple, but giving an exact answer — in years, months, and days — trips up a surprising number of people. A quick year subtraction is fine for a casual chat, yet it can be wrong for almost half the year, and that matters on school forms, job applications, insurance paperwork, and visa or retirement checks.

Why just subtracting the years does not work

Take a person born in 1998. In 2026, 2026 minus 1998 is 28. That is only right after their birthday in 2026. Before that birthday, they are still 27. The year number alone hides whether the birthday has passed, and it says nothing about the extra months and days since the last birthday.

An exact age answers three questions at once: how many whole years have passed, how many whole months have passed since the last birthday, and how many days are left after that. To get all three reliably, work column by column, from days to years, and borrow when a column goes negative.

The borrow method, step by step

Write the two dates as day, month, and year, with the later date on top:

Days first. Subtract the birth day from the current day. If the answer is negative, borrow the days in the month just before the current month: add that month's real length (28, 29, 30, or 31 days) to the current day, and take 1 away from the current month.
Months next. Subtract the birth month from the current month (after any borrow in step 1). If the answer is negative, borrow 12 months: add 12 to the current month and take 1 away from the current year.
Years last. Subtract the birth year from the current year (after any borrow in step 2). That result is the number of whole years.

A worked example with both kinds of borrowing

Suppose someone was born on 18 November 1995, and today is 5 April 2026.

Days: 5 minus 18 is negative, so borrow March's 31 days. That gives 36 minus 18 = 18 days, and April becomes March for the next step.
Months: March (3) minus November (11) is negative, so borrow 12 months. That gives 15 minus 11 = 4 months, and 2026 becomes 2025 for the next step.
Years: 2025 minus 1995 = 30 years.

Exact age: 30 years, 4 months, and 18 days. You can check it the other way: 30 years after 18 November 1995 is 18 November 2025, plus 4 months is 18 March 2026, plus 18 days is 5 April 2026.

The same steps work for age on any date, not just today. Put the target date on top — a past date for "how old was I then?" or a future date for "how old will I be?" — and follow the same borrowing rules.

Leap years and 29 February birthdays

Leap years are where a flat, average month length breaks down. Do not borrow a generic 30 days, and do not divide a total day count by 365 or 365.25 and call the result a calendar age. Calendar age is built from real calendar months.

The key rule is simple: when you borrow days, use the actual length of the previous month. Borrowing across March means looking back at February, so you add 28 days in a common year and 29 days in a leap year. A year is usually a leap year if it is divisible by 4, with the century exception that years divisible by 100 are not leap years unless they are also divisible by 400 — so 2024 was a leap year, 2100 will not be, and 2000 was.

If you were born on 29 February, you still turn a year older every year, even though your exact birth date only appears on the calendar every four years. In non-leap years, most official systems treat 1 March as the birthday for age and eligibility, although a few use 28 February. If an exact cutoff matters, check the rule used by the school, employer, or agency involved rather than guessing.

Common mistakes to watch out for

Ignoring whether this year's birthday has passed. This alone makes a year-only subtraction wrong for about half the year.
Borrowing a flat 30 days. Months are not all 30 days long, so this quietly shifts the day count.
Forgetting leap years. Any range that crosses February can be off by a day if February's real length is ignored.
Mixing up day and month order. A date written as 03/04 can mean 3 April or March 4 depending on the country, so confirm the format before you calculate.
Averaging months or years. Dividing by 30.44 days per month or 365 days per year gives an approximation, not an exact calendar age.

For an official form, it is worth checking your hand calculation a second way — or with a trusted calculator — especially near a cutoff such as 18 years, a school admission date, or a retirement age.

When exact age really matters

In everyday conversation, "I'm 34" is plenty. At a boundary, the months and days decide the outcome: a child born one day after a school cutoff may wait a full year, and the gap between 17 years, 11 months and 18 years, 0 months can be the gap between ineligible and eligible. The same precision matters for pension and retirement eligibility, insurance premiums, minimum-age checks, and age on a specific application date.

Try it in seconds

If you would rather skip the borrowing, use the free Age Calculator on all-done.xyz. Enter your date of birth and it gives your exact age in years, months, and days — no signup needed. It is a handy way to double-check the manual method above.

For the longer version of this guide, see the original post on the all-done.xyz blog: How to Calculate Your Exact Age in Years, Months and Days.

How to Compress a PDF to 1MB Without Losing Quality

All Done Tools — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 05:38:31 +0000

Maker disclosure: I built the free PDF compressor at all-done.xyz, including the Compress PDF tool. This post adapts my guide on that site, so you can follow the same method here.

If a job portal, university form, or email system has ever rejected your file for being too large, you know the frustration. The limit is often 1 MB, and the file in question looks harmless — a few pages, some photos, nothing dramatic. Getting under that limit is usually straightforward once you know where the extra megabytes are hiding.

This is a cross-post adapted from my full guide, How to Compress a PDF to 1MB Without Losing Quality.

What makes a PDF so large?

In most cases, it is not the text. A hundred pages of plain text weighs very little. The weight usually comes from:

High-resolution photos embedded at print quality, even though the file will only be read on screen
Embedded fonts, especially a complete font family
Scanned pages, which are really just photographs of text

A single uncompressed photo can add several megabytes on its own. That is why a short report can quietly grow to 20 MB or 40 MB. Finding the culprit helps you choose the right fix instead of just pushing a compression slider to its maximum.

Lossy vs. lossless, in plain terms

Lossless compression makes the file smaller without changing how it looks. It is ideal for printing and archiving, but the savings are usually modest — roughly 10 to 30 percent.

Lossy compression removes image detail that is hard to notice at normal viewing size. The savings can be much larger, often 70 to 90 percent, which is why it is the practical choice for email and online uploads.

The destination should guide the choice. For a portal upload or an email attachment, sensible lossy compression is usually invisible. For a portfolio or a print-ready file, stay lossless or use only light compression. When in doubt, start with the tool's recommended or medium setting.

How to compress a PDF to 1MB

Open a PDF compressor — for example, the free Compress PDF tool — and upload your file.
Start with the medium or recommended compression level.
Download the result and check its size.
If it is still over 1 MB, run it once more at a stronger setting.
Open the compressed file and check it visually before you submit it anywhere.

Two passes at medium strength often give a cleaner result than one aggressive pass. And a realistic expectation helps: a 5–8 MB document can often be brought under 1 MB without obvious damage, while a 50 MB scan will not get there without visible quality loss.

Scanned PDFs need a different approach

Because every scanned page is an image, downsampling matters most. For screen reading, 150–200 DPI is usually plenty. Converting a color scan to grayscale, when color adds nothing, can cut the size to roughly a third.

Be careful with heavy compression on scans, though: small text can blur, making the document harder to read and harder to OCR later. If a text-only scan can be captured in black and white rather than grayscale, that is even smaller — a bitonal page at 200 DPI is often under 50 KB.

Also clean up a scan before compressing. Compression tends to lock in crooked pages and smudges, so fix those first if you can.

When compression alone is not enough

Some files simply cannot reach 1 MB. A 200-page full-color catalog is one example. In that case:

Split the PDF into smaller parts, each under the limit.
Reduce image resolution in the source document before exporting a new PDF.
Remove embedded videos, 3D objects, duplicate fonts, and blank pages from bad scans.

Fixing oversized images in the original document is often faster than fighting the finished PDF.

Will the compressed PDF still be searchable?

Yes, with a proper compressor. Compression changes image data, not the text layer, so searching, copying text, and screen-reader access should keep working. Avoid any option that flattens every page into a plain image, because that destroys the searchable text.

Try it yourself

If you have a file waiting for a 1 MB limit, try the free Compress PDF tool — no signup needed — and compare the before-and-after sizes. For the full version of this guide, see How to Compress a PDF to 1MB Without Losing Quality.

WiFi QR Code Generator Free — Share Your Password Without Typing It

All Done Tools — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 03:18:19 +0000

Disclosure: I'm the maker of All Done (all-done.xyz), a site of free online tools — no signup, no cost

Stop dictating your 20-character WiFi password letter by letter. One scan connects guests instantly. Here is how to make a WiFi QR code, and how to avoid the common failures that stop it working.

The problem with sharing WiFi passwords

Every host knows the ritual: a guest asks for the WiFi, you recite a password full of capitals and symbols, they mistype it twice, and you both stare at a "could not join" message. Cafés tape passwords to the counter where everyone photographs them; Airbnb hosts print them in the welcome book, where they go stale.

A WiFi QR code ends the ritual. The network name, security type, and password are encoded in the pattern — the guest points their camera at it and the phone offers to join. No typing, no misheard characters, and no password lingering in the group chat.

Make one in under a minute

Open the QR Code Generator and switch to the WiFi tab. Then:

Type your network name (SSID) exactly as it appears — capitals, spaces, and all.
Choose the security type (WPA/WPA2 for most home routers, or none for open networks).
Enter the password.

The live preview shows the code as you type. Download the PNG when it looks right, print it, and put it where guests actually look: the fridge, the café counter, or the Airbnb welcome binder. One code, permanent fix.

The gotchas that break WiFi QR codes

Most failed WiFi codes fail for boring reasons:

The SSID is case-sensitive. "HomeWiFi" and "homewifi" are different networks. Copy the exact spelling from your router's admin panel or sticker.
The security type must match the router's setting. Pick WPA/WPA2 unless you know yours is different.
Special characters are fine, but copy the password from the router sticker rather than retyping it from memory.
Hidden networks are unreliable. Some phones will not auto-join a hidden SSID from a QR scan, or they join but drop. If your network is hidden, consider unhiding it or keeping a printed password as backup.
Separate 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz names need separate codes. Generate the code for the network you want guests on.
Always test-scan with a second phone before printing.

Do guests need an app to scan it?

Almost certainly not. iPhones have scanned QR codes straight from the Camera app since iOS 11, and Android phones since Android 10 — that covers the overwhelming majority of phones in pockets today. The guest opens the camera, points it at the code, and taps the join prompt.

For a rare older phone, any free QR scanner app from the app store works. If you run a business with foot traffic, add one line under the code: "Point your camera at this code to join."

Security note: put guests on a guest network

Be clear-eyed about one thing: a WiFi password inside a QR code is plaintext to anyone who photographs the printout. For home use that is usually fine — it is the same exposure as telling someone the password. But the code is only as private as the paper it is printed on.

The clean solution is a guest network, which nearly all modern routers support. Guests get internet without seeing your shared folders, printers, or smart-home devices, and you can change the guest password — and reprint one code — without touching your own devices. Treat the printed QR like a house key: convenient, but do not leave it where strangers wander.

Make your WiFi QR code free

Enter your network name and password, download the code, and never dictate a password again — free, no signup. Try the QR Code Generator now.

Originally published on the All Done blog.

AI Presentation Maker for Teachers: The Classroom Guide (2026)

All Done Tools — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 06:17:24 +0000

Disclosure: I'm the maker of All Done (all-done.xyz), a site of free online tools — no signup, no cost. This is a cross-post of the full guide on our blog, adapted for DEV.

Ask most teachers what eats their evening, and they won't say grading. They'll say the slides. The lesson itself is 40 minutes; making it look like a lesson is a whole other job — picking fonts, hunting for a diagram that isn't clip art, retyping the same quiz questions you typed last year. AI presentation makers flip that trade: you bring the teaching judgment, and the machine does the slide grunt work.

What an AI presentation maker actually does for a teacher

An AI presentation maker takes a topic — or your actual lesson materials — and builds a structured, designed slide deck from it: titles, bullet points, and suggested visuals across multiple slides, ready for you to edit. For a teacher, that means the blank-deck problem disappears. You start from a draft that has the right shape instead of a white slide and a blinking cursor.

This is different from a template gallery, which gives you design without content, and from a chatbot, which gives you content without slides. A presentation maker does both halves: it organizes the ideas into a slide-by-slide sequence and lays them out so the deck is presentable on the first pass.

The real time savings: where the hours go

The honest version of the time math: teachers who use AI weekly report saving about 5.9 hours a week (Gallup and Walton Family Foundation survey) — self-reported, so treat it as a direction, not a guarantee. Where the hours actually go is slide grunt work: hunting for a diagram that is not clip art, retyping quiz questions into a second tool, and rebuilding the same water-cycle slide for the third year in a row.

The win is not just speed. It is consistency across a term: the same lesson skeleton — hook, objective, vocabulary, explanation, practice, check, exit ticket — reused for every topic, so students learn the rhythm of your lessons and you stop reinventing the structure each night.

The workflow that actually works

The teachers getting the best decks all follow the same four steps, in this order. The order matters more than which tool you pick.

Define one measurable outcome first. "Students will distinguish renewable from non-renewable energy sources using four examples" beats "teach energy". The AI cannot set your objective; it can only build toward it.
Feed it your materials, not just a topic. Attach the lesson plan, worksheet, or textbook chapter as a PDF or Word file and ask for slides built from that material. Decks built from your source are dramatically more accurate than decks built from the model's memory.
Dictate the structure, not just the subject. Ask for the exact slide sequence: hook, objective, vocabulary, two explanation slides, a worked example, practice, a three-question check, and an exit ticket. Ten to twelve slides covers a 40–45-minute lesson.
Review like a teacher, not a passenger. Check every fact against your materials, replace vague or culturally unsuitable questions, and verify font sizes and contrast for the back row before anyone sees it.

Follow it and even a free tool produces a deck you can present the next morning.

Free vs paid: the honest landscape

Here is the landscape as it stands. Canva for Education is 100% free for verified K-12 teachers — the most generous free option in the category. Dedicated AI tools mostly run on freemium: a starter pack of monthly AI credits, then $8–16 a month for unlimited decks.

The genuinely free, no-signup route also exists: our AI presentation maker — type a topic and get an editable deck you can export as PowerPoint with no watermark. That covers the core job — topic in, editable slides out — and for most classroom lessons it is all you need before spending anything. The honest advice is to start with what is free and only pay when you have hit a real limit: curriculum-standard alignment, live student polls, or school-wide collaboration.

The prompt formula for lesson decks

Good lesson prompts follow a formula: topic, grade, goal, structure. Name all four and the AI has a complete brief; skip them and it guesses at an audience you did not describe.

Translate teaching moves into slide instructions. "Make it engaging" means nothing to a model; "one idea per slide, a labeled diagram on slide 4, a three-question check on slide 8" is a blueprint it can execute.

Weak: "slides about fractions" — Strong: "8 slides on adding fractions for 4th grade — hook with a pizza example, vocabulary, two worked examples, practice problems, exit ticket."
Weak: "make it fun" — Strong: "age-appropriate visuals, simple language, one worked example followed by a try-it-yourself slide, large readable fonts."
Ask for differentiation on purpose: "also produce a simplified 6-slide version with fewer words per slide for struggling readers" costs you one extra sentence in the prompt.
Match the export to the destination: PPTX for PowerPoint and Google Slides editing, PDF for printing handouts or sharing with parents.

Where AI still falls short

AI is genuinely useful here, but it has edges a teacher must own. The model does not verify that an AI-written fact is true, that a curriculum standard is correctly applied, or that your school permits a particular AI use — those are the teacher's calls, every time. Uploaded-source decks are far more reliable than from-memory decks, but you still check.

Accessibility is the other quiet trap. AI decks love small text on busy backgrounds and color-only instructions ("the red items are wrong"). Before presenting: bump fonts to back-row size, check contrast, and give every visual a descriptive label. And never put personally identifiable student information into a public AI tool — use school-approved platforms where student data is involved.

The classroom-ready checklist

Run every AI-generated deck through this list before it reaches students, and you will avoid nearly every common embarrassment.

One measurable learning objective, stated on slide 2 — cut any slide that does not serve it.
Every fact checked against your lesson materials or textbook, not just the AI's memory.
Fonts readable from the back row; high contrast; no color-only instructions.
One labeled visual per key concept — a diagram beats a paragraph for retention.
A check-for-understanding every few slides and an exit ticket at the end.
Export as PPTX for editing in PowerPoint or Google Slides; PDF for handouts.
Keep the source file you attached archived — when the curriculum updates, you regenerate the deck instead of rebuilding it.

The full version with FAQs lives on our blog: AI Presentation Maker for Teachers: The Classroom Guide (2026).

Free QR Code Generator With Logo — No Signup, No Watermark

All Done Tools — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 05:40:51 +0000

Full disclosure: I built all-done.xyz, a free tools site. This is a cross-post of the full guide on our blog, adapted for DEV.

I went looking for a truly free QR code generator recently, and the hunt played out the way it always does. The generator page looks generous: type a URL, get a code. Then you click "add logo" and the velvet rope drops — an account is required, color tweaks are locked to a Pro tier, and the download lands with a watermark unless you pay. Some tools go a step further and silently default you to a "dynamic" code, which quietly stops working when your trial ends.

If all you need is a plain black-and-white square, the free tiers are fine. But for a business card, a menu, or a sticker on a shop window, a generic code looks unfinished — and that branded part is exactly what they charge for.

Static vs dynamic: know the difference before you print

Most QR generators offer two kinds of codes, and the distinction matters more than any styling option.

A static code encodes your URL or text directly into the pattern itself. Nothing lives on anyone's server, so the code works forever with nothing to renew. A dynamic code encodes a short link hosted by the provider — that lets you edit the destination later and track scans, but the code dies the moment the subscription lapses.

For anything printed — business cards, packaging, signage — static is the sane default. You don't want your shop-window sticker bricking itself because a SaaS trial ended. Reach for a paid dynamic service only if you genuinely need scan analytics or editable destinations.

The tool below generates static codes, which is exactly why it's free and never expires.

Adding your logo, step by step

Our QR Code Generator keeps logo upload, custom colors, and templates on the free tier — no account, and everything runs in your browser, so nothing you type or upload leaves your device.

Pick a content type first: URL, text, WiFi credentials, contact card, and more. Enter your content.
Upload your logo and choose your foreground and background colors. The live preview updates as you work, so what you see is the finished code.
Download the PNG. No signup screen, no watermark, no "upgrade to remove branding" nudge.

Logo QR codes that still scan reliably

A logo in the middle works because QR codes carry built-in error correction — up to 30% of the pattern can be obscured and the code still reads. That margin is real, but it shrinks on cheap prints and tiny stickers, so follow a few rules:

Keep the logo centered and modest — about the middle fifth of the code — and never let it touch the three big corner squares. Those are what scanners lock onto first.
Prefer dark-on-light colors. Inverted or low-contrast schemes look stylish and fail in dim restaurants.
Leave the quiet zone — the white margin around the code — intact.
Test-scan with your own phone before any bulk printing. Thirty seconds of checking beats a reprint.

Print tips for crisp, scannable codes

The PNG download is perfect for screens: websites, emails, social posts. For print, size and sharpness decide everything. Print at 300 DPI and keep the code at least 2 x 2 cm (about an inch square) so phones can scan it comfortably. For anything viewed at arm's length or more, like posters, go bigger.

One more practical note: QR codes survive moderate JPEG compression, but every re-compress of a re-compress softens the edges. Download the PNG once and print from the original file, not from a screenshot of a screenshot.

That's the full workflow. If you've been paying for branded QR codes, this is the free route: QR Code Generator.

AI Product Photos for Ecommerce: The Seller's Guide (2026)

All Done Tools — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 05:41:41 +0000

Disclosure: I'm the maker of all-done.xyz, a collection of free online tools with no signup. This is a cross-post of the full guide on our blog, adapted for DEV.

A studio shoot costs hundreds and takes days. AI product photography does the same job in minutes from a phone photo — here's the workflow sellers actually use.

What AI product photography actually does

AI product photography takes a raw photo — often just a phone shot of a product on a table or against a plain wall — and generates a clean, studio-quality version of it. The AI removes or replaces the background, corrects harsh or uneven lighting, and can build full editorial scenes, like your product styled on a marble counter or a sunlit shelf, without you ever shooting in that setting.

This is meaningfully different from older cutout tools that just deleted a background and left a flat, obviously-pasted image. Modern tools rebuild lighting, cast shadows and surface reflections around your product so it looks like it was actually photographed in the new setting. The product stays yours; everything around it is reconstructed.

Why sellers are switching: the math

A traditional product shoot means studio booking, props, a photographer, editing rounds and reshoots — days of planning and hundreds of dollars before a single listing goes live. The AI route takes one decent source photo and a few minutes, with no equipment and no scheduling.

There's a second, quieter win: consistency. Sellers with large catalogs struggle to keep every product looking like it belongs to the same brand. AI applies the same lighting, backdrop and style formula across hundreds of SKUs automatically. Products with multiple high-quality images see up to 30% higher conversion rates, because shoppers trust what they can see clearly.

The workflow that actually works

The sellers getting the best results all follow the same four steps, in order:

Shoot a clean source photo. A phone is fine — good natural light, product fully in frame and in focus, against the simplest background you have. Sharp and well-lit beats fancy every time.
Cut out the product. Remove the background so you have a clean product on transparency. Our free background remover does this in the browser — the file never leaves your device.
Generate the scene. Describe the backdrop with a text prompt (the formula is below) and generate the lifestyle background or studio backdrop. Our free AI product backgrounds tool takes a product photo plus a background choice and returns a studio photo with the product unchanged.
Composite and verify. Place your cutout product onto the scene, then compare the final image against the real item — labels, colors and proportions must match.

Follow it in order and even free tools produce listing-ready images.

The prompt formula for product scenes

Scene prompts follow a simple formula: surface, lighting and mood. Name all three and the AI has a complete blueprint; skip them and it guesses.

Weak: "nice kitchen background" — Strong: "a ceramic mug on a white marble kitchen counter, soft morning sunlight from the left, blurred greenery in the background, bright and airy".
Weak: "luxury style" — Strong: "a perfume bottle on a dark stone podium, dramatic side lighting, deep shadows, black background, premium and moody".
Add negative space on purpose: "empty copy space on the left third" leaves room for your sale text or logo overlay.
Match the aspect ratio to the placement: 1:1 square for Amazon and marketplace listings, 4:5 vertical for Instagram and product pages, 16:9 wide for store banners.

Our AI image generator is another free option if you want full prompt control over the scene.

Free vs paid: the honest landscape

Dedicated AI product-photo tools mostly run on credits or subscriptions: free tiers cover a handful of generations, credit packs work out to roughly $0.30 per photo, and full subscriptions run $10 to $49 a month. It's still a fraction of a studio shoot — but know what you're buying.

The genuinely free route is a two-tool combo and it works: a free background remover for the cutout step, plus a free text-to-image generator for the scene backgrounds. You do the compositing, which takes about two minutes per image once you have the rhythm.

Where AI still falls short

Fine printed text — ingredients lists, tiny label copy, serial numbers — can shift or garble slightly during generation, which is why the compare-against-the-real-item step is non-negotiable. Hands, faces and complex reflections are the other classic trouble spots; review every image at full size before publishing.

Marketplace rules are the other constraint. Amazon's main image must be pure white background, no props and no text — an AI lifestyle scene will get rejected there, so keep scenes for image slots two through seven.

The marketplace-ready checklist

Main image (Amazon): pure white background (RGB 255,255,255), product fills 85% of the frame, at least 2000px on the longest side for zoom.
Every image: compare labels, colors and proportions against the real product at full size.
Keep one consistent style — same lighting mood and backdrop family — across the whole catalog.
Lifestyle scenes go in secondary slots; never as the Amazon main image.
Keep your clean cutout PNGs archived. When a marketplace updates its image rules, you regenerate scenes without reshooting.

The full version with FAQs lives on our blog: AI Product Photos for Ecommerce: The Seller's Guide (2026).

How to Password Protect a PDF on Any Device

All Done Tools — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 05:44:08 +0000

A PDF password stops casual snooping — if you set the right kind. Here's how to add open and permissions passwords on any device, free.

Choose the right PDF password protection

A password can stop someone from opening a PDF, but it won't stop every kind of access or sharing. Before anything else, decide whether you want to block opening the file or just limit what people can do with it.

An open password is needed to view the PDF. A permissions password controls actions such as printing, editing, or copying, while still letting people open the file. Some PDF apps let you set both — sensible when a document should only reach named readers and you also want to limit changes. But permissions are not a substitute for an open password if the file itself must stay private.

PDF passwords add a layer of protection, not full control over a file after it's shared. Recipients may save copies, and some apps may not enforce every permission. If you need to control access after sending a document, consider a secure sharing system with access tracking or revocation — a password-protected PDF alone can't do that.

Pick a long, unique password that you don't use for another account. A phrase made of unrelated words is easier to type than a jumble of symbols. Save it in a trusted password manager, then send it to the recipient through a separate channel from the PDF.

Use an open password to limit who can view a PDF.
Use permissions when you need to limit printing, editing, or copying.

Add a password with a PDF security app

Use a PDF app with security controls when you need to set an open password or adjust document permissions. The exact menu labels vary by app and version, but the security setting is usually in the document protection tools.

Now test the saved copy. Close it, reopen it, and check that the password prompt appears. If you set permissions, test the actions you meant to restrict — don't assume that a successful save means every setting is right.

A password-strength meter can help you spot a weak choice, but don't treat a meter as a replacement for a unique password. If you forget the password, you may not be able to recover it from the PDF, so store it before sending the file.

Open the PDF in your PDF security app.
Open the protection or security controls and choose the option to protect the document with a password.
Select whether the password should be required to view the PDF or to change permissions.
Enter the password, then type it again to confirm. For permissions protection, choose which actions recipients may take.
Apply the setting and save a protected copy with a clear file name. Keep the original in a safe place until you've tested the new file.

Password-protect a PDF on Mac and Windows

On a Mac, Preview can export a password-protected PDF. On Windows, creating a PDF from a document doesn't necessarily add a password — check the security options in the app you use to create or edit the PDF.

On a Mac with Preview: open the PDF in Preview and choose File > Export. Give the exported PDF a new name to keep the original unchanged. Select Permissions, turn on the setting that requires a password to open the document, then enter and confirm your password. To limit printing or other actions, set an owner password and choose which actions are allowed. Choose Apply, then Save — and reopen the exported file to test it.

On Windows: first check whether the app you're using has a PDF security setting. A basic PDF-creation step makes a PDF from a document but doesn't add encryption — don't mistake that step for protection. If you can't find an open-password setting, you'll need a PDF app or service that supports password protection.

All Done's PDFpad is a free Windows PDF editor with no signup, watermarks, or usage limits. Its tools focus on visual PDF edits, though — it doesn't include password protection. Keep editing and security as separate checks: a clean-looking PDF isn't necessarily a protected one.

Handle multiple PDFs, sharing, and common problems

Protecting several files one by one can lead to missed documents or mixed-up passwords. Before you start, group the PDFs by recipient or purpose, and decide whether each file needs an open password or only limits on editing and printing.

Keep the password separate from the file: send the PDF through one channel and share the password through another. Avoid putting both in the same email thread or the same folder as the attachment.

If you forgot the password, there may be no way to retrieve it from the PDF. Check your password manager or the secure record where you stored it. If you're the owner, look for an unprotected backup. Don't send the file to an unknown service that promises to bypass protection.

To remove protection, use the app that set the password, and make sure you have permission to change the file. A permissions password may be required to remove restrictions. If the document belongs to someone else, ask them for an unlocked copy or the right password.

A PDF password protects access to the file, but it can't recall a copy after you share it. For sensitive files, choose a sharing method that fits your need to track or revoke access.

The bottom line

Choose an open password when you need to limit who can view a PDF, then test the saved copy before sharing it. On a Mac, start with Preview. On Windows, confirm that your PDF app supports password protection — and prepare the file first if it needs editing.

Protect a PDF online, free

Want to add a password without installing anything? Protect PDF is All Done's free online tool: upload your PDF, set a password, and download the protected file. Encryption happens entirely in your browser with 128-bit encryption, so your file never leaves your device — no signup, no watermarks.

Frequently asked questions

Can I password-protect a PDF for free?

Yes. On a Mac, Preview can export a PDF with an open password at no cost. On Windows, check the PDF app you already use for a security setting. Printing to PDF by itself doesn't add a password.

What's the difference between an open password and a permissions password?

An open password is required to view the PDF. A permissions password controls actions such as editing or printing, while letting recipients open the file. Use an open password when you need to restrict access to the document itself — permissions alone don't stop someone from viewing it.

Can I password-protect a PDF in Windows without a PDF security app?

It depends on the PDF app you have. A built-in PDF creation function can create a PDF, but it doesn't add password protection by itself. Look for an open-password or encryption setting in your PDF app. All Done's PDFpad supports visual edits, but it doesn't add PDF passwords.

What should I do if I forget my PDF password?

Check your password manager or other secure record first. If you created the PDF, look for an unprotected backup copy. A forgotten password may not be recoverable from the PDF itself. If someone else owns the document, ask them for the password or a new copy rather than trying to bypass its protection.

Does a password stop someone from sharing a PDF?

No. A password can restrict opening or certain actions, but once someone can open the file, they may be able to save or share a copy. If you need to track viewers or revoke access later, use a sharing system designed for those controls instead of relying on a PDF password alone.

AI Image Generator: Write Prompts That Work (2026)

All Done Tools — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 05:40:39 +0000

AI Image Generator: Write Prompts That Work (2026)

Master any AI image generator with the proven prompt formula: subject, style, lighting and mood. Real examples and pro tips for beginners inside.

The Prompt Formula That Actually Works

Prompt quality is the single biggest factor in your results — bigger than which generator you use. After thousands of generations, the community has converged on a structure that works: subject, setting, style and medium, lighting, and mood. Hit all five and the AI has a complete blueprint; skip them and it guesses.

Compare: 'woman in a coffee shop' gives you generic stock-photo mush. 'Close-up portrait of a woman in a quiet coffee shop, warm afternoon light, film photography style, slightly overexposed, candid and calm' gives you something with atmosphere and intent. The difference isn't length — it's specificity. Every added detail is a decision you're making instead of leaving to chance.

Weak vs Strong: Real Prompt Examples

See the formula in action:

Notice the pattern: concrete visuals replace abstract feelings. 'Nostalgia' means nothing to an image model; 'faded colors, worn furniture, old photographs' is a paint-by-numbers it can execute. Translate every emotion into something a camera could capture.

Weak: 'a dog' — Strong: 'a cheerful golden retriever playing in a sunlit field, shallow depth of field, shot on 35mm film, joyful summer mood'.
Weak: 'city at night' — Strong: 'rainy cyberpunk city street at night, neon signs reflecting on wet pavement, cinematic wide shot, moody and atmospheric'.
Weak: 'a feeling of nostalgia' — Strong: 'faded colors, worn furniture, old photographs on a wooden table, warm window light, quiet melancholy'.

5 Prompt Upgrades That Transform Results

Add these to any prompt for an instant quality jump:

One caution: don't stack contradictory terms. 'Photorealistic' and 'abstract' in the same prompt pull the model in opposite directions and you get neither. Pick one vision per generation.

Name an art style or medium: 'watercolor illustration', 'studio photography', 'vintage poster', 'concept art'.
Describe the light: 'golden hour', 'soft diffused light', 'backlit', 'harsh shadows', 'neon-lit'.
Add camera language for realism: 'shot on 35mm', 'macro lens', 'wide angle', 'shallow depth of field'.
Set the composition: 'close-up portrait', 'aerial view', 'top-down', 'rule of thirds'.
Use quality cues sparingly: 'ultra-detailed', 'sharp focus' — seasoning, not substance.

3 Mistakes Beginners Always Make

Everyone burns their first dozen generations on these:

The iteration point is the real pro skill. Treat prompting like an experiment: change the lighting, regenerate; change the style, regenerate. Single-variable iteration teaches you what each phrase does, and within a week you'll write working prompts on the first try.

Asking for text in the image — AI generators still mangle words and letters. Avoid signs, logos with text, and book covers until you know your tool handles them.
Abstract emotions without visual anchors — 'beautiful atmosphere' fails; 'warm golden-hour light with long shadows' works.
Changing everything at once — when a result is close but off, adjust one element per regeneration or you'll never learn what fixed it.

From Prompt to Finished Image: The Workflow

Here's the practical loop: start with the five-part formula, generate, and evaluate against your intent — not against perfection. Is the composition right? Is the mood close? Fix the biggest miss first with a targeted edit to the prompt, not a rewrite. Most great AI images land within 3-5 iterations. Save the prompts that work in a notes file — your personal prompt library becomes more valuable than any single generation.

For consistency across a set — say, blog illustrations or a campaign — lock your style phrases and reuse them verbatim in every prompt while varying only the subject. Same style words, same lighting words, new subject: that's how you get a cohesive series instead of ten random images. Keep a running list of phrases that delivered great results; over time it becomes your personal style preset. And the free AI Image Generator is perfect for practicing: type a description, get an image in seconds, no signup.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do I write a good prompt for an AI image generator?

Use the formula: subject, setting, style and medium, lighting, and mood. Be specific and concrete — 'golden retriever in a sunlit field, 35mm film photography' beats 'a nice dog'. Name art styles, describe light sources, and add camera terms for realism.

Q: Why do my AI images look generic?

Generic prompts produce generic images. 'A beautiful landscape' could be anything, so the model picks the statistical average — bland. Add specific details: the time of day, the art style, the mood, the composition. Specificity is what separates striking images from stock-photo mush.

Q: Can AI image generators create text in images?

Poorly — this remains one of AI's weakest areas. Short words sometimes work on newer models, but longer text usually comes out garbled or misspelled. Avoid requesting signs, labels, or typography in your prompts unless you've verified your specific tool handles text well.

Q: How detailed should my prompt be?

Detailed enough to cover subject, setting, style, lighting, and mood — usually 15-40 words. More isn't always better: very long prompts with contradictory instructions confuse the model. Prioritize clarity over buzzwords, and iterate one element at a time.

Try the Free AI Image Generator

Type a description and get a stunning image in seconds — free, no signup, right in your browser.

Disclosure: I'm the maker of this free tool.

Free Background Remover — No Signup, No Watermark, Nothing Uploaded

All Done Tools — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 05:41:11 +0000

Free Background Remover — No Signup, No Watermark, Nothing Uploaded

Most 'free' background removers watermark, cap your resolution, or upload your photos to their servers. This one runs the AI in your browser — here's the honest rundown.

Disclosure: I built All Done — the free tool behind this guide. This post was originally published at https://all-done.xyz/blog/free-background-remover-no-signup-no-watermark (canonical).

Try it free: Background Remover

The catch behind most 'free' background removers

The background-remover market has a standard playbook: advertise 'free', then watermark the download, cap free exports at low resolution, require an account for anything useful, and quietly upload every photo to company servers for 'processing' — and training data. The free tier is a demo with a funnel attached.

That's the gap a genuinely free tool attacks. No watermark means the output is actually usable. No signup means no email harvested. And browser-local processing means your photos are never uploaded at all — which turns out to be the rarest feature of the three.

How it works here, step by step

Upload a JPG, PNG, or WebP (up to 15 MB) and the AI model segments the subject right in your browser tab. Seconds later you get a side-by-side view — original next to the cutout on a transparency checkerboard — and a download button for the transparent PNG. No account, no queue, no credit system.

We ran it on a real portrait: clean subject separation, transparent PNG downloaded and opened correctly in an image editor. The cutout quality is what you'd expect from a modern segmentation model — excellent on clear subjects, honest about its limits on tricky edges (more on that below).

Upload a JPG, PNG, or WebP — up to 15 MB, one image at a time.
The AI cuts out the subject in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
Preview original vs transparent result side by side, then download the PNG.

Your photo never leaves your device

This is the feature that matters most and gets mentioned least. Cloud-based removers receive your full photo — including personal portraits, product shots, and client work — on their servers, where retention policies vary and 'we may use uploads to improve our models' is common fine print. You are trusting a stranger's infrastructure with your images.

Browser-local AI removes the trust question entirely. The photo never leaves your device because the computation happens on it. For ID photos, family pictures, unreleased products, or anything under NDA, that's not a nice-to-have — it's the only architecture that guarantees privacy by construction.

ATS-Friendly Resume Guide: Beat the Bots in 2026

All Done Tools — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:52:39 +0000

Originally published on All Done — this is a cross-post so the full guide lives where it's free forever.

Most resumes never reach a human — they're filtered, parsed, and ranked by an applicant tracking system first. Here is how to make sure yours gets through.

The Gatekeeper You Never See

Here is an uncomfortable statistic: 97.8% of Fortune 500 companies filter applications through an applicant tracking system, and 88% of employers admit they lose qualified candidates to automated screening. Your resume is not being read and rejected — in most cases it is being ranked by software and never opened at all.

An ATS does two things: it parses your file into structured data (name, dates, skills, job titles) and it scores how well that data matches the job description. 99.7% of recruiters use keyword filters to sort candidates. This guide covers exactly how to satisfy both the parser and the person who reads what survives it.

Format: The Non-Negotiable Rules

Parsing software reads your resume left to right, top to bottom, as plain text. Anything that breaks that linear path breaks your application.

Single-column layout is mandatory — two-column designs get read across instead of down, jumbling your job titles with the wrong descriptions.
No tables, text boxes, graphics, icons, or skill bars — they cause parsing failures or get stripped entirely.
Stick to standard fonts (Arial, Calibri, Georgia) at 10 to 12pt.
Use conventional section headings like Work Experience, Education, and Skills.
Keep your contact details in the body of the document — many parsers skip headers and footers completely.

Boring resumes get read; pretty resumes get rejected.

Keywords: Speak the Machine's Language

Keyword matching is the number one reason resumes fail screening. If the posting says "project management" and your resume says "handled projects", the system may not connect the two.

Aim for roughly 75% overlap with the job description's terminology: pull 15 to 20 key skills, tools, certifications, and exact job titles from the posting and weave them naturally into your summary, skills section, and bullets.

Repeat priority keywords two to three times, including singular and plural variants where natural.
Spell out acronyms on first use — "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)" — so both forms are searchable.
Mirror the job title itself where honest: candidates whose resume title matches the posting are over ten times more likely to get an interview.

DOCX or PDF? The File Format Answer

Unless the posting specifically requests a PDF, submit .docx — it is the safest format across ATS platforms. Text-based PDFs usually parse fine, but PDFs exported from design tools like Canva or InDesign often carry layout artifacts that scramble extraction. Never submit .pages files, scanned images, or infographic-style resumes; the parser reads zero words from an image.

One more detail people miss: the filename. Save it as Firstname-Lastname-Resume-2026.docx. Some systems display the filename to the recruiter, and "Final_v3_updated(2).docx" is not the first impression you want.

Content That Scores: Verbs, Numbers, Tailoring

Once the parser can read your resume, the scoring begins — and content decides your rank. Start bullets with strong action verbs (led, built, delivered, increased), quantify every achievement you can (percentages, revenue, team sizes, time saved), and use the CAR method: Challenge, Action, Result. "Increased quarterly sales by 23% by implementing a new CRM workflow" beats "responsible for sales growth" every time.

Tailor strategically rather than exhaustively. You do not need to rewrite everything per application — update your summary, reorder your top skills to mirror the posting, and adjust two or three bullets. A resume tuned to one specific posting will always outscore a generic one sent to forty.

Do not neglect the professional summary at the top: three to five keyword-rich lines that name your role, years of experience, and two or three headline skills. It is the first text block the parser reads and the first thing a recruiter skims, so front-load it with the exact terminology from the posting.

The 60-Second ATS Self-Test

Before you hit submit, run the Notepad test: copy your entire resume into a plain text editor. If sections look scrambled, merged, or missing, an ATS will struggle with it too — fix the formatting, not the content. Then check the essentials: single column, standard headings, contact info in the body, keywords from the posting present, and a clean filename.

If you'd rather not fight Word margins, our free Resume Builder starts you in a single-column, parser-safe layout with standard headings baked in. No signup needed.

This is a cross-post of the full guide at all-done.xyz/blog/ats-friendly-resume-guide-2026. I build All Done — 39 free online tools, no signup, no cost.