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Corel Photo-Paint 7 PLUS! has enriched its interface with a wide range of new tools and filters. One of the more useful photo-retouching tools is the Lens Object feature. Lens Objects introduces an image correction feature called Lenses. This allows you to see how color and tonal adjustments affect the underlying image, without actually making changes to the image. In all there are 12 lenses providing a wide range of effects. Another useful tool that has been around for a while but improved in this prod uct is the layer tool. Though not as refined as Adobe’s Photoshop, it is functional and can be used in the creation of many incredible effects.
Corel Photo-Paint 7 PLUS! and several 3rd Party vendors have added a number of new filters and plug-ins. The SQUIZZ! plug-in is a new addition. SQUIZZ! allows you to distort, expand and pinch, squeeze, smear, warp, wrap and twist an image using a grid mesh. Other Third Party filters included are Extensis Intellihance. This allows you to automatically enhance your image ’s tones, saturation, and sharpness. Kai’s Power Tools is a cool way of creating textures, color blends and 3-D modeling. Digimarc Digital allows you to embed and read digital watermarks. You should note, though, you will need to register your watermark with the company for a fee. Auto F/X Photo/Graphic Edges allows you to create different designer edges to frame an image. Cytopia Photolab allows you to make fine tuned color corrections to your image, as if you were in a photo lab.
However, when working with such files, any sound information is lost in the reworked video file.
Object menu commands appearing in the object menu have been rearranged. The pre-existing items have not been removed. The menu window is now shorter and more manageable. You can customize all windows and tool settings. Many of the tools allow you to save specific properties for customized tools. Also the undo command allows you to change the undo at intermittent undoes. However, it is extremely cumbersome to work with.
The one thing I found most improved was the color management system. Corel in cooperation with Kodak has developed a simple question and answer system to help color calibrate your system. This increased accuracy in color calibration helps for those pesky RGB to CMYK conversions . The best color management interface I have seen and used has been Aldus’s Photostyler version 2.0a. Kodak developed that system along with Aldus several years back.
I believe that it still is one of finest interfaces on the market, though more than four years old. However, Corel has come one step closer to having a working system that will aid in the color management issues of the prepress industry.
Corel has done an admirable job with Corel PHOTO PAINT 7.0 PLUS! Corel Photo-Paint 7 PLUS! would make a fine addition to anyone’s image manipulation collection. It has powerful color correction tools as well as an arsenal of filters and plug-ins for spec ial effects to add that dazzle to your image. Added to this is the fact that it is one of the few programs that is addressing the color management issues with Kodak’s help. I would have to say look out, Photoshop, there is a new kid on the block.
Andrew Chan is a HAL-PC member and owner of Alpha & Omega Graphics, Inc., a Corel authorized Service Bureau in Houston.
Version 7.0 retains the same basic look and feel of the previous version, but incorporates enough new features to make upgrading worthwhile, particularly if you do any web design work. It continues to shine in ease of use and speed. It loaded several lar ge images (around 18 Megs each) at one time without crashing or slowing to a crawl, and screen redraws were quick even with an old one Meg graphics card. The test machine for this review was a Pentium 100 with 32 Megs of RAM. Overall, the program seems s table; it only crashed once during a week of this reviewer’s deliberate attempts to break it.
The toolbar buttons and menus are for the most part easy to use and readily accessible, although I found a few procedures marred by awkward placement of dialog boxes. The proceedures for adding a custom texture and custom image spray are also a little aw kward to use.
The printed manual and online tutorials are clearly aimed at persons with relatively little graphic experience and were easy to follow, definitely an improvement over the documentation that came with the previous edition of Picture Publisher as part of t he ABC Graphics Suite. Given the intended audience, the main thing this reviewer found missing in the manual was a good explanation of how to prepare files for a service bureau.
Neither the printed manual, nor the online help, nor the Readme file make any mention of several nifty third party programs included on the CD: VideoCraft GIF Animator, a program for creating animated GIFs, and Map This 3.1, a program for creating image maps.
Granted, these are third party products and come with their own online help, but the Micrografx documentation might have at least mentioned they were there. If I hadn’t scrutinized the advertising blurbs on the box very carefully, I wouldn’t have known to look for them. Picture Publisher also comes with a large collection of clip art and stock photos and a rudimentary image manager, Media Manager, to manage this large assortment…and you can use Media Manger to catalog and organize any other graphic images.
Plug-ins and special effects: Many of the older special effects plug-ins that worked with Picture Publisher 6 will not work with version 7, including AlienSkin’s Black Box 2.0 and Eye Candy 3.0. The Readme file indicates that the 3.01 version of Eye Candy works fine with a couple of minor exceptions. However, check out some of Picture Publisher’s built in macros and wizards, before spendin g money on third party add-ons. These are a great value.
There’s a wizard that makes creating drop shadows a snap and another wizard that lets you create text with a variety of special effects, including embossed, recessed, metallic, glowing. The Button Maker wizard reduces the heretofore rather complicated bu siness of creating a button from scratch to a few mouse clicks. You can create almost any kind of button, round or square, in raised, recessed, and shaded forms. Wizards are like macros, except they have dialog boxes for interactive user input. You can a lso tint grayscale images and apply a variety of edge effects to the edges of an image. Users can also record their own macros. By default, all the commands applied to an image are stored in the Command Center. If the file is saved in Picture Publisher’s native format the list of commands can be saved with it, allowing multiple Undos and Redos even after the file has been saved. The Command Center, combined with the ability to define sections of the image as independent objects, makes the program very f lexible. You can also use the more conventional method of deliberately recording a series of actions for playback as a macro; however, the Command Center is great for times when you stumble on an effect you’d like to save, but can’t remember how you “got there”.
Micrografx has packed this version with features geared toward creating and optimizing images for the Web. In addition to those already mentioned these include: Copy HTML, a background texture previewer, palettes optimized for Netscape and Internet Explo rer, and the ability to map a group of images to the same palette. The Export GIF dialog box lets you designate multiple colors as transparent and even provides an estimate of how long it will take to download the saved file. Copy HTML makes it easy to c opy all the necessary codes for placement of an image in an HTML file from Picture Publisher into a text-based editor in one easy step.
The program also includes a digital watermarking feature (licensed from Digimark) used to embed copyright information into an image in a way that is difficult to obliterate. However, to take full advantage of the watermarking feature, one must purchase a subscription ($99 per year) from Digimark.
Operating System: Windows 95 or Microsoft Windows NT® 3.51 (service pack 5 installed).
Imports and Exports file formats: Export in more than 16 formats and an additional 21 import formats.
Price: $99 (not a typo!) Trial edition available at http://www.micro-grafx.com/picturepublisher/download/pp7ie/register.asp. A. M. Schaer is a HAL-PC member who teaches Microsoft Word and Excel on a contract basis for Wall and Associates. She can be reached by email at schaer@hal-pc.org.
Photoshop 4.0 builds on some of Photoshop 3.0’s new features such as layers, combined palettes, and lighting effects plus adds others including:
• 48 new artistic filters with greater control options
• Adjustment layers
• Grids and guidelines
• Custom gradients with multicolor
• Image caching
• Actions (similar to macros)
• Navigator palette
• Free-transform tool
• Watermarking (see note)
• New image formats for web publishing
• Improved documentation and tutorials
The remainder of this review provides a brief overview of these new and improved features.
There are many predefined multicolor gradients, plus you can create your own. You can adjust the starting and ending colors and add one or more intermediate colors to the gradient. You can also easily add transparency to any gradient. A radial gradient o ption has been added.
A new image-caching feature makes redrawing images quicker. Performance improves when scrolling, zooming, moving selections, and compositing layers. (Note that Adobe has redefined the functions of the move and selection tools.)
Check out the Action Xchange Website http://www.jmc.mit. edu/photoshop/ where you can find other special-effects actions.
A new Navigator palette can help you zoom in, out, or around any area in the image. It provides continuous zoom levels from 0.13% to 1600% in addition to the standard zoom.
The new free transform tool allows you to interactively move, scale, rotate, skew, and distort a selected area of an image in one step. A modified image size command includes a resample image option; it replaces the constrain file size option in Photosho p 3.0.5.
Besides the ability to change the file size, the resample image option gives you better control over the quality of an image.
Including the correct pixel dimensions of an image are especially important when preparing images for the Web.
The watermark added to the image notifies users that an image is copyright-protected via a digital watermark that uses Digimarc PictureMarc technology. The watermark remains readable (by the program, not the human eye) even after an image has been printe d, edited, or rescanned.
(NOTE: You need to register your “watermark”, for an extra fee.)
You can also save files to progressive JPG format and have new controls over JPG settings. PDF files can also be written directly from Photoshop 4.0.
These are also great for a quick refresher at a later date. Extensive on-line help and well-written printed documentation round out this outstanding product.
The on-line help contains links to the Adobe home page where you can get tips and techniques for using the product, search a product support data base, and download the latest updates.
And even though the new action palette makes it easy to create multiple images needed for animated GIFs, you must use another program to animate the images.
Photoshop 4.0 needs an automatic color management system and some improvement in the printer profile that adds more choices in the color settings. The incremental improvements in this version of Photoshop have again made it a much better program. It cont inues to be the most popular bitmap and photo-editing program.
Barbara Appel is a graphic designer and owner of Appel & Omega,
Inc.
Shirley Fender, a graphic designer and associate, and Larry Dybala, a
Technical Communicator and Designer, both of whom are HAL-PC members and
contributed to this review.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.
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Last modified: 1997:08:31