The most recent articles from PC Magazine

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0

Cliff Joseph — 2002-09-26T14:35:50.000Z

Cliff Joseph, PC Magazine, Thursday 26 September 2002 at 14:35:50

A powerful and easy-to-use photo-editing program.

When it was first launched, Photoshop Elements suffered from a bit of an identity crisis. It was a cut-down and less expensive version of Adobe's Photoshop, the program that dominates the professional photo-editing market.

However, to some of us it looked as though Elements was simply a way of recycling old versions of Photoshop.

The program also competed in the consumer market with Photodeluxe, Adobe's cheap-and-cheerful photo editor for beginners.

That left Photoshop Elements uncomfortably squeezed between its two Adobe stablemates. Photodeluxe is likely to be phased out, while Photoshop Elements has just been upgraded to version 2.0.

A comparison with Photoshop is still inevitable. Both programs have the same interface, using floating palettes that can be neatly tucked into the Palette Well in the top right-hand corner of the screen in order to save space and keep things tidy.

The improved File Browser in Elements 2.0 is a direct copy of the same feature that was introduced in Photoshop 7.0. This lets you view any image files on your computer and sort through them using criteria such as name, size, resolution or creation date.

The interface isn't elegant, but it's a handy feature if you have many graphics files.

Elements 2.0 has a number of features that help set it apart from Photoshop, providing greater ease of use for non-professionals and, occasionally, even improving on Photoshop.

One handy feature is the ability to view video clips and then capture individual frames so that you can save and edit them. There's also a feature that'll convert any image into a compressed JPEG, launch your email program and attach the file to a new message.

Another useful timesaver is the QuickFix option, which brings a number of basic editing tools together into a single dialog box. This shows a preview of the image that you're working on and allows you to adjust basic settings such as brightness and contrast, colour correction and lighting levels. From here, you can also alter the image focus and rotate the image.

There are more complex tools in this upgrade as well, such as the new Selection brush. This provides a very precise method for selecting finely detailed elements within an image so that you can cut them out and paste them into new images, or combine them with other images to create a collage.

The brush works well, although you really need to understand how masking and layering techniques work to use this tool properly.

Adobe has improved the online documentation in this version of Elements in order to give new users a bit more help. There's a new glossary in the Help menu, and a number of online tutorials that'll introduce you to basic editing techniques. There's also a handy new Help search feature.

In addition to these new options, there are a number of existing features that have been refined. There are new 'artistic' brushes that let you create natural paint effects, and minor improvements to the various drawing and text tools.

The printing options provide greater versatility when printing multiple images on a single piece of paper, and there are improved options for creating web galleries and stitching multiple photos together to create 360-degree panoramas.

All this makes Photoshop Elements 2.0 a very powerful photo-editing program, probably the most powerful available in the sub-£100 price range.

Fact file

Price: £74.99 (ex. VAT)

Contact: Adobe (020) 8606 4001

Minimum system requirements:

CPU 133MHz
Memory 128MB
Hard disk 150MB

Pictographics iCorrect 3.0

Paul Monckton — 2002-06-14T10:17:58.000Z

Paul Monckton, PC Magazine, Friday 14 June 2002 at 10:17:58

This intuitive image enhancer offers vastly improved results in seconds.

ICorrect 3.0 delivers quick and effective colour correction for digital images. Available in both standalone and Photoshop plug-in versions this small, yet powerful, tool helps you get the best out of your digital images using a highly intuitive interactive approach.

Old or faded images often have colour and contrast problems. If you've tried using Photoshop's built-in tools, you'll know they can be tricky to use. ICorrect is very simple and quick to use, but the results can be dramatic.

Certain colours such as flesh tones and grass are quite easy to judge by eye. The software uses these Memory Colours as the basis for interactive correction. You first select a reference colour from a choice of Neutral, Sky, Skin and Foliage, then click on areas of your image that are the appropriate colour.

iCorrect automatically performs the corrections with the results visible alongside your original. You then repeat this process, clicking in several areas of skin tone, for example, until the software has produced an accurate result. You can then move on to other memory colours if they are present in your image.

iCorrect can also make automatic black point and white point adjustments to improve brightness and contrast. There's also manual control of both of these parameters to allow you to fine tune your image.

A very handy monitor adjustment feature provides a crude, but useful, method of setting up your monitor's brightness and contrast, which is a must when making visual corrections.

Starting with a digital camera image taken indoors without flash, we produced a vastly improved result in seconds. No specialist knowledge is required and the program even provides pop-up instructions to guide you through the process.

Perhaps more impressive is iCorrect's ability to improve pictures you previously thought to be correct, just by applying subtle tonal changes.

Even users familiar with the use of devices such as Photoshop's curves tool might find the plug-in version of iCorrect 3.0 invaluable for its high-quality results and the time it saves.

Advanced users might want to opt for iCorrect Professional ($79), which retains the same simple interface, but adds greater flexibility.

Price: $39.95

Minimum requirements: Windows 9x, 2000, NT 4.0, XP; Pentium 133MHz; 32Mb Ram; 1Mb free hard drive space.

Contact: Pictographics

www.picto.com

Digital Domain Profile Prism 1.6

Paul Monckton — 2002-04-26T10:31:21.000Z

Paul Monckton, PC Magazine, Friday 26 April 2002 at 10:31:21

Gives your digital images a colour profile for a relatively low cost.

Being able to edit and print your own pictures is one of the advantages of digital photography, but it can also be one of the biggest headaches.

If you've ever shot a brightly coloured scene that comes out mysteriously flat and lifeless, or taken a picture of a beautiful blue flower only to see it come out an unnatural shade of purple, you'll appreciate the effectiveness of Profile Prism.

With a conventional film camera, you simply shoot the image and send it off for processing, secure in the knowledge that your prints will be returned looking exactly the way that you intended. Or, if you're a professional, you process and print them yourself to produce the desired effect.

The problem with digital photography is that you don't know the original characteristics of your 'film'. Your camera will produce an RGB image, but the RGB colour space is device-dependent, which means that the RGB colour values your camera uses to describe, for example, purple, might not be the same as those used by your imaging software or printer.

There have been attempts to standardise RGB colour - the sRGB colour space is the default used on the web and is also available on most modern monitors and printers. Unfortunately, sRGB limits the range of colours available, bringing them down to a lowest common denominator level. Unfortunately, not all digital cameras support sRGB.

Profile Prism helps by enabling you to create an industry standard colour profile that details exactly what colours your camera is describing in its RGB file. This profile can then be used by any imaging program that supports ICC profiles, such as Adobe's Photoshop, to reproduce the precise colours, automatically restoring your purple flower to blue and bringing back your vivid colours. This will save you hours of tricky image manipulation.

To create your profile, you must first photograph the supplied colour target. This is a card printed with a pattern of accurately coloured squares on a grey grid. Once you've loaded this image into Profile Prism, it will automatically locate each of the coloured squares and, by comparing your image data to known values, calculate an ICC profile for your camera.

The software itself is very simple to use, but the hardest part of the procedure is taking the initial photograph of the colour target, because it's important to get the exposure exactly right and to set up your camera correctly.

Once you've created your profile, you can apply it to any images that you take with your camera. You can also use the profile retrospectively to 'breathe new life' into your existing library of pictures once you've profiled the camera that took them.

Profile Prism 1.6 lets you create a colour profile that can make a huge difference to your digital images for a relatively low cost.

Price

$69

Contact

Digital Domain: PO Box 595, Finksburg, Maryland 21048

www.ddisoftware.com/prism/

Micrografx Picture Publisher Professional 10

Cliff Joseph — 2002-04-22T14:00:58.000Z

Cliff Joseph, PC Magazine, Monday 22 April 2002 at 14:00:58

An impressive degree of creative power at a competitive price.

Our main criticism of Picture Publisher 9 when we reviewed it (PC Magazine, August 2001), was that it seemed confused as to who its users were. It contained an odd mixture of wizards and aids aimed at beginners, while also including high-end colour management and correction tools for professional designers.

Micrografx seems to have recognised this problem, as this upgrade has been split into two products. Picture Publisher Professional 10, reviewed here, concentrates on more experienced users. However, Micrografx has also released Picture Publisher 10 Digital Camera Edition (£24.99 ex.VAT), aimed at home users just getting started with digital photography.

This approach makes more sense than trying to cater for beginners and professionals within a single product.

The list of new features in this upgrade is quite extensive. There are several new features for working with web graphics, for example, including new slicing tools. There's a new 'four-up' preview dialog that displays four versions of a file using different compression settings. You can also adjust the compression settings for each preview so that you can see how they affect the image quality.

Picture Publisher's text tools have also been refined, with a useful new option for running text along a curve.

However, it's in the area of special effects that Micrografx has really gone to town. There are new Blur effects, including radial, zoom and streaking blurs, which provide adjustable settings and a live preview option.

Even more eye-catching are the Particle Studio and Lightning effects, which allow you to add flame effects and streaked forks of lightning to images, respectively.

Picture Publisher also includes a feature called the Paint Studio, which lets you transform photos so that they appear to have been painted with traditional materials, such as oil paints or chalk.

Finally, just to help you keep track of all your photographs and images, there's a separate PhotoAlbum utility that enables you to view multiple images and arrange them in albums. This feature also provides a useful 'contact sheet' printing option, which can be used to print multiple images on a single sheet of paper.

The decision to focus on more experienced users certainly seems to have paid off for Micrografx. The package's online help is still a bit scrappy and some of its dialog boxes can be a bit intimidating, but Picture Publisher Professional 10 is both more powerful and focused than its predecessor.

It's cheaper, too, and provides an impressive degree of creative power at a competitive price.

Contact

Micrografx, Grafx House, Forsyth Road, Woking, Surrey GU21 5SB

Tel 01483 747526, Fax 01483 747528

www.micrografx.com/mgxproducts/PicturePublisher.asp

Adobe Photoshop 7.0

Cliff Joseph — 2002-04-17T12:11:52.000Z

Cliff Joseph, PC Magazine, Wednesday 17 April 2002 at 12:11:52

Focuses on refinements to the program's existing image-editing tools.

Photoshop 7.0 certainly isn't a disappointment and its list of new features is long enough to merit the leap from version 6.0 to 7.0. However, this upgrade seems to concentrate on refining the program's existing image-editing tools, rather than introducing any major new capabilities.

Perhaps the most obvious new feature is the File Browser, which sits in the palette docking area in the right-hand corner of the program's main toolbar. The File Browser provides a number of options for viewing and organising your image files.

It's divided into four panes, the first of which works like Windows Explorer and provides a hierarchical view of the contents of your hard disk drive. The Thumbnail pane shows small previews of all the images in a particular folder, while Preview shows a larger view of the currently selected image.

Finally, there's the Metadata pane, which displays 'metadata' that can be stored with each image file, such as the date the picture was taken, its resolution, file size and copyright information.

The File Browser's interface is functional, rather than elegant, and you'll probably have to spend some time readjusting the layout of the various panes to get it set up the way you want it. However, it does provide some handy features. You can add rankings to images and sort them by ranking or by other attributes, such as file name or date created.

There's also a Batch Rename feature that will appeal to photographers.

Digital cameras tend to save their files with nondescript names such as '0001.jpg', which isn't great when trying to locate one picture in a large batch. With Batch Rename you can assign descriptive names to a series of photos all at once.

The File Browser is definitely a useful addition, but it does feel as though it's been bolted on almost as an afterthought and sits rather untidily amidst Photoshop's neat little collection of palettes. Fortunately, one of the other improvements in this upgrade is the ability to create custom workspaces. You can arrange the various tool palettes on screen in any way you want and then save each arrangement as a named workspace. You might have one workspace set up with tools for photo retouching, say, and another for creating rollover buttons for your website.

Once the settings have been saved you can switch from one to the other by selecting the required workspace from the Window menu on the main toolbar.

There are some very neat refinements to the various editing tools as well. The existing Clone tool is often used to remove blemishes from a photograph by copying an unblemished part of the image onto the area that needs to be retouched. This tool isn't always effective, though, as the lighting and texture of the two areas may not match properly.

To eliminate this version 7.0 has come up with the Healing Brush. This works just like the Clone tool, but it corrects differences in texture and lighting so the retouched area more closely matches the image around it.

Photoshop's brush tools have been enhanced in other ways, too. The engine used to create bitmap paint effects has been rewritten so you can now create paint effects such as pastels and charcoal. There's also greater freedom to adjust brush properties such as tilt and texture.

There are many other minor additions, such as a spelling checker, improved controls for creating rollover buttons, and new printing options.

Admittedly, there's nothing quite as attention-grabbing as the Liquefy command that appeared in Photoshop 6.0, but the new Healing Brush feature alone will make this a must-have upgrade for many users.

Contact

Adobe: Waterview House, 1 Roundwood Avenue, Stockley Park, Uxbridge UB11 1AY

Tel 020 8606 4000, Fax 020 8606 4004

www.adobe.co.uk/products/photoshop/

Ulead PhotoImpact 7.0

Cliff Joseph — 2002-04-11T11:26:07.000Z

Cliff Joseph, PC Magazine, Thursday 11 April 2002 at 11:26:07

Image-editing software that not only lets you manage, correct and enhance photos, but also allows you to create and publish many types of images.

Adobe and Macromedia continue to argue which one invented the 'tabbed palettes' used in their rival graphics programs, but Ulead Systems' PhotoImpact has taken the idea of palettes to an almost ridiculous extreme.

The EasyPalette used in previous versions has been modified so that it now contains an enormous range of tools. By default, this palette is divided into two panels, with a list of available tools displayed in the left-hand side and a thumbnail preview on the right. Just about all of PhotoImpact's special effects filters can be viewed in this palette, along with text effects, templates, masking tools and brush and lighting effects.

You can remove the tool list and simply display the preview panel in the palette, in which case you select tools from a separate pull-down menu at the top of the EasyPalette. There's also an EasyPalette Pop-Up that sits in the status bar at the bottom of the program's main workspace.

Initially this is empty, but you can customise it by selecting tools from the EasyPalette itself and then adding them to the Pop-Up. All the EasyPalette tools are also available in the program's standard toolbars and menu displays.

This provides an enormous amount of freedom when it comes to setting up PhotoImpact to suit the way you work. However, newcomers might be confused by the sheer amount of duplication in the way the program presents its tools. The new Beautify Skin effect, for instance, is listed under Camera Lens effects in the Effects menu and Retouching tools in EasyPalette.

This new tool is worth looking for, though. It allows you to select the skintone from a particular area in a photo and apply it to other areas.

Other new special effects include Zoom Blur, which provides several options for creation motion-blur effects. There are also spherical and trapezoid lens distortion effects and an option called Crystal, which simulates the effect of viewing an image through glass.

There are also many new tools for creating web graphics. The new image map and slicing tools are available from the program's main toolbar, while a wizard-like dialog box guides you through the process of creating rollovers, banners and other graphics. The program also supports the new, and more efficient, JPEG2000 file compression format.

PhotoImpact's interface might sometimes be too clever for its own good and its online help system isn't always helpful, but there's no doubt that it packs a lot of useful graphics tools into a very affordable package.

Contact

Distributed by Computers Unlimited, The Technology Park, Colindeep Lane, London NW9 6DU. Tel 020 8200 8282 Fax 020-8200 3788

www.ulead.co.uk