What's New in Digital Imaging Software?

PSA Journal, August, 2001 by Stanley Ashbrook

I found the PhotoMerge feature especially intriguing. This function opens all of the image files in a designated folder and stitches them together to form a panorama, by intelligently matching overlapping image areas.

What's missing? For one, the ability to work in CMYK for outputting to the 4-color print process, the Pen tool for advanced vector selections, and the ability to save a selection in an alpha channel. Quick Mask mode and Layer Masks are also not included.

In all honesty, you can probably buy an image-editing program with power at or near the same price, such as Paint Shop Pro or Picture Publisher, but the real advantage for the newcomer that starts with Photoshop Elements is the ability to learn image editing by learning the Photoshop interface and to upgrade to the full version when you feel the need for more power. Then it won't be necessary to learn a new program or lose the investment in your beginning program. By starting with Elements, you can take advantage of the popularity of Photoshop's vast array of 3rd party books, tutorials, seminars, videotapes, etc. that help you learn the program.

* Picture Publisher[R] 9

Micrografx has introduced a new upgrade for their Picture Publisher -- a full-featured, image-editing application. Version 9 adds automated wizards, tutorials, and tool presets.

There are several new features in Version 9. One is Channel Mixer that allows you to modify a color channel using a mix of the current color channels. Besides creating interesting effects, this command lets you create high quality gray scale images, and enhance the quality of color images.

MultiProbe displays color information for up to eight locations in an image so you can make color and tonal corrections. As in Photoshop, there is now a Measure Tool to calculate the distance/angle between any two or three points in an image. An Info Window displays information that helps you perform precise operations, such as aligning pixels and measuring sizes of areas within an image.

You can enhance the colors in your original image, compensate for colorcasts, make color corrections such as brightness, contrast, color balance, hue, saturation and tonal details by using the new Modify Color Maps.

You can undo the last step or multiple steps, only limited by memory and disk space. Take a snapshot of the image, and use the SnapShot for painting later. This is useful for painting special effects.

There is now a Path Tool so you can create a mask using a besier tool.

Learn more about Picture Publisher 9 by visiting their Website at http://www.micrografx.com.

* Plug Ins

In addition to programs for image editing there are a number of programs that either work in conjunction with or within the editing program to either create special effects or provide a function not performed well in the editing program. One of these is -- Genuine Fractals[TM]

There is axiom in digital image editing that you don't resample an image to make it larger. The reason for this is when you ask the program to enlarge an image, it must add pixels. Quality is lost because the programs only do a fair job of picking the right pixels to add. Along came Genuine Fractals, a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and compatible image-editing programs that enables photographers to produce high-quality digital photo enlargements and repurpose artwork at various sizes and resolutions from the same low- to medium-resolution originals. Resolution on demand lets you output any file size from a single encoded file. Genuine Fractals comes in three versions: