ImagePals 2 improves its graphics manipulation tools
By Zatni Arbi
JAKARTA (JP): PhotoShop, PhotoStyler, PhotoMagic and Publisher PaintBrush are just some of the familiar names in the graphics manipulation world. Each of them offer a set of tools that allow you to edit images, be it a TIFF image that you have scanned from a photo or a stock photograph you have just retrieved from a Photo CD Collection.
Don't forget to add to the above list the new and more powerful CorelPHOTO-PAINT!, which is part of the CorelDRAW! 5.0 package. Brad Young, Corel System's sales manager for Asia, told me at the CorelDRAW! 5.0 launch here in Jakarta last week that the people at Corel had thought CorelPHOTO-PAINT! was so versa tile that they were intending to sell this program as a stand- alone product.
However, by today's standards, an image manipulation program would not be considered comprehensive if it didn't come with some utilities that helped you manage your collection. For graphics file management, Hijaak Pro, from Inset System, used to be my favorite.
It offers the facilities to create thumbnail views of your graphics file collection. It also has powerful screen capture utilities that I've been using to create illustrations for my articles. But my new favorite is the US$ 129.00 ImagePals from Ulead System, Torrance, California.
Image tools
Ulead System is a five-year-old company that already has a proven track record. It was this company that developed PhotoStyler, which has been marketed by Aldus Corporation. You should be fairly familiar with this giant since I spoke a great deal about it in my discussion of mergers and alliances a couple of weeks ago.
ImagePals is aimed at designers, graphic artists, photographers, and desktop publishers who need a comprehensive tool set for working with image, graphic, video and even sound files.
In the area of image manipulation, ImagePals lets you do many things that high-end programs that I mentioned above do. You can blur or sharpen the image, emphasize the edges and warp or apply custom filters. You can also adjust the tones, adjust the brightness and contrast, convert a color image into grayscale or vice versa.
What I like is the collection of special effect tools. ImagePals has 20 of them. I really like this quick-and-dirty way of manipulating images. For instance, I can create the blur effect so that the picture of a stopped car will look as if it is moving. Or, I can make a picture look "warmer" by increasing the intensity of red and yellow overtones. Of course, other more or less standard special effects, such as Emboss, are also available here.
ImagePals also provides the Object Pool, a quick and easy way to store images and masks for later use or editing.
Media management
Ulead also calls ImagePals a media management tool. That means this package is for anyone working with image, graphic, video, animation or sound files. It has five integrated modules, which you can call up by clicking the Pals menu item on the right end of the menu bar. ImagePals provides a complete set of tools to let you visually organize, edit and convert your files.
ImagePals organizes every image, graphic, video and sound file on your hard drive, network and Photo CDs -- even files created by other Windows programs -- into visual thumbnail albums. You can collect files into albums according to media, format, date, type or group them by client, project, subject, etc.
If you prefer, you can use any system that matches the way you work. As you build your albums, ImagePals automatically creates thumbnails of your files and remembers the location of each thumbnail's source file.
ImagePals also provides powerful cataloging and searching facilities. To find your thumbnails fast, you can assign a description, a subject, and up to 32 keywords to each thumbnail.
Locating thumbnails is as easy as browsing through your albums or initiating searches by description, subject, keyword, file name, data type, date, etc. You can even save search criteria to be used again later or "mark" thumbnails while browsing or searching for easy viewing or retrieval.
To preview a file, you only have to double click on the thumbnail. The built-in viewer or Microsoft Media Player brings up the file instantly! If the file is on a CD, ImagePals will tell you which CD to insert.
Legal aspects
Although such a wide array of image editing tools are available for desktop publishers, photographers, etc., one should not take the legal implications too lightly. Digital images are very easy to manipulate, but doing so may turn out to be an infringement of the property rights of the person who created them in the first place.
A lawsuit that enjoyed wide coverage involved the stock photography agency FPG International and the second largest U.S. four-color newspaper, Newsday. The former sued the latter for US$ 1.4 million for having used two of its photos.
FPG alleged that Newsday's computer illustrator had electronically reversed the placement of a couple in the photo, altered the shadows and edited some other elements of the image. US$ 1.4 is a heck of a lot of money.
So, the gist of the story is, folks, before you begin using all the super-duper power tools that are available today, make sure that you don't violate someone else's copyrighted work. With the availability of royalty-free Photo CD collections, there's actually no reason for you to do so.
Back to ImagePals, I think this new program will take the place of Hijaak Pro on my hard disk. It provides the same level of screen capture quality as well as file conversion. Better still, it integrates image management tools into the package, something that Hijaak Pro doesn't have.
Like Hijaak Pro, I can transfer images directly into ImagePals Image Editor from a TWAIN-compliant scanner. If you work with images, you should take a look at this low-cost solution from Ulead System.