ImagePals 2 improves its graphics manipulation tools

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.