Picture This
Get your point across with good graphics software
By Russell Smith
With the advent of low-cost color inkjet printers, the popularity
of computer graphics programs has soared. Digital photography,
low-priced scanners, and the emergence of personal web pages have
added to the growing consumer interest in graphics software. Next
to e-mail and word processing, in fact, graphics production is
probably one of the top three activities for the average computer
user.
It's a rare computer user who has not owned at some time a copy
of Broderbund's Print Shop and PrintMaster or Sierra's Print Artist.
These are great programs for novice and advanced user alike and
should be on the software purchase list of every school. Yet as
computer users mature and learn more web page and digital imagery
skills, they will find these great classic print programs lacking
in graphic editing tools. They'll begin to look for a program
that can crop and repair defects on digital photos, or a program
to make transparent backgrounds and animated GIF files. And they'll
want professional-quality assistance in creating school newspapers,
brochures, and in-house newsletters.
Following are some of the best graphics, editing programs that
can fulfill the needs of intermediate to advanced users.
 Paint
Shop Pro 6.0 and
Animation Shop 2
Jasc Software, Inc. (800)
622-2793. Frequently referred to as the poor man's Adobe Photoshop,
Paint Shop Pro has been popular for many years as a shareware
program on the Internet. Now PSP is appearing in glossy cardboard
packaging at commercial retail outlets across America. Part of
the appeal of Paint Shop Pro is that it has evolved with increasingly
sophisticated features, yet has retained an elegant and uncluttered
work area with icons that are clearly marked and easy to identify.
The 6.0 version includes a number of improvements, such as better
formatting control of the text tool; numerous special effects
like Warp, Kaleidoscope, Sculpture, and Beveling; multiple image
printing that allows the user to arrange and print several graphics
on a single sheet of paper; a picture frame option for images;
a new Help system with a convenient "How do I ..." section; enhanced
zoom control; and enhanced digital camera support.
 Many
users will find Animation Shop 2 a welcome tool for creating animated
graphics for web pages and presentations. Animation Shop 2 is
tightly integrated with PSP6 and can be launched from a menu option
inside PSP6. Animation Shop 2 allows the user to create text banner
animations easily using a Banner Wizard. The Crop tool lets you
remove all undesired content, such as empty canvas area, from
all frames in an animation to reduce the file size and download
time for web graphics. The Registration Mark tool allows you to
place a crosshair at the same location in every animation frame
to ensure precise placement.
The tight integration with Paint Shop Pro 6 allows one or more
frames to be exported to Paint Shop Pro for editing and updated
directly back to Animation Shop. Frames can also be dragged and
dropped into Paint Shop Pro 6 or from the PSP 6 Browser to Animation
Shop. HTML source code for inserting an animation into a web page
can be quickly accessed and copied to the clipboard using the
View HTML Code feature.
Paint Shop Pro 6.0 is a very nice graphics editing program at
one-sixth the price of full-blown Adobe Photoshop. Yet it has
grown in complexity in the past four years of upgrade versions.
Novice users may find PSP6 a little overpowering, but intermediate
to advanced computer users will quickly get up to speed in using
the program. I rate it a good buy.
 PhotoDraw
2000 Version 2
Microsoft Corp. (800)
426-9400. The new kid on the block for graphics programs, PhotoDraw
2000 has quickly proven to be a welcome addition in the intermediate
price range. Developed for placement in the vaunted Microsoft
Office lineup, PhotoDraw was born with a silver spoon in its mouth
-- and a haughty pedigree to live up to. Happily, most reports
from Internet PhotoDraw owners indicate a high level of satisfaction
with the new Office component.
I like PhotoDraw for its ability to create professional-quality
banners and logos (see the logo on my Fair
Use web site, which I created in PhotoDraw). It has an impressive
CD database of sample graphics (write to me and I'll tell you
a neat undocumented trick for loading all of the CD graphics onto
your hard drive for easy access), and the beveling features are
as good as or better than in any other program. Importing graphics
from other programs is a cinch in PD2000 as it recognizes more
than 20 formats.
Version 2, released late in October 1999, includes a number
of new features, such as a convenient toolbar access that allows
you to quickly select an area of a picture to copy or crop. Another
new feature, Custom Formats, allows you to create a custom look
and apply it to any object using the Format Painter tool. Version
2 also has an additional 150 built-in web effects and styles that
make it easy to apply embossing, rollovers, and glows. A new web-effects
tool called Styles lets you save and reuse your own custom styles.
PhotoDraw is one of the easiest programs for getting users quickly
productive with eye-catching graphics. The advantage of the Microsoft
common menu interface makes icons and menus easy to learn in PhotoDraw.
One of the weaknesses of PhotoDraw is its lack of a robust GIF
animator. A very basic one was added in Version 2, but power users
will prefer a more sophisticated GIF program like the GIF Construction
Set. Still, with only two versions developed, PhotoDraw has a
lot of promise for greater enhancements in the future. Power users
won't throw away their Adobe Photoshop, but even advanced users
will find highly desirable features in PhotoDraw.
Publisher
2000 Deluxe with Picture It! 2000
Microsoft Corp. (800)
426-9400. Publisher is rapidly endearing itself to desktop publishers
as the premiere brochure and newsletter program. It's also a pretty
darned good web page editor. Publisher comes with a whopping 2,000
publication templates and more than 40 Design Sets that help deliver
a consistent color scheme and design. "Wizards" help users quickly
produce professional-quality printouts. The Pack and Go feature
allows you to carry your project on diskettes to a commercial
printing service.
The Deluxe version of Publisher 2000 comes with an additional
CD of 50,000 clip art images plus the Picture It! 2000 program.
Picture It! 2000 has some neat photo editing features that make
it a nice complement to Publisher. In a new Mini Lab function,
users can now fix all of their photos at the same time. Cropping,
brightness adjustment, rotation, and other editing changes can
be applied to multiple photos. The ability to automatically remove
the annoying red-eye in digital and scanned photos is another
welcome tool. There's also a wide array of special effects users
can pick from, including head swap, fantasy shots, and watercolor
backgrounds.
More than 100 different special illusions help change your picture
into a special graphic. Two CDs jam-packed with graphics provide
a wide array of choices for projects like calendars, business
cards, certificates, electronic greeting cards, and web pages.
Picture It! is designed for the entry-level consumer and might
appear fairly primitive to an advanced user, yet it has improved
a lot with the 2000 version. On the plus side, it doesn't have
a 400 page manual like its more expensive competitors, so the
learning curve is smooth and fast.
Graphic
Workshop Professional and GIF
Construction Set Professional 2.0a.
Alchemy
Mindworks, Inc. (800) 263-1138. This excellent program from
Canada is as good as it gets for ease of use in basic editing
of photos for web pages. It doesn't even pretend to do any of
the super fancy Photoshop functions. What it does do is let you
easily convert a photo from one format to another (like change
a BMP wallpaper file into a JPG file or vice versa).
Besides this conversion tool -- the best one in the industry
for versatility and ease of use -- Graphic Workshop has superb
scaling and cropping tools and the ability to view practically
any kind of graphic file (including digital camera files). Another
very useful function is the ability to rename and delete any file
in the directory view and easily view the file size of graphics.
GIF Construction Set is the easiest GIF animator on the market.
If you've tried some other animation programs and been confused,
give this one a try. GIF Construction Set Professional features
an Animation Wizard to create sophisticated animations, a Supercompressor
to squeeze your GIF files down to size, and extensive documentation
and tutorials,
About the only negative I can possibly find is the slightly
glamorous Renaissance mermaid logo on the closing shareware splash
screen of Graphic Workshop Professional. There's no full frontal
view, but some folks might think the image is inappropriate for
kids. Registration eliminates the mermaid, and it's a bargain
at the price for such a useful program. It will quickly become
the workhorse for your basic web page photo editing.
 Image
Composer 1.5.
Microsoft Corp. (800)
426-9400. I'll bet most computer users didn't even know there
is a superb graphics editing program bundled with FrontPage 98
and FrontPage 2000 (not included with the Office Premium version,
which has PhotoDraw as the graphics component). The beauty of
Image Composer is its innovative use of "sprites," a new type
of transparent-based image that lets you arrange, customize, and
create on-screen images. Sprites have transparency information
built in, which means they can possess the shape of the objects
they represent. Traditional graphics editing software uses rectangular
images, which can be difficult to work with on web pages.
Image Composer gives users better control over their graphic
creations, but the learning curve is steeper than that of PhotoDraw.
If you want quick-and-dirty graphics that look great without much
effort, use PhotoDraw. If you want slightly superior graphics
that require more time, install Image Composer. As a free value
add-on to FrontPage, it is a very powerful graphic tool.
LView Pro 2.7 and LView Poster
MMedia Research Corp. (954) 458-9698. This popular shareware
program started out years ago as a utility to view collections
of various graphic files easily, but it has grown into a complete
graphics editor. It not only creates quick and easy catalogs but
is now a complete and full-featured paint program as well. And
it's one of the few commercial paint programs that include any
options for cataloging your graphics (Picture It! 2000 being a
notable exception).
It's easy to create a thumbnail database of a lot of graphics
and do it in a short amount of time. Then you can click on the
thumbnails to activate the paint editor in LView. All the popular
paint tools can be found in LView, including airbrush, flood fill,
smear, and even clone. You get a toolbar on the side of the window
for easy access.
Photoshop
5.5 and ImageReady 2.0
 Adobe
Systems, Inc. (800) 492-3623. I saved my review of Photoshop
for last as I had never used it before and knew of it only by
its vaunted reputation as the best editing software bar none.
I half expected to be disappointed by it, or at least be disgusted
by the reputed complexity of the program. Yet to my happy surprise
I found Photoshop a very user-friendly program. The massive assortment
of special effects really astounded me as I didn't quite expect
such a large variety of graphic tricks. The price of this program
is an obstacle, but considering the unparalleled graphic tools
and the clean interface, this program will get a lot of use by
your advanced users.
Adobe calls Photoshop "the world-standard image-editing solution
for print and the web," and I'm not inclined to disagree. The
innovative Adobe GIF compression engine can reduce the size of
GIF web graphics tremendously; in a two- or four-image screen
view, users can check file size and quality and even download
times for their web graphics.
In Photoshop 5.5, Adobe has integrated ImageReady (formerly
a $200 stand-alone product) to permit easy production of professional-quality
animated GIF files with the smallest possible file sizes. Like
the sprites in Image Composer, each graphic layer is a separate
object in the animation, enabling full control over the desired
outcome. The easy-to-learn interface makes ImageReady a powerful
tool for webmasters and printmeisters everywhere.
The really awesome advantage Adobe holds in its graphics software
is the use of common core technologies across many products. Thus
Photoshop is integrated tightly with Adobe Illustrator, Adobe
InDesign, Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, and other Adobe
products with a common interface and underlying similar coding.
As we begin to move rapidly into the full-motion digital era --
made possible by faster machines, broader bandwidth, and cheaper
digital video cameras -- the Adobe advantage might loom even larger
in the future. For now, though, we can just say that Photoshop
5.5 is the fastest and best graphics editing software on planet
Earth.
Russell Smith
is a contributing editor to Electronic School and an educational
technology consultant for Region 14 education Service Center in
Abilene, Texas.
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