PhotoFiltre and Photo Workshop comparision

[A.A. Fussy]

Here is my PhotoFiltre and Photo Workshop 2 comparision, based on what I
tried out in each program:

Note: abbreviations are PWS- for Photo Workshop 2, PF- for PhotoFiltre :

General-PWS-is free for both commercial and non-commercial users, PF has a
registration screen,but is currently useless.PhotoFiltre can open images
in more file formats than Photo Workshop 2 and can export to.ico files .
No score awarded to this category, as this would not be a issue for most
users.

Interface:
PWS-Photo Workshop 2 has a MDI interface, with a Office 97 toolbar style,
and it uses two task panes-one is for tool options, the other is for
selecting colors-very useful, as you can save sets of custom colirs in .bbc
format and has a larger area for displaying the colors and allows you to
enter custom color values-eg. red-125,blue-130, green-130 . Its menu style
is similar to Office 97's menus. Via the tool settings pane-a simple option
to draw shapes is available. A handy 6 mage selection clipboard is
available in the tool settings task pane.
PF-one shortcoming I found that the color palette is very small and built
into the toolbar, and has no area for storing custom colors or entering a
custon RGB value-you have to do that via a color dialog, I feel it should
have a separate toolbar for the color selection. It has a very nice Office
2003 style backgrounds on menus. And there's no way to draw shapes via its
toolbar.Also there is no clipboard monitor function, and it has a more
complicated interface-eg. to change a brush width, you have to access a
dialog called 'Stroke and fill', in Photo Workshop can be done without using
a dialog box, through its tool settings bar .

Score-out of ten:
Photo Workshop 2-9, because of a versatile color selection system, and a
easy to use interface, with a clipboard monitor function , and it's easy to
change tool settings
PhotoFiltre- 7, because it has a unusual tool box style, with integrated
color selector , which has very small color samples, plus some tools options
need to set via dialog boxes, eg. the paintbrush tool in the toolbox setting
area only offers different brush styles, width via a dialo box,and no
clipboard monitor.

Tools-Photo Workshop 2 has a easy to use set of tools, Photofiltre has
more, but are not as easy to set options for. Photo Workshop has 3-4 brush
stroke types-eg. a Japanese caligraphy style slanted brush , PhotoFiltre
has some advanced ones, and the caligraphy style slanted brush is in its
advanced paintbrush tool, not the standard one . Selections-Photo Workshop
actually allows you to move your selected image area around, Photofiltre
doesn't alloes this-the selected area does not move, it only selects the
area.

No score-though Photofiltre has more tools for modifying images, they both
do the same job, but Photo Workshop 2 has a better selection method.
Image operations-Resize:
PhotoFiltre and Photo Workshop have very similar resize options- both have a
retain aspect ratio option, and both are easy to use.
Again, no score as both programs have similar ways of resizing images.

Image operations-text:

PWS-you can add text via the top toolbar, and has a very simple options-font
size, font style and has preview area that shows what you have typed.
PF-to add text, it's Image-Text.... or via the toolbar, its dialog has many
more options for text-like antia-alias, drop shadows, alignment, angle, fill
patterns, but its preview has 'abyz' instead of your actual text.

Score:
PhotoFiltre:10- because it has more options for text and has great text
effects like text angles .
Photo Workshop 2:9.5-Although, its text tool is more limited, it is easier
for new users to add text to images.

Effects:

PWS-has a variety of image effects, which most are customisable, and allows
you to preview the effect . It has easy to use border/frame effects, and is
also customisable too. They are simple to set-via the Image menu. Also these
effects are quickly applied. It has frame effects-such as a 3D button frame
effect-one of 7 available , and also easy to customisable. The border effect
is very simple to add and looks neat.

PhotoFiltre-At first sight, it has a impressive arrary of effects, but not
all can be customized- the effects are applied as soon as a effect is
selected. There are a small selection of customisable effects, however. Some
effects can be slow to apply or to preview, even on my Pentium 4 2.40GHz
system. Its frame effects are similar to Photo Workshop, but some of them
are not customisable, and there is no easy method for adding a border
effect to a image in PhotoFiltre .

Score:
Photo Workshop 2: 10-as it has easy to use image effects and most are easy
to customise, plus the image effects do not take a long time to be applied
to a image.


PhotoFiltre: 4-most effects are not customisable, some are slow to preview
and apply, and although its frame effects are good, some cannot be
customised, like the button frame effect- Photo Workshop's button style
effect's properties can be changed, but PhotoFiltre's are not.


Image management:
PWS- Photo Workshop 2 has a major adavantage compared to PhotoFiltre- it
has image management functions,via the free bPicture '04 image manager-
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail.php3?fid=1076838784 . You can even
access Photo Workshop 2 from it. bPicture ' 04 has a very good image sorter
and has a built-in slideshow feature, but also includes Presenter to create
image slideshows. You can access Photo Workshop 2 from bPicture.
PhotoFiltre-PhotoFiltre only has basic image managment, no slideshow output,
no image sorter.

Score:
Photo Workshop 2:10-because when used in conjuction with bPicture '04, you
will have a very good image management system.
PhotoFiltre:2-as it has very few image management options.

Open/save-both can save in .bmp and .jpg formats, while PhotoFiltre has more
formats to save in. No score-both can save images easily.

Final Scores:
Photo Workshop 2-38.5 out of 40
PhotoFiltre- 23 out of 40

In conclusion-based on what I tested, both are quite capable, but I feel
PhotoFiltre is suited to more advanced users, and I can recommend my Photo
Workshop 2 for its image managment features when used with bPicture, and
slideshw output and easy to use tools.

 

[MinMin]

Here is my PhotoFiltre and Photo Workshop 2 comparision, based on what I
tried out in each program:

Final Scores:
Photo Workshop 2-38.5 out of 40
PhotoFiltre- 23 out of 40

In conclusion-based on what I tested, both are quite capable, but I feel
PhotoFiltre is suited to more advanced users, and I can recommend my Photo
Workshop 2 for its image managment features when used with bPicture, and
slideshw output and easy to use tools.

"Nurse!!! Get the sedative, Fussy has finally completely flipped!!!"

"Yes, doctor. All right, Mr Fussy, this won't hurt a bit. Yes, of
course we know your name is Bill Gates...."

 

[A.A. Fussy]

"Nurse!!! Get the sedative, Fussy has finally completely flipped!!!"

"Yes, doctor. All right, Mr Fussy, this won't hurt a bit. Yes, of
course we know your name is Bill Gates...."

--
MinMin

"Did you hear the one about the kleptomaniac who married a nymphomaniac?
Their kid turned out to be a f@#$ing thief."

It's just a comparison of the two programs, based on the features I tried
in each application

 

[MightyKitten]

It's just a comparison of the two programs, based on the features I tried
in each application

I just finnished my review. I suggest you read it VERRY CAREFULLY

Purpose of this test:

A.A. Fussy wanted someone to review his Babya Photo Workshop 2. When nobody
felt the need to do this, he baldly wrote a review him self, comparing the
software with photofiltre. I have read about A.A. Fussy in this Newsgroup
(alt.comp.freeware) and also seen postings of himself. Unitll now, I
restrained myself from giving a judgement as I never have used his software
before.


This afternoon (Central European Time) I finnished my testing system. The
review A.A. Fussy wrote gave me the cause to find out for myself how good
his Babya Photo Workshop 2 realy is, And to give A.A. Fussy what he wants: A
(as much as posible) objective review of his program.

============================================================================
=====


Test system Specifications:

Hardware
Penium III @ 800 MHz
512 MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 2 kaart 64 MB Ram
SMC2802W wireless PCI NIC
Soundblaster Live! card


Software.
It is a dual boot system, both Windows 2000 Professional.
The first system (I'll call it my freeware system) is compleetly on the
first partition. The second system (Called the test system) is on the Second
partition.I will not bore you with the software specifications of my
freeware system, as I use the (Surprisse...) test system for the review.

The Test system is a Windows 2000 Professional system, with all windows
updates unitl 01-03-2004, except for the Journal Viewer (This package will
corrupt setup information sometimes) Only drivers for the soundcard,
Videocard and NIC are installed. Other devices are working with default
windows drivers, ore are being ignored. This system has, ofcorse been
imaged, to reset any installation. No other softwar is running. No virus
scanner, nothing. All packages are scanned on my other machine running
McAffee 7.0 Enterprise ED adn on my freeware machine running AVG antivirus.


============================================================================
=====

Preparing
To prepare fot the test, I went to the official websites of both PhotoFiltre
And downloaded the software from the authos site. Then I went to Microsoft
to download the visual basic 6 runtimes, needed for Babya Photo Workshop 2

============================================================================
=====

Testing.
I'm writing the report while I'm testing, using notepad. This means I might
comeback on items I wrot earlier in the report. All typing error are a bonus
addon ;-)


============================================================================
=====

Setup:


Babya Photo Workshop 2
First I installed the Visual Basic 6 runtime modules. This went without any
event.
The installation of Photo Workshop seems clean enough. To bad the Author
does not include a warning about the need of Visual Basic 6.0 runtimes.

After installation, I tried to startPhotoworkshop, but got the error
message:
"Component 'MSCOMCTL.OCX' or one of its dependencies not correctly
registred: a file is missing or invalid." Thoug this is a quite common file,
it is not good practise to expect it is already installed. After copying the
file from my freeware system, it tried again. This time 'comdlg32.ocx' was
missing. This one is also copied and I try to start the program again: It
Works!


Installation size:
138 KiB comdlg32.ocx
1053 KiB MSCOMCTL.OCX
2048 KiB Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime (discussable)
2469 KiB Babya Photo Workshop 2
--------
5708 KiB Totaal


============================================================================
=====

The software

Babya Photo Workshop 2
When run, it starts with diplaying a splashscreen, but this can be disabled.
A little more strange is what happens after the splash screen: you are asked
to adjust the settings to create an empty sheet. Though possible usefull, I
mightsooner expect a compleetly empty sheet, an open dialogue or nothing (as
photofiltre does)

The first thing you will notice are the very with side bars with tools and a
color picker. Instantly, a question arose: Whay have toolbars on each side,
and not neatly underneat eachother? The reason is quite simple: you cannot
alte the sosition of these bars.

Babya Photo Workshop 2 can handel JPG, BMP, GIF and BIF pictures for
opening, and .JPG, .BMP for saving. I opened one of my JPG photo's. After
loading, It shows my photo, but the window is set to a display of (I think)
200x200. Fotunately, you can alter the windows size and make it fill the
workspace.

On the bright side, I recognise some of the tools inmeadiately, other icon's
are a mistery, worth exploring.

I will skip the first 7 icons:
New, Open, Save, Cut, Copy, Delete and undo

Icon 8 is an arrow. It only seems to be a kind of neutral tool fucntion.
The next one is the select rectangle option. It works well, but does asume
you want to copy the selected rectangle by default (if you drag the selected
part, this part is copied in stead of cut. Not very usual, but might be a
good option for some of us.

The Pencil tool works quite correctly. No further comments
The eraser tool erases to white. This cannot be altered.
The fill area tool works as might be expected
The line tool does too. You can alter the thickness of iot.

The first mistery icon seems to be a draw-a-series-of-connected-lines tool,
and it seems to work ok. One minus: if you create a closed shape, the
filling option does not work. I might be this is not the purpose of the
tool.

The Draw poreset shapes tool comes next. It works quite like the on in
MS-paint.
The next tool is an icon called "Alter Colors" What this one does will
reamin a mistery for life.


At this moment It is time to save the changes I made on the drawing:
The save as function does not seem to work.

Alright, I'' go to my pictures directory and duplicate the picture, so Photo
Workshop can save over the origional picture. When I press the buton save, I
get an error message: "Run-Time Error '53' File not found BBJPeg.dll"
I Press the OK button and the program crashes.

This is the end of my review. I am willing to spend some time write a
review, but not for a software package that can not save pictures.

============================================================================
=====

My Advice:
Sorry Fussy, but you realy should do your homework again:


First:
Make sure all basic functions work an a clean system: Opening, saving,
diplaying). No fancy tools, no filters Basics first. Create a viewer first,
then add a feature one time after another.

Second:
Do something about your Userinterface. If the interview I read was real,
Your goal is to create Macintosh like interfaces. To be honest and put it
hard: Your not evcen close. Interfaces have to be simple, yet complete.

Third
Provide a help file. Evenif very basic, Tell people what to do when in
trouble: where to download the visual basic runtime, where to get the
missing ocx files


MightyKitten

 

[Nicolaas Hawkins]

It's just a comparison of the two programs, based on the features I tried
in each application

and therefore spamming, self-serving claptrap lacking any shred of
objectivity, credibility, or usefulness.
--

 

[William F. Adams]

MightyKitten said:
<snip> Well-reasoned, procedural analysis and review of an apparently
amateurish software program which is rigid in its UI, and non-functional due to
a well-diagnosed error followed by mature, sensible advice which included:

Second:
Do something about your Userinterface. If the interview I read was real,
Your goal is to create Macintosh like interfaces. To be honest and put it
hard: Your not evcen close. Interfaces have to be simple, yet complete.

A user interface is far more than just an appearance, and Macintosh-like
encompasses so much as to be virtually meaningless these days. NeXT-like or Mac
OS X-like would be better (though again, Mac OS X encompasses such a range of
APIs and UIs that one must specify whether one means foetid, warmed-over Carbon
code (such as Macromedia FreeHand or Adobe Illustrator), or nice fresh Cocoa
code such as Purgatory Design's Intaglio or Cenon (the latter is free /
opensource and is available for OpenStep 4.2, Mac OS X and Linux and other Unix
variants running the GNUstep libraries). Look up a post I made on
www.macslash.org on GNUstep for one take on what Mac-like ought to mean these
days.

To return to the topic at hand, a wonderful, long-awaited freeware paint
program was just announced today, ArtRage, by Ambient Designs. Although it's UI
is optimized for Tablet PCs, it works quite well w/ the mouse, and exposes a
_lot_ of functionality in a very small space. Although inflexible in some ways
(no scrolling, can't move / rearrange tools, limited file export choices), it's
a wonderfully vivid, immediate and fluid application. The UI is similar in
concept to Alias SketchBook, which is available in a crippled trial form which
is still highly useful. Even though one can learn either of these applications
quickly, there's a lot to be learned / considered from their UI. (which is very
well explained in the excellent help file / manual provided in .html format)

http://www.ambientdesign.com/artragedown.html

An excellent book on user interface design is Kevin Mullett and Darrell Sano's
_Designing Visual Interfaces_ --- this is one of the best books I've ever read
and I can't recommend it highly enough.

MightyKitten, let me assure you that this program _can_ save and open files.
and it exports .bmp files which can be opened by MS Paint, and .png files which
Adobe PhotoShop 4 will open fine (didn't check the jpeg). The program is in
public beta, so a bit of caution is advised, but the company which does it has
made some really sharp, profesisonal PhotoShop filters, and would be glad of
constructive feedback and useful bug reports.

William

 

[A.A. Fussy]

I just finnished my review. I suggest you read it VERRY CAREFULLY

Purpose of this test:

A.A. Fussy wanted someone to review his Babya Photo Workshop 2. When nobody
felt the need to do this, he baldly wrote a review him self, comparing the
software with photofiltre. I have read about A.A. Fussy in this Newsgroup
(alt.comp.freeware) and also seen postings of himself. Unitll now, I
restrained myself from giving a judgement as I never have used his software
before.


This afternoon (Central European Time) I finnished my testing system. The
review A.A. Fussy wrote gave me the cause to find out for myself how good
his Babya Photo Workshop 2 realy is, And to give A.A. Fussy what he wants: A
(as much as posible) objective review of his program.

============================================================================
=====


Test system Specifications:

Hardware
Penium III @ 800 MHz
512 MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 2 kaart 64 MB Ram
SMC2802W wireless PCI NIC
Soundblaster Live! card


Software.
It is a dual boot system, both Windows 2000 Professional.
The first system (I'll call it my freeware system) is compleetly on the
first partition. The second system (Called the test system) is on the Second
partition.I will not bore you with the software specifications of my
freeware system, as I use the (Surprisse...) test system for the review.

The Test system is a Windows 2000 Professional system, with all windows
updates unitl 01-03-2004, except for the Journal Viewer (This package will
corrupt setup information sometimes) Only drivers for the soundcard,
Videocard and NIC are installed. Other devices are working with default
windows drivers, ore are being ignored. This system has, ofcorse been
imaged, to reset any installation. No other softwar is running. No virus
scanner, nothing. All packages are scanned on my other machine running
McAffee 7.0 Enterprise ED adn on my freeware machine running AVG antivirus.
============================================================================
=====

Preparing
To prepare fot the test, I went to the official websites of both PhotoFiltre
And downloaded the software from the authos site. Then I went to Microsoft
to download the visual basic 6 runtimes, needed for Babya Photo Workshop 2

============================================================================
=====

Testing.
I'm writing the report while I'm testing, using notepad. This means I might
comeback on items I wrot earlier in the report. All typing error are a bonus
addon ;-)


============================================================================
=====

Setup:


Babya Photo Workshop 2
First I installed the Visual Basic 6 runtime modules. This went without any
event.
The installation of Photo Workshop seems clean enough. To bad the Author
does not include a warning about the need of Visual Basic 6.0 runtimes.

After installation, I tried to startPhotoworkshop, but got the error
message:
"Component 'MSCOMCTL.OCX' or one of its dependencies not correctly
registred: a file is missing or invalid." Thoug this is a quite common file,
it is not good practise to expect it is already installed. After copying the
file from my freeware system, it tried again. This time 'comdlg32.ocx' was
missing. This one is also copied and I try to start the program again: It
Works!


Installation size:
138 KiB comdlg32.ocx
1053 KiB MSCOMCTL.OCX
2048 KiB Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime (discussable)
2469 KiB Babya Photo Workshop 2
--------
5708 KiB Totaal


============================================================================
=====

The software

Babya Photo Workshop 2
When run, it starts with diplaying a splashscreen, but this can be disabled.
A little more strange is what happens after the splash screen: you are asked
to adjust the settings to create an empty sheet. Though possible usefull, I
mightsooner expect a compleetly empty sheet, an open dialogue or nothing (as
photofiltre does)

The first thing you will notice are the very with side bars with tools and a
color picker. Instantly, a question arose: Whay have toolbars on each side,
and not neatly underneat eachother? The reason is quite simple: you cannot
alte the sosition of these bars.

Babya Photo Workshop 2 can handel JPG, BMP, GIF and BIF pictures for
opening, and .JPG, .BMP for saving. I opened one of my JPG photo's. After
loading, It shows my photo, but the window is set to a display of (I think)
200x200. Fotunately, you can alter the windows size and make it fill the
workspace.

On the bright side, I recognise some of the tools inmeadiately, other icon's
are a mistery, worth exploring.

I will skip the first 7 icons:
New, Open, Save, Cut, Copy, Delete and undo

Icon 8 is an arrow. It only seems to be a kind of neutral tool fucntion.
The next one is the select rectangle option. It works well, but does asume
you want to copy the selected rectangle by default (if you drag the selected
part, this part is copied in stead of cut. Not very usual, but might be a
good option for some of us.

The Pencil tool works quite correctly. No further comments
The eraser tool erases to white. This cannot be altered.
The fill area tool works as might be expected
The line tool does too. You can alter the thickness of iot.

The first mistery icon seems to be a draw-a-series-of-connected-lines tool,
and it seems to work ok. One minus: if you create a closed shape, the
filling option does not work. I might be this is not the purpose of the
tool.

The Draw poreset shapes tool comes next. It works quite like the on in
MS-paint.
The next tool is an icon called "Alter Colors" What this one does will
reamin a mistery for life.


At this moment It is time to save the changes I made on the drawing:
The save as function does not seem to work.

Alright, I'' go to my pictures directory and duplicate the picture, so Photo
Workshop can save over the origional picture. When I press the buton save, I
get an error message: "Run-Time Error '53' File not found BBJPeg.dll"
I Press the OK button and the program crashes.

This is the end of my review. I am willing to spend some time write a
review, but not for a software package that can not save pictures.

============================================================================
=====

My Advice:
Sorry Fussy, but you realy should do your homework again:


First:
Make sure all basic functions work an a clean system: Opening, saving,
diplaying). No fancy tools, no filters Basics first. Create a viewer first,
then add a feature one time after another.

Second:
Do something about your Userinterface. If the interview I read was real,
Your goal is to create Macintosh like interfaces. To be honest and put it
hard: Your not evcen close. Interfaces have to be simple, yet complete.

Third
Provide a help file. Evenif very basic, Tell people what to do when in
trouble: where to download the visual basic runtime, where to get the
missing ocx files


MightyKitten

I tested version 2.0 while in develop,ent and it does save .jpg files,
ok.

 

[A.A. Fussy]

I just finnished my review. I suggest you read it VERRY CAREFULLY

Purpose of this test:

A.A. Fussy wanted someone to review his Babya Photo Workshop 2. When nobody
felt the need to do this, he baldly wrote a review him self, comparing the
software with photofiltre. I have read about A.A. Fussy in this Newsgroup
(alt.comp.freeware) and also seen postings of himself. Unitll now, I
restrained myself from giving a judgement as I never have used his software
before.


This afternoon (Central European Time) I finnished my testing system. The
review A.A. Fussy wrote gave me the cause to find out for myself how good
his Babya Photo Workshop 2 realy is, And to give A.A. Fussy what he wants: A
(as much as posible) objective review of his program.

============================================================================
=====


Test system Specifications:

Hardware
Penium III @ 800 MHz
512 MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 2 kaart 64 MB Ram
SMC2802W wireless PCI NIC
Soundblaster Live! card


Software.
It is a dual boot system, both Windows 2000 Professional.
The first system (I'll call it my freeware system) is compleetly on the
first partition. The second system (Called the test system) is on the Second
partition.I will not bore you with the software specifications of my
freeware system, as I use the (Surprisse...) test system for the review.

The Test system is a Windows 2000 Professional system, with all windows
updates unitl 01-03-2004, except for the Journal Viewer (This package will
corrupt setup information sometimes) Only drivers for the soundcard,
Videocard and NIC are installed. Other devices are working with default
windows drivers, ore are being ignored. This system has, ofcorse been
imaged, to reset any installation. No other softwar is running. No virus
scanner, nothing. All packages are scanned on my other machine running
McAffee 7.0 Enterprise ED adn on my freeware machine running AVG antivirus.
============================================================================
=====

Preparing
To prepare fot the test, I went to the official websites of both PhotoFiltre
And downloaded the software from the authos site. Then I went to Microsoft
to download the visual basic 6 runtimes, needed for Babya Photo Workshop 2

============================================================================
=====

Testing.
I'm writing the report while I'm testing, using notepad. This means I might
comeback on items I wrot earlier in the report. All typing error are a bonus
addon ;-)


============================================================================
=====

Setup:


Babya Photo Workshop 2
First I installed the Visual Basic 6 runtime modules. This went without any
event.
The installation of Photo Workshop seems clean enough. To bad the Author
does not include a warning about the need of Visual Basic 6.0 runtimes.

After installation, I tried to startPhotoworkshop, but got the error
message:
"Component 'MSCOMCTL.OCX' or one of its dependencies not correctly
registred: a file is missing or invalid." Thoug this is a quite common file,
it is not good practise to expect it is already installed. After copying the
file from my freeware system, it tried again. This time 'comdlg32.ocx' was
missing. This one is also copied and I try to start the program again: It
Works!


Installation size:
138 KiB comdlg32.ocx
1053 KiB MSCOMCTL.OCX
2048 KiB Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime (discussable)
2469 KiB Babya Photo Workshop 2
--------
5708 KiB Totaal


============================================================================
=====

The software

Babya Photo Workshop 2
When run, it starts with diplaying a splashscreen, but this can be disabled.
A little more strange is what happens after the splash screen: you are asked
to adjust the settings to create an empty sheet. Though possible usefull, I
mightsooner expect a compleetly empty sheet, an open dialogue or nothing (as
photofiltre does)

The first thing you will notice are the very with side bars with tools and a
color picker. Instantly, a question arose: Whay have toolbars on each side,
and not neatly underneat eachother? The reason is quite simple: you cannot
alte the sosition of these bars.

Babya Photo Workshop 2 can handel JPG, BMP, GIF and BIF pictures for
opening, and .JPG, .BMP for saving. I opened one of my JPG photo's. After
loading, It shows my photo, but the window is set to a display of (I think)
200x200. Fotunately, you can alter the windows size and make it fill the
workspace.

On the bright side, I recognise some of the tools inmeadiately, other icon's
are a mistery, worth exploring.

I will skip the first 7 icons:
New, Open, Save, Cut, Copy, Delete and undo

Icon 8 is an arrow. It only seems to be a kind of neutral tool fucntion.
The next one is the select rectangle option. It works well, but does asume
you want to copy the selected rectangle by default (if you drag the selected
part, this part is copied in stead of cut. Not very usual, but might be a
good option for some of us.

The Pencil tool works quite correctly. No further comments
The eraser tool erases to white. This cannot be altered.
The fill area tool works as might be expected
The line tool does too. You can alter the thickness of iot.

The first mistery icon seems to be a draw-a-series-of-connected-lines tool,
and it seems to work ok. One minus: if you create a closed shape, the
filling option does not work. I might be this is not the purpose of the
tool.

The Draw poreset shapes tool comes next. It works quite like the on in
MS-paint.
The next tool is an icon called "Alter Colors" What this one does will
reamin a mistery for life.


At this moment It is time to save the changes I made on the drawing:
The save as function does not seem to work.

Alright, I'' go to my pictures directory and duplicate the picture, so Photo
Workshop can save over the origional picture. When I press the buton save, I
get an error message: "Run-Time Error '53' File not found BBJPeg.dll"
I Press the OK button and the program crashes.

MightyKitten, I tested exactly what you did, and it did not crash, but it
saved the image

 

[Roger Johansson]

http://www.ambientdesign.com/artragedown.html
The program is in public beta,

Well, more like an alpha, or maybe just an idea for a program.
As a first suggestion for a future program it has some positive qualities.
It is a little like playing with the mixer palette in corel painter.

so a bit of caution is advised, but the company which does it has
made some really sharp, profesisonal PhotoShop filters, and would be glad of
constructive feedback and useful bug reports.

The program interface is hopeless, both from a practical standpoint and
estetically. It is ugly, uses a lot of screen space and gets in the way of
the painting, unless the painting is kept very small to avoid all the big
tool panels.

I cannot imagine anybody over the age of 4 using this seriously in any way,
in its present state of development.
It lacks many necessary features, like zoom, movement, fill, etc..

The idea of using another picture as a tracing paper is nice, but can be
realized by using layers in many other paint programs.

 

[Nicolaas Hawkins]

I tested version 2.0 while in develop,ent and it does save .jpg files,
ok.

And you quoted the entire 230 lines to add your pathetic two-line comment
at the bottom?

Boy, do YOU ever need a clue ... or a swift kick up the arse ... or both!
--

Nicolaas.



- It's sometimes hard to believe, but some teens are human.

 

[MightyKitten]

I

MightyKitten, I tested exactly what you did, and it did not crash, but it
saved the image

I'm sure it does on your system, but if I'm missing BBJPeg.dll (Whitch, if I
might elaborate on the filename, probably contains routines for saving JPEG
compression. If you don't add this to the installer, I don't have it on my
PC, thus not being able to use it. The result is a crash.

*NEVER* ever test only on a machine the program is written on. Testing it on
a clean system is the only way you can be reasonably sure the installer has
all the needed files.

Mighty Kitten

 

[MightyKitten]

A user interface is far more than just an appearance...

I agree copleetly, but most average users will be drawn to an user interface
(Meaning the parts that can be seen) even before they know about the
functions. The only aspect being more important is price. Functionality is
(forntuately?) 3rd

MightyKitten, let me assure you that this program _can_ save and open files.
and it exports .bmp files which can be opened by MS Paint, and .png files which
Adobe PhotoShop 4 will open fine (didn't check the jpeg). The program is in
public beta, so a bit of caution is advised, but the company which does it has
made some really sharp, profesisonal PhotoShop filters, and would be glad of
constructive feedback and useful bug reports.

As I said to fussy, I think he programmed it well, He just forgot to add the
BBJPeg.dll to the installation pakage.
If I may elaborate (Eliza Talk) on the name of this file I assume:

- It is Babya (BB) written or enhanced file, therefor not downloadable elso
on hte web
- It has something to do with JPEG pictures, and sine this error came up
while saving the picture, I assume it contans routines to save to JPEG.
- Since it is missing (File searched my system) it is quite logical it
crashes. But very bad implemented all the same.

William

MightyKitten

 

[|3iff //ullins]

Here is my PhotoFiltre and Photo Workshop 2 comparision

i stand by my previous words:

all the babya stuff (such as Photo Workshop 2) i've seen looks so
(crappily coded) in the screenshots that there is no way this side of
downtown hedes i would ever even so much as *consider installing any
of it (such as Photo Workshop 2) on my system.

 

[bloned]

Go with Photoplus 5.5 (the last freeware version available)
Very Photoshop-like, including use of layers etc. I even like it more
than the Gimp, but that's just my opinion.

http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/se...arch?sourceid=navclient&q=serif+photoplus&SP=

grtz.R

 

[William F. Adams]

Roger J. said:

Well, more like an alpha, or maybe just an idea for a program.
As a first suggestion for a future program it has some positive qualities.
It is a little like playing with the mixer palette in corel painter.

Which is a wonderful tool.

The program interface is hopeless, both from a practical standpoint and
estetically. It is ugly, uses a lot of screen space and gets in the way of
the painting, unless the painting is kept very small to avoid all the big
tool panels.

You didn't try it did you?

First, I like the aesthetics of it.

Second, the big tool panels auto-hide as one approaches them when drawing /
painting / erasing.

Third, the tools can be hidden either individually by pressing on their
``center'', or by right-clicking which hides _all_ of them (another right-click
brings them back).

I cannot imagine anybody over the age of 4 using this seriously in any way,
in its present state of development.

Why resort to the ad hominem? _Try_ the program, learn how fluid it's UI and
customizable within its established parameters (I noted the slightly
inflexibile aspects when I first posted).

That's one of the things which

It lacks many necessary features, like zoom, movement, fill, etc..

All of which are available in other programs, most of which are expensive
commercial software, and have UIs which depend on keyboard shortcuts /
modifiers. I've considered getting Corel Painter 8 for example, but it would
require my purchasing a new system (ArtRage runs wonderfully on my Fujitsu
Stylistic 2300 233MHz Pentium MMX running Win98se w/ 160MB RAM --- Corel
Painter 8 won't even load). I suppose Corel Painter Classic would be
acceptable, but one can't get it separately from a Wacom tablet these days
AFAICT, besides, this is alt.comp.freeware and neither of those are freeware
(unless someone has a working link to the Painter 5 archive?)

What other natural media free painting programs are there and how does this
compare?

I tried Dogwaffle, and it was sluggish, so was another program I posted about
here whose name I can't recall.

The GIMP while neat for scripting things, has a UI I've never found appealing,
and it's moving up in terms of system specifications --- I can't try the new v2
preview 'cause it needs a Pentium II or better.

Pixia looks interesting, and I've been meaning to try it out. The statement for
the first tutorial I found was rather off-putting though, ``Pixia is an easy
tool once you learn how to use it, but until you get used to its unique
interface, you may encounter problems and be unable to find what to do with
them.''

ArtRage doesn't have that problem (true, it does less at this time, but it does
a wonderful job of exposing _all_ of its capabilities in a UI which is easy and
quick to play (or work) with).

The idea of using another picture as a tracing paper is nice, but can be
realized by using layers in many other paint programs.

But AFAICT, none of these other paint programs will auto-apply colour based on
what one is painting over.

William

 

[Roger Johansson]

Roger J. said:

Which is a wonderful tool.

But it takes more than a mixer palette to create a useful paint program.

What they have created in ArtRage is the basic engine in a paint program.
A funtion where you can move a tool (a brush) over an area, and pixels are
changed around that tool according to different algorithms, different for a
brush, an eraser, a palette knife, etc... You can change the color of that
tool and how the color is applied.

ArtRage needs to take that basic paint engine and put it into a program
with a useful interface, and add lots of other functions, to create a
working paint program.

You didn't try it did you?

Yes, I did. I played with it for 15 minutes or so.

First, I like the aesthetics of it.

Second, the big tool panels auto-hide as one approaches them when drawing /
painting / erasing.

But that means you cannot start a brush stroke from a point inside a panel,
you have to start each stroke outside to get into the panel area, and that
is not possible to work with.

Third, the tools can be hidden either individually by pressing on their
``center'', or by right-clicking which hides _all_ of them (another right-click
brings them back).

I did not get that idea even though I rightclicked a lot to see what would
happen. Maybe I missed some functionality there.

Why resort to the ad hominem? _Try_ the program, learn how fluid it's UI and
customizable within its established parameters (I noted the slightly
inflexibile aspects when I first posted).

I am serious about that judgement. The program could be used by children
because it gives a working area directly at the start, the tools are big
and easy to see, and give response directly, the tracing paper function is
a lot easier to use than to use layers in other programs.

But overall, this is not a program anybody could use to produce even medium
level art on. Too many necessary functions are simply not there.

That's one of the things which


All of which are available in other programs, most of which are expensive
commercial software, and have UIs which depend on keyboard shortcuts /
modifiers. I've considered getting Corel Painter 8 for example, but it would
require my purchasing a new system (ArtRage runs wonderfully on my Fujitsu
Stylistic 2300 233MHz Pentium MMX running Win98se w/ 160MB RAM --- Corel
Painter 8 won't even load). I suppose Corel Painter Classic would be

What you need is Pixia, it runs perfectly on very low resources, I know
because my computer is very old.

The interface is a lot easier than you seem to think, and there is an
excellent help file in the program which explains the interface.
There are also very good web tutorials.

Pixia looks interesting, and I've been meaning to try it out. The statement for
the first tutorial I found was rather off-putting though, ``Pixia is an easy
tool once you learn how to use it, but until you get used to its unique
interface, you may encounter problems and be unable to find what to do with
them.''

Don't just read the first sentence of a tutorial, try it yourself and you
will see how easy it is to use, but look at the help file before you begin.

The only competition to Pixia in low resource computers is PsP, ver 7 or
earlier versions, but they are not freeware.
And I could never learn to use layers in PsP, although I tried many times.
In Pixia it was so easy that I regret not having learned to use layers
before, it is really useful.

 

[MightyKitten]

I tried artrage myself.
My Thoughts About it

Use:
ArtRage is not about edition, but about sketching.

Interface
Think most advanced users don't care to much about this kind of interface,
though I have to say, it will awe most inexperienced users. I like it for
estetic reasons (MacOS X like, could be worse) And the positioning isn't to
confusing either. I think it is even much more convinient for those who
hardly ever see a computer program as all symbols are quite realistic. But
the palettes are quite big, even if you are able to hide it. This could be a
contra for more experienced users. The aditional options on a tool (Like
the glass of water) should be movable, in my opinion

Options
It does not have too much features, but for a starter, It is more than
enough. To much options creates fear of useing such programs by many people.
Experienced users quickly will miss options, tools and filters.

Tools:
I liked the texture of the oilpaint and other tools. The Program did a good
job keeping up with the speed of my Tablet pencil.Exept for the Felt pens,
that is. They seemed to skip some parts (more than the other tools at least)
The color weel is simply and good to understand except maybe for the option
Autoclean. You will have to read the help file for this. (By the way, it
would make that selection option circular, in consistence with the GUI)

Saving
One thing I don't get is the default file format ArtRage saves to. Why does
it have a specific format? Since it can also save PNG, whitch is lossless, I
would have chosen this for a default format.

Help
The Helpfile is clean and easy to understand, but in design very
disapointing when you got used to the interface of the program. But this is
not too ig of a problem.

Other things:
By Default, The name of the picture is hidden. Personaly, I would show it by
default, as people could overlook the small button in the corner if hidden.

I Used My Wacom Graphire II and found the pressure enabled fucntions quite
nice, but the difference in pressure might have been more obvious, in my
opinion.

Conclusion
ArtRage is focused on beginning users, prefeerably with a tablet. It would
indeed be a very gooo addition to the software package of the Wacom Graphire
series and its clones (by the way, most of them are also manufactured by
wacom (or use wacom technologie) but need specific drivers).

Experienced users my prefer Pixa above ArtRage for functionality and quicker
selection of tools.

MightyKitten

PS. I Keep the program for now on my freeware pc... Hope to see the offical
release soon. I have some people I would recomand it too. Notably my mother,
who always asks me to start and end internet explorer, or to close those
nasy pop up that slips to the pop-up stopper. I'm sure she will understand
the interface

 

[Roger Johansson]

Experienced users quickly will miss options, tools and filters.

The things I miss most are ways to zoom in and out and to move to different
parts of the picture.

Different ways to select areas and fill areas with colors and do other
operations on them.

Different thickness of applying the color, not just different color hues.
There is no spray can tool.

The tool panels cannot occupy so much of the screen, and they are all over
the screen too, they should occupy a side of the screen and leave the rest
of the screen free.

Tools:
I liked the texture of the oilpaint and other tools.

Yeah, that is the paint engine, as I call it, that part is good.
That is a good start for a paint program, but they need to develop a user
interface and add several other functions to create a working paint program
for serious use.

And I am not talking about filters and photo processing tools, such things
are not necessarily needed for a paint program.
Such tools are available in special programs like Photofiltre.

Some programs, like PsP, try to combine both paint functions and photo
filter functions in the same program, but that often results in a program
which is more about processing pictures than about creating pictures.

Some photo processing tools are very useful as brushes in a paint program,
like a brush which lightens up the part of the picture it is moved over.
Such brushes must have very soft edges and be applied with low density to
be useful.

 

[William F. Adams]

Roger J. said:

What they have created in ArtRage is the basic engine in a paint program.
A funtion where you can move a tool (a brush) over an area, and pixels are
changed around that tool according to different algorithms, different for a
brush, an eraser, a palette knife, etc... You can change the color of that
tool and how the color is applied.

Yep. Neat ain't it.

ArtRage needs to take that basic paint engine and put it into a program
with a useful interface, and add lots of other functions, to create a
working paint program.

The interface is useful already (and innovative and to some people attractive).
It already works as a paint program, it simply doesn't meet your needs ---
there're a number of people whose needs it does meet, I'm one of them.

Yes, I did. I played with it for 15 minutes or so.

And you didn't draw anything large enough to get close to one of the palettes?

But that means you cannot start a brush stroke from a point inside a panel,
you have to start each stroke outside to get into the panel area, and that
is not possible to work with.

That's why there're two ways to hide them.

I did not get that idea even though I rightclicked a lot to see what would
happen. Maybe I missed some functionality there.

I'd be inclined to agree with that last.

I am serious about that judgement. The program could be used by children
because it gives a working area directly at the start, the tools are big
and easy to see, and give response directly, the tracing paper function is
a lot easier to use than to use layers in other programs.

All of which helps to make it a directly useful program to _anyone_ who needs
to do quick, interactive sketching or painting.

But overall, this is not a program anybody could use to produce even medium
level art on. Too many necessary functions are simply not there.

?!? Uh, people have created art w/o layers and gee whizzy computer features for
a _long_ time. And other people managed to make art w/ even really incredibly
primitive paint programs back in the days of the Apple ][.

I take these aren't even ``medium level art''?

http://www.greenjem.com/index.htm

Note that the complaint about brush size applies to a limitation of the beta
(an early one).

Although it's nice to have good tools, ``An inspired calligrapher can create
pages of beauty using stick ink, quill, brush, pick-axe, buzz saw, or even
strawberry jam.''

Art is something one pulls out from within, not something found in a software
program binary.

What you need is Pixia, it runs perfectly on very low resources, I know
because my computer is very old.

I think it's a bit presumptuous for you to assume you know what I need.

The interface is a lot easier than you seem to think, and there is an
excellent help file in the program which explains the interface.
There are also very good web tutorials.

But all of the web tutorials I've found indicate one should use modifier keys
like shift for various things --- normally when I'm painting I don't have a
keyboard attached to my tablet.

ArtRage is perfect for my needs, 'cause it allows me to pull out my pen slate
and immediately begin painting / drawing w/o feeling limited by not having a
keyboard.

Don't just read the first sentence of a tutorial, try it yourself and you
will see how easy it is to use, but look at the help file before you begin.

But ArtRage allowed me to get started and use the program w/o awkwardness w/o
resorting to reading the help file.

The only competition to Pixia in low resource computers is PsP, ver 7 or
earlier versions, but they are not freeware.
And I could never learn to use layers in PsP, although I tried many times.
In Pixia it was so easy that I regret not having learned to use layers
before, it is really useful.

I've got PhotoShop for layers & compositing &c.

William

 

[Roger Johansson]

(e-mail address removed) (William F. Adams) wrote:

I have already written about what is lacking in ArtRage in another message,
so I only reply to a few things in your message here.

I take these aren't even ``medium level art''?
http://www.greenjem.com/index.htm

All these pictures show the lack of detail, the lack of resolution, you can
see the paint strokes on everyone of these pictures.

That is the result if there is no zoom and position control, and no density
control of the brushes.

When I was in school, at age 14, we had one lesson in art every week.
We had a limited assortment of brushes and paints, and most paintings we
produced looked exactly like all those paintings on that site do.

Big brush strokes, a lack of realism and detail, a lack of knowledge about
how to apply color in soft layers, like a fine mist when necessary.

I don't know how to express this, because I have no wish to offend you, but
we obviously have different demands and expectations on a paint program.