PhotoStudio 2000 v.4.1
PhotoStudio 2000 v.4.1
| by Dale Farris, President, Golden Triangle PC Club December 2000 PhotoStudio 2000 is a full featured, 32-bit digital imaging program designed both for consumers as well as professionals. Novice and professional tools are both provided in this program that has a complete set of easy-to-use photo editing and retouching tools, as well as a wide selection of special effect and enhancement tools with unlimited levels of modification and thumbnail previews. While this program certainly does not replace the premier photo editing program now on the market, Adobe's Photoshop 6.0, nevertheless PhotoStudio 2000 is jam packed with so many features and priced so competitively that for many users, this photo editing program will be just what they need. As most folks know, adding features and capabilities to software increases the price of the program while also steeply raising the learning curve required to learn how to use all the features. Filling the retail software market shelves now are a litany of photo and image editing programs that have many features, are "reasonably" priced, and what's most important, are very easy to use. While this means such programs as PhotoStudio 2000 end up appealing more to the consumer or family market than to the professional market, nevertheless the powerful features and editing functions in this program are so well designed that anyone can quickly learn how to apply these features. I also suspect many users might find the value in PhotoStudio 2000 near or equal to the power of PhotoShop. About ArcSoft, Inc. Founded in 1994 and based in Fremont, California, ArcSoft develops, manufactures, and markets digital imaging and video software products and Internet technology designed for the creation of business graphics, consumer photo editing, multimedia, and Internet publishing. Their PhotoIsland Network System is a nifty additional service for their customers, supporting some intriguing image sharing and management features. Typical users of ArcSoft software range from photo enthusiasts and leading manufacturers of digital cameras, printers, and scanners, to application service providers (ASP). ArcSoft distributes their products through the retail channel, the Internet, and through OEM agreements with leading digital camera, scanner and printer manufacturers. Don't be surprised to find ArcSoft software bundled with some of your newly purchased digital scanners or cameras. The ArcSoft product line is fully developed and designed around providing software that is easy to use, while very appropriately priced, with a strong focus on the consumer market. In addition to Photo Studio 2000 for Windows, the ArcSoft product family includes the following programs. PhotoFantasy PhotoMontage PhotoPrinter PhotoPrinter Pro MediaBrowser Panorama Maker PhotoImpression VideoImpression 3D Text Factory PhotoStudio for the Mac The most expensive of this lineup of programs is the $99.99 PhotoStudio for the Mac, with all the others priced from $19.99 (PhotoPrinter) to $39.99 (PhotoStudio, PhotoMontage, PhotoImpression, 3D Text Factory), to the $49.99 VideoImpression. Operational Features Some of the special features in PhotoStudio 2000 include a complete set of editing and retouching tools like air brush, bucket fill, and paint brush. In addition, there are over 40 special effects and enhancements with unlimited levels of modifications and real-time, thumbnail preview windows. The Album Manager is an image database that provides easy file searching, drag-and-drop arranging and multiple file retrieving. You can create slide shows with descriptive text and over 100 transition effects. Multiple output options include full-color, black-and-white, and grayscale images, as well as slide shows for publication, presentation or animation. The program supports TWAIN-compliant scanners and digital cameras, and supports most common image file formats. ArcSoft has gone an extra mile with their support, offering a fully developed Web site that is filled with technical assistance, including a long list of FAQ's, as well as their special PhotoIsland Web site. (www.photoislandcom) Summary of Tools and Techniques Once you open the program, you are presented with a well designed layout that includes a main menu bar, a quick access bar, a layers palette, tools palette, a tool options palette, an album palette, a status bar, and the image window that contains the image you are working on, all designed around the workspace window. Most of these components of the PhotoStudio 2000 Desktop are snapped to the side of the desktop, but you can float these by dragging the handle of a component towards the center of the workspace. The View menu gives you control over which of these components you wish to show or not show on the desktop. The Tools Palette include the following tool commands: Select, Freehand Select, View, Red-eye Removal, Pen, Eraser, Smudge, Brighten/Darken, Bucket Fill, Stamp, Gradient Fill, Transform, Crop, Move, Magic Wand, Pan, Text, Paintbrush, Spraypaint, Clone, Blue/Sharpen, Pattern Fill, Shape, Line, Eyedropper, and Trash Can. That's a pretty extensive line-up of photo editing tools, don't you agree? The Navigation Palette is a neat, small window that represents the image you are working on and allows you a way to zoom in and out of the image, while moving around the image in the image window. The Album Palette allows you to keep images or photos you want to work on in a album, allowing you quick access when you return to these files, or samples of images included in the program. There are five ways to bring images into PhotoStudio 2000, including creating new images from scratch, opening existing images from albums or disk drives, acquiring images from digital cameras or scanners, or capturing images from the desktop of any application window. This means that included in this program is a screen/window capture component, the foundation of many specialized programs that are designed to do only this, such as FullShot, or PrintScreen Pro. This alone adds value to this already value rich program. PhotoStudio 2000 provides these Enhance features: auto enhance, brightness and contrast, hue and saturation, tone adjustment, color reduction, equalization, negative, threshold, smooth filters, sharpen filters, special filters, and user's filters. Effects available include composite, stitch, fine art, liquid effects, tiling, emboss, motion blur, fisheye, cone, sphere, whirlpool, spiral, cylinder, ribbon, and magic mirror. Fine art, liquid effects, and tiling also provide still more special effects, such as oil painting, splash, melting, 3d grid and mosaic. The layering tools are similar to all photo editing programs, such as soft edge and add shadow. You can create a panoramic photo using the Stitch tool to stitch two images together. In addition, you can use the Clone tool to remove unwanted aspects in an image, lighten up an image, display multiple images, copy among images, and of course, work with layers. Also, you can resize an image element, and add text to am image, edit your text, add shadow to text, adjust the hue of the image background, and merge layers into one. With this extensive array of editing tools and techniques, now you can see how valuable is this super program at this also super price! Typical Uses of the Program For folks who have migrated their image capturing to digital cameras, PhotoStudio 2000 is an essential additional tool to help them further enhance and improve these digital images. With the rapid advances in and number of digital cameras on the market, look for this explosion of use of these cameras to continue to increase in the future. As the amount of digitally captured images continues to increase, there is a corresponding increase in the use of the Internet as the means by which folks store and share their images. With the inclusion of ArcSoft's super PhotoIsland Web site, this provides a nice collection of additional tips and tricks for digital image editors, as well as online access to albums of images. At PhotoIsland, users simply register their copy of the program, and then enter a comprehensive additional array of helpful information. For professionals, PhotoStudio 2000 provides most all image editing tools that are necessary to prepare a high quality image that could then be merged into Web pages or high quality paper documentation for customers. Also, with the increasing advances in the quality and power of color printers, while the prices of these printers continue to drop, this has resulted in an interest in producing quality output from a home color printer. This use will also be well supported by the many features in PhotoStudio 2000. Install and Setup Installation went smoothly on my machine, but be sure you have the minimum system requirements for this program. Also, with any program, the faster the processor and the more RAM you have, the better this and any program will operate. Remember also that this program is designed to help you edit and enhance photographs or other image files, and this means the many tools and techniques built into the program will certainly challenge the processing speed of any machine. Therefore, this or any other photo editor will be more especially impacted by the processor speed. The v. 4.1 update is accessible via the ArcSoft web site link listed below. This v. 4.1 update fixes problems with albums, memory leaks, and Windows file associations. New features also include a slide show screen saver, enhanced rotation and enhanced resizing. This update can only be used if you have the full retail version of PhotoStudio 2000. PhotoStudio 2.0 and 3.0 users will not be able to use this download. Price $39.99 street price (shop around, as price may vary) NOTE: At this price, and filled with these many super features, PhotoStudio 2000 is one of the most high value programs I've worked with in a long while. Kudos to ArcSoft for their decision to pack so much power into this program at this very reasonable price. System Configuration Requirements Pentium-based PC Windows 95, 98, 2000, or NT 16MB RAM (32MB recommended) 50MB free hard drive space CD ROM for installation VGA monitor with 16-bit color display (24-bit color display recommended) Mouse Supports Popular imaging formats, including BMP, TIF, JPG, PCD (real only), PCX, TGA, and FlashPix TWAIN-compliant devices Canon, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark, and other popular printers Contact Boatran Le User Group Manager ArcSoft, Inc. 46601 Fremont Blvd. Fremont, California 94538 510-440-9901, x265 FAX 510-440-1270 ble@arcsoft.com www.arcsoft.com Acknowledgments Thanks are in order to the excellent supplemental material supplied with the program that was of great assistance in the preparation of this review. Viewers are encouraged to also seek out other comments and suggestions from the reviews of this application found in the online versions of PC Magazine, PC World, and Windows Magazine. |