|
September, 2005
By: Charles W. Moore
Image Tricks is a free image editing application From BeLight
Software that provides a convenient and attractive graphical user interface for
working with Mac OS X Tiger Core Image filters. With Image Tricks you can easily
edit and apply various effects and filters to your photos and images. you can
also use Image Tricks directly in BeLight programs (select "Edit Image"
from the menu or double click on the image).
That is if you have hardware that properly supports Core Image,
which my 700 MHz G3 iBook and its Radeon 7500 GPU with 16 MB of VRAM do not. Image
Tricks looks great, but I wasn't really able to do much with it on this machine.
The features work, sort of, at the speed of cold molasses running uphill in a Canadian
January.
BeLight specifies minimum system requirements of Macintosh G3 or
better, and Mac OS X 10.4 or later, but I would say that a minimum video graphics
support spec. should also be included.
According to Apple's Core Image information page, the following
GPUs support Core Image:
• ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
• ATI Radeon 9550, 9650, 9600, 9600 XT, 9800 XT, X800 XT
• nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200
• nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
• nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, 6800 GT DDL
You can check it out at:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/coreimage/
With proper graphics support, tricks you can play with an image include:
• Adjust colors — Saturation, Brightness, Contrast, Hue, etc.
• Blur your picture in different ways.
• Distort images using Twirl, Bump, Pinch and more.
• Stylize your art: Make Mosaic, Crystalize, use Halftone effects, etc.
• Tile, Kaleidoscope and Crop images.
Other Key Features:
• Easy to use and friendly Interface.
• Around 35 Core Image Effects and Filters.
• Import over 20 image formats (TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PDF, EPS among them).
• Export to TIFF, JPEG, PNG and GIF formats.
• Resize images.
• iPhoto integration.
oreillynet.com's Derrick Story says that "Image Tricks is a
terrific tool for exploring some of the imaging goodies Apple has tucked inside
Tiger's coat. Set aside an hour and give it a try. I think you'll have a ball."
You can read Derrick's further comments here:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7578
I'm looking forward to playing with Image Tricks when I upgrade
my system.
Image Tricks is freeware.
For more information, visit:
http://belightsoft.com/products/imagetricks/overview.php
See other reviews
|
