Charles Moore Reviews Color It! 4.5 For Mac OS X
Digimage Arts, Color It!'s new corporate parent, has announced that at long last the new Color It! version 4.5 for Mac OS X is finished. This English version is OS X-native, and does not require Classic mode as previous versions do.
I've known for sure for more than two years that Color It! 4.5 wasn't vapor, because Color It!'s developers kindly supplied me with a non-public alpha build back in the spring of 2004, which I have been using ever since until I received my Color It! 4.5 final CD a couple of weeks ago. Alpha it may have been, and with a few rough edges, but in the main the pre-release version worked great, with no stability issues, and Color It! remains my workaday image editor of choice - not as powerful or richly-featured as Photoshop Elements 4, but it sure starts up a lot faster (virtually instantly on my not exactly cutting edge G3 and G4 hardware. It - Classic Mac OS version - launches on our old 233 MHz PowerBook G3 in less than four seconds), and has a light, quick, nimble feel to its user interface compared to the formidable but ponderous Photoshop Elements, although the latter remains my pick for serious photo editing and correction. I've used Color It! as my workhorse graphic app. since way back on my old 25 MHz 68030 LC 520 running System 7.1, and it was even speedy on that hardware.
It is a delight to finally have a final version of Color It! 4.5 on my Desktop. Color It! has always been a pleasant place to be in the virtual world, and version 4.5 is very familiar territory for anyone who is conversant with previous versions. There is no Universal Binary version, and given the historical rate of development for this program, I wouldn't advise holding one's breath waiting for one, but it really shouldn't be an issue.
Color It! just flies on my 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4, and it's much faster than any other image editor I've tried. Just as the Classic version of Color It! 4 continues to provide sparkling performance in OS X Classic Mode on PPC Macs, so long as Rosetta emulation is supported on MacIntels, there should be no cause for concern in this regard. Color It! is extremely efficiently coded, and, for example, still only demands a piddling 6 MB of RAM. I haven't had the opportunity to try Color It! 4.5 in an Intel mac, but Digimage Arts reports that it runs very nicely on Intel-based Macs utilizing Apple's Rosetta technology.
It's gratifying speed and responsiveness notwithstanding, one cool thing about Color It! is that it has always worked a lot like Photoshop, and that skills you develop using one of these programs will to a considerable degree transfer to the other There are distinctions and differences of course, but not ones so radical that you have to climb a steep learning curve when switching. Color It! also supports Photoshop plug ins.
Bitmap graphics or "paint" software programs are all essentially descended from the MacPaint application that shipped with the original Macs back in 1984. There used to be a passel of paint programs for the Mac, including Photoshop, Canvas, Painter, SuperPaint, UltraPaint, Expert Color Paint (a licensed version of Color It! version 1.0), the painting module in HyperCard, PixelPaint Pro, MacPaint itself, and more.
Of all of these, Color It! came closest to being an all-round Photoshop substitute for PhotoShop (for the rest of us" at a fraction of Photoshop's price, which is probably why it is still around while most of the others are pushing up daisies in the software boneyard.
My first acquaintance with Color It! was Version 3.0, which came bundled with a scanner I bought back in the mid-'90s. I was impressed that the bundled image editing software was such a complete and comprehensive program, and not a "crippleware" come-on to buy something more expensive. Color It! quickly became my main image editing and scanning program ever since.
I found that Color It! even offered some features that the formidable PhotoShop didn't at the time, notably including multiple undos and a convolution editor that applies convolutions (numerical pixel-by-pixel operations) on the fly as you paint. Color It! also happily supported PhotoShop plug-ins, vastly expanding its built-in versatility, and had a customizable toolbox, user-friendly color controls with an intuitive slider-bar motif, anti-aliasing and feathering options, an Unsharp Mask function, and selection and masking tools. Color It! also supported pressure-sensitive control over input (if you had a pressure-sensitive drawing tablet like Wacom's), did color corrections with its Levels and Curves commands, allowed you to edit color channels separately using paint tools and special-effects filters, including CMYK separation channels. Color It! 4.5 for OS X supports all of these features and more.
While Color It!'s execution of certain functions is less precise and powerful than PhotoShop's, it is more than adequate for the needs of novices, advanced amateurs, and light professional use. It is also, as noted, enough like PhotoShop that those familiar with that program will not have a steep learning-curve to climb.
For the sort of graphics work I typically do, such as converting screenshots to GIFs or JPEGs for the Web, or doing simple image editing, creating line art drawings for article illustrations, cleaning up product photos, and the like, using PhotoShop, even Photoshop Elements, seems like the proverbial swatting flies with a sledgehammer. Color It! starts up almost instantly and is admirably fast at doing what it does.
While Photoshop Elements 4.0 requires Color It! Elements 4.0 requires 157.8 MB of hard disk real estate for the Application Folder (88.3 MB for the application itself), Color It! 4.5 is only 18.3 MB for the application (128.7 MB for the entire installation, but about 85 MB of that is an included library of royalty-free images) and will run in about 6 MB of memory.
The current Color It! Version 4.5 is an evolutionary upgrade from PPC Versions 4.x. Those familiar with the earlier versions of Color It! will have no problem feeling right at home.
With Color It! 4.5 you can:
• Create, view, edit and save animated GIF files without leaving the program • Catalog your image files for quicker browsing and retrieval.
• Export documents with clipping paths.
• Remove scratches, dust, red-eye effects & more from scanned or digital photographs with the program's built-in filters.
• Open and save PNG and progressive JPEG files.
• Quickly create client- and server-side image maps for the Web by simply defining shapes around parts of an image.
• Apply linear or radial effects to gradient fills.
• Minimize color tables to create smaller GIF files for your Web pages.
• Mix paint and pasted images together with different effects using Color It! 4.5's paint transfer modes.
If you've used an earlier version of Color It!, you'll feel right at home in Version 4.5 for OS x.
The Magnification Pop-up Menu shows the current magnification or reduction view of the document. You can change the setting quickly by clicking on the menu and selecting a new level. It does not change the document itself, only your view of it. Clicking on the Magnification Buttons changes the view level by one step.
The Tools Palette
The Tools palette is the control center of the program, containing six families of tools:
General Tools: Pointer, Mover, Magnify, and Eyedropper.
Selection Tools: Shape Selection, Lasso, Magic Wand, Zap, Scissors, Crop, and Bezier.
Brush Tools: Brush, Eraser, Pencil, Air Brush, Blur, Sharpen, Stamp, Smudge, Lighten and Darken.
Paint Tools: Shape Objects, Paint Bucket, Line, Text, and Gradient tools.
Filter Tool: Kernel Brush tool.
Several additional tools are available in the pop-up menu in the upper right side of the Tools palette. When a tool is chosen, it appears above the pop-up pointer when the menu closes.
Colors Palette
The Colors palette is used to select and edit colors and patterns. It can be opened from the Tools menu [Command-Y] or by double-clicking the Eyedropper-tool. The Backbox indicates the color or pattern used for the background color. This fills holes created when selections are moved, cleared or cut. The Framebox indicates the color or pattern chosen for frames. The Fillbox indicates the color or pattern used in painting and fill operations. Click on one of the boxes to select it; the selected color type is shown with a gray border.
Six different displays are available for the bottom portion of the Colors palette: HSB Range, Color Wheel, Sliders, Color Grid, Scratch Pad,and Patterns.
The Web Map palette is a floating palette used to create and modify web image maps. It can be opened or closed from the Tools menu, and can be closed by clicking on the close button at the upper left corner of the palette. A web image map is a text file that describes the regions within a graphic that link to an HTML Web page or location within a Web page. When a viewer in a Web browser clicks on this area on a Web page, they will be immediately transferred to that page or location.
The Animation palette is a floating palette that is used to create and animated GIF images. It can be opened or closed from the Animation command on Tools menu. An animated GIF is a special type of GIF file that contains multiple images that play back in sequence on a Web page.
Catalog palettes are a convenient method of cataloging images in thumbnail form. Each catalog may hold up to 200 thumbnails. Images to be cataloged may be in any of the formats Color It! opens, and may reside on your hard drive or on stock image and PhotoCDs. Catalogs may also be automatically created when multiple images are acquired from a scanner or digital camera if the Acquire/import auto-save box is checked in Preferences (Color It!-> Preferences->General).
Color It! does not provide any direct interfaces with scanners or digital cameras. Software to access a scanner or digital camera is provided by the manufacturer with the peripheral device. In almost all cases nowadays, a TWAIN driver in provided. See the instructions that came with your peripheral to install the TWAINdriver. Once you have installed the TWAINdriver on your computer, start Color It! and go to File-> Scan/Import.Choose SelectTWAIN Source from the submenu.
Images with a good balance of colors and contrast produce the best scans. If the image you are scanning is imperfect, it is still possible to get fairly good results. The options under Adjustment in the Filter menu (Levels, Curves, Brightness, etc.) and Sharpen can be used to help compensate for poor quality originals, sometimes with surprisingly good results. The Remove Scratches filter and Stamp tool are particularly effective in fixing flaws in the original image such as folds in the paper, streaks, dirt, scratches or other background noise.
Color it! 4.5 can save files in TIFF, PICT, JPEG, PNG, PostScript, Paint (the old MacPaint file format), CompuServe GIF, Photoshop 2.0 and 2.5, StartUpScreen, Photone Prepress, Scitex CT QuickTime PICT. The program can be used to create animated GIFs.
There is an excellent and profusely illustrated 123-page user manual and tutorial included in PDF format, including exhaustively detailed descriptions and instructions for all menu commands.
It has been my observation over my long experience with Color It! that people who use it tend to become enthusiastic fans of the program. And understandably so. It's a powerful bitmap graphics application with an extremely user-friendly, attractive and well-engineered interface at a barely more than shareware price. No wonder so many have continued using Color It! 4 for Classic in Classic Mode with OS X. Happily, with Color It! 4.5, that's no longer necessary, and folks who have upgraded to an Intel-powered Mac are now back in the game, thanks to Rosetta emulation.
Hopefully, Color It! development will continue and someday there will be a Universal Binary version, but for now, Color It!, always speedy, must run in near real time on a MacIntel anyway - emulation notwithstanding. Cool.
If you need raw power with everything including the kitchen sink (and then some) feature depth, then go with Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Canvas, or the GIMP, but for light to moderate duty bitmap graphics creaton, manipulation, and digital photo editing that "just works," Color It! is well worth considering.
In summary.....
Hooray:
Native OS X support at last
Excellent Value
Rich and powerful feature set
Small, economical of memory,
Fast!;
User-friendly;
Stable, highly polished program
Boo:
Some functions not as powerful or precise as they would be in PhotoShop
Color It!'s eraser tool is a bit poky
System requirements:
• A Macintosh computer with a G3 or greater PowerPC chip (G3, G4 or G5) or a Mac with an Intel chip (Intel-based Macs will utilize Apple’s Rosetta technology)
• A mere 6 megabytes of random access memory
• A hard disk with at least 20 megabytes free
• Mac OS X operating system, version 10.0 or above (Color It! 4.5 will not function in Mac OS 9 or earlier)
• Video that supports at least 256 grays or colors
If you own Color It! 4.0 or Enhance 4.0, you can upgrade to Color It! 4.5 for $39.95. You will need to provide your Color It! 4.0 or Enhance 4.0 Registration number when you order (your Registration number can be viewed by choosing the “About Color It!� or “About Enhance� command under the Apple menu).
If you own a previous version of Color It! or Enhance or any version of Digimage Arts' other products ( Digital Darkroom or wwwART), you may purchase Color It! 4.5 for $49.95.
If you do not presently own any of these products, the purchase price of Color It! 4.5 is $59.95.
Shipping And Handling:
$5.00 for U.S. destinations
$7.00 for Canada
$15.00 for international destinations
Shipments in the U.S. and Canada are sent via First Class mail. International shipments are sent via Global Priority Mail where available (usually 4-6 days).
For more information, call: 800-388-8109 toll-free (U.S. and Canada) between 8am and 5pm U. S. Central time Monday through Friday. International customers may call +01-515-462-5930.
Order by postal mail from:
Digimage Arts
P.O. Box 269
Winterset, Iowa 50273-0269 USA
For more information, visit:
http://www.digimagearts.com/
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Charles W. Moore
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