ChocoFlop 0.79 Live! Image and Photo Editing Application for Mac OS X
This is and will probably remain a Mac Only tool. It uses Core Image at it’s heart to be able to utilize to it’s maximum the hardware. Thanks to great work of the guys at apple I’ll be able to focus on usability and not much about optimizing gaussian blur filters and such things. Thanks to the work that’s already been done this project’s development time will be much shorter than if I had to start from scratch. That said, this makes the app very dependant of the operating system. But we all know intel macs are going to rule the world aren’t they?
Speed
Choco::Flop will always launch fast enough for the user to not to worry about opening/closing it on a low-end machine. The beta version I have launches on my Ibook in about 4 seconds the first time and instantly the following ones. Of course this is a small program right now and you can expect it to get a little slower with time. However I will do my best to avoid bloat. I want to be able to double-click and image, modify the curves, save and quit. All that as fast as possible. And I want the time to be spent on processing the image, not loading the program.
File formats
At start will be able to save in all CoreImage supported formats. As of 10.4 (the minimum required OS to run CoreImage apps) those formats are:
- BMP
- GIF
- PNG
- JPEG
- JPEG 2000
- TIF
- TGA
- SGI
- PICT
- OpenEXR
- PSD (no layers!)
Those should be enough for most people. But more may come if required. Additionally I will create one special proprietary format. It will be open, simple and documented (some folder with an xml description and a tif for each layer). It will allow to save layers and their settings and anything that’s tied to the application. Eventually if time allows I’ll have a look at the possibility of natively saving and loading PhotoShop’s PSD files. The format is documented by Adobe, so it’s nothing impossible. It will just take some additional time and support from willing users. Of course it can never be as perfect as the native format.
Not for printing
Choco::Flop is designed for people who create digital media. It’ll support RGB in 32, 64 or 128 bit modes but not CMYK or Lab or whatever modes you’d get for this kind of work. This may come in some very distant future, but this is currently not my goal so don’t count on it. That said you can of course print from the application.
Focus on Usability
Unlike many “Core Image Demonstration” type tools, Choco::Flop is meant to be usable in everyday work. The goal is not just to add as many filters to an image as possible and see what random results one can achieve. I expect users to know what they want to be doing. Real-Time preview and non-destructive Effect layers will be available as required but they won’t be the goal.
This means people who have spent time learning industry standard tools will feel right at home when working with layers, layer masks, selections and painting tools
New in version 0.79:
Save for web feature
Clicking on the left area of the cancel button no longer enables/disables live preview
No more ugly artifacts while resizing the window
Version 0.79 has a feature that's been missing for long: web export with live compression preview. All powered by the great command line tools ImageMagick and AdvComp. ChocoFlop still only works in true color but you can now export and get the smallest possible files. If you are trying to get PNG files to get as small as possible, for example because like me you're into mobile apps, then ChocoFlop will now be able to do the job. If you find a combination that gives you smaller PNG files I'd like to hear about it.
Since all the compression, quantization and dithering magic is done by ImageMagick, you'll need ImageMagick installed. I thought about bundling if with the app but it's ten times bigger than the app itself. So instead the app just tells you to download it and unzip it in on your disk. Maybe in a future version it will be able to download and unzip it automatically.
I also built an universal binary of advpng (part of the AdvanceComp project), which you can get here if you want to use it for other purposes. It's also bundled in the app package now, much like dcRaw was previously. (Merci Gilles pour le build PowerPC ^_^)
Features
Some of these features are ready, others are in development. ChocoFlop is still being developed. I only update this from time to time, so you’d rather read the news or download the app to get up to date feature list. This however should give you a good idea of what it does (or will do).
100% Mac OSX Native
- Very fast launch time (about 1 second on cheapest mac mini)
- Written from scratch for Mac OS X 10.4
- No legacy or compatibility slow code
- Uses all hardware acceleration (CPU and GPU)
- Universal binary for PowerPC and Intel
- Uses CoreImage and custom OpenGL code.
- The download is under one megabyte (zipped) so far and will remain in that range.
Advanced GUI
- Full Screen mode.
- Real Time Preview for all filters and transformations.
- Industry standard shortcuts and user interface.
- Easy transition from much more expensive packages.
Painting Tools
- All tools: tablets (Wacom) for pressure information.
- All tools: disable smooth drawing for pixel-art
- Paint brush / Eraser
- Brushes: Parametric (diameter, hardness, opacity)
- Brushes: Bitmap (user-defined)
- Stamp Tool
- Magic Brush (Blur, Sharpen, Saturate, Desaturate…)
- Gradients: Circular (or gaussian)
- Gradients: Linear
- More: to come…
Geometry Transformation Tools
- Scale
- Rotate
- Flip Axis
- Deform
- Perspective
- Interactive and Preset Modes.
Misc. Tools
- Color Picker - precise or averaged, global or per layer
- Zoom
- Pan
Selection Tools
- Rectangle
- Oval
- Lasso
- QuickMask Painting
- Add / Substract from selection
- Create LayerMask from selection
- Blur selection
- Select by Color
Layers
- Support for an unlimited number of layers
- Layer folders and sub-folders
- Each layer can have it’s own layer mask
- Each layer supports all blending modes (see below)
Live! Layers
- Every Filter can be either applied or kept as a Live! Layer.
- Live! Layers have layer masks just like normal layers.
- Accelerated by Graphics Card (GPU)
You can select an area, fire up any filter and keep it as Live! layer. Your selection will automatically be used as a layer mask for the new layer. The filter will be applied in a real-time, non-destructive manner. You can also paint in the layermask to reveal or hide parts of the filter. If you plan on having several live layers a CoreImage supported Graphics Card will help a lot (like Radeon 9600 or better).
Image modes
- 32 bits = 256 levels per color component (standard)
- 64 bits = 2^16 levels per color component (65536 levels)
- 128 bits = 2^32 levels for each color (that’s a lot, aka. a shitload or 4+ billions)
128 bit gives you much greater accuracy and is much less destructive. Take a picture, reduce it’s luminosity to 10% of what it was (apply the filter). Now take it back to it’s original luminosity. You’ll see that with 128 bits floating-point precision you can get back pretty much your original image without loss. With good old 32 bits trying to get back to the original luminosity would get you an awfully posterized image. Note that not all formats will allow you to save in such a color depth. OpenEXR (used by the movie industry and supported by OSX) allows it and so will ChocoFlop’s native format. Even if you wish to save a GIF (256 colors) in the end, it’s always better to work in this mode and convert to 256 colors only when saving.
Color Adjustment
- Sepia Tone
- MonoChrome
- Color Map
- Invert
- Desaturate
- Posterize
- False Color
- Exposure
- Gamma
- Color Controls
- Hue Adjust
- White Point
- Color Cube
- More: Supports any third party Core Image Filter.
Filters
- Sharpen: Unsharp Mask
- Sharpen: Sharpen Luminance
- Blur: Motion Blur
- Blur: Zoom Blur
- Blur: Gaussian Blur
- Blur: Median
- Blur: Noise Reduction
- Distortion: Bump
- Distortion: Circle Splash
- Distortion: Displacement
- Distortion: Glass
- Distortion: Glass Lozenge
- Distortion: Hole
- Distortion: Pinch
- Distortion: Torus
- Distortion: Twirl
- Distortion: Vortex
- HalfTone: Circular Screen
- HalfTone: CMYK Halftone
- HalfTone: Dot Screen
- HalfTone: Hatched Screen
- HalfTone: Line Screen
- Tile: Affine Clamp
- Tile: Affine Tile
- Tile: Kaleidoscope
- Tile: Op Tile
- Tile: Parallelogram Tile
- Tile: Perspective Tile
- Tile: Triangle Tile
- Generators: CheckerBoard
- Generators: Constant Color (Fill)
- Generators: Random Generator (Color Noise)
- Generators: Star Shine
- Generators: Stripes
- Generators: SunBeams
- Gradient: Gaussian
- Gradient: Linear
- Gradient: Radial
-Stylize: Bloom
-Stylize: Crystallize
-Stylize: Edges
-Stylize: Edge Work
-Stylize: Gloom
-Stylize: Pixellate
-Stylize: Pointillize
-Stylize: Spotlight
-Stylize: Shaded material
- More: Supports any third party Core Image Filter.
Supported File Formats - Read and Write
- Native ChocoFlop format ( .chocoimg ). Simple and open
- Windows Bitmap Format, a.k.a DIB ( .bmp and .BMPf )
- Graphics Interchange Format ( .gif , not animated at this point)
- Portable Network Graphics ( .png)
- Joint Photographic Experts Group a.k.a. JPEG ( .jpg , .jpeg )
- JPEG 2000 ( .jp2 ) - More info
- Tagged Image File Format ( .tiff or .tif )
- Targa ( .targa or .tga )
- Macintosh Picture Format ( .pict, .pct, .pic )
- Portable Document Format ( .pdf , export only as 0f 0.17)
- SGI ( .sgi)
- OpenEXR ( .exr )
- PhotoShop Document ( .psd , no layers at this point!)
Supported File Formats - Read ONLY
- RAW: Nikon ( .nef )
- RAW: Sony ( .srf )
- RAW: Fuji ( .raf )
- RAW: Adobe ( .dng )
- RAW: Olympus ( .orf )
- RAW: Konica-Minolta ( .mrw )
- RAW: Canon ( .crw and .cr2 )
- Canon-TIF-Raw
- Kodak FlashPix ( .fpx , .fpix )
- Kodak RAW ( .dcr )
- Adobe Illustrator (.ai) - (NOT WORKING AS 0f 0.17)
- Microsoft Icons ( .ico )
- Windows Cursor ( .cur )
- Apple Icons ( .icns )
- Mac Paint ( .ptng and .pnt and .mac )
- XBitmap ( .xbm )
- Radiance ( .hdr )
- Quicktime Import Format ( .qti and .qtif )
- and Apple Quicktime supported images
Blending modes
- Addition
- Minimum
- Maximum
- Normal (Source Over)
- Color
- Color Burn
- Color Dodge
- Darken
- Difference
- Exclusion
- Hard Light
- Hue
- Lighten
- Luminosity
- Multiply
- Overlay
- Saturation
- Screen
- Soft Light
System requirements:
1 GHz G4 or better,
Mac OS X 10.4 or later,
Growl installed.
System support:
PPC/Intel
Demoware (currenty alpha quality)
For more information, visit:
http://www.chocoflop.com/features/
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