Image Studio Review (September 95) 

                           Mark Klocek

Recently  I've  seen  a  number of PD Image Processors come to light, and
this  is  another one.  I've been using it since its earliest incarnation
in  September  1994.   I  was  so  impressed  with  this  first version I
registered my ten quid.  Now I'm on version 2.1.1.  If you don't register
it  you can only load 250 x 250 pixel images (if they are larger they are
cropped),  which is not helpful.  I best warn you I praise this product a
lot so don`t worry about that!

Image  Studio  although  it  does not touch the high end image processing
packages  is  still  good.   Its  far,  far  cheaper  than these high end
packages and runs on weaker machines with ease, but this does not mean it
doesn't perform.

The main thing is that instead of using ridiculous amounts of RAM to work
with  your pictures, it uses a few megs on your hard drive instead.  This
makes things a little slower, but by heck none of the 'high-end' packages
can do that.

Its  got  a  great interface [CLICK FIG BUTTON].  You use pull down menus
for  some  of  the  things  you  do less and you can get an interface for
effects, convolves etc by using the pull down menu.  These interfaces can
be  turned on and off easily whenever you want.  On the screen there is a
greyscale  preview  (number of greyscale colours selected by you) of your
pic.   You can zoom in on it and pick specific parts of the image to work
on.   Its  all  rather fantastic with out treating you like a pillock and
the interface is pretty nippy.

Yet  another  amazing things is that it works on ECS and AGA Amigas.  AND
on  ECS  Amigas  you  can  save  AGA  pics,  but  you  cannot see them (a
representation  is  shown  instead).   That bit really surprised me, even
though  I  have  an  AGA Amiga so it doesn't matter to me.  Its workbench
2.04+ though, so it ain`t perfect but still clever and nifty.

Now  onto  the  juicy  bit  what can it do?  Well it loads and saves in a
variety  of  picture  types  using  its  `IO  modules'.  At the moment it
supports  BMP,  EPS,  GIF,  IFF,  JPEG,  PCX,  PNG  (a  module I obtained
elsewhere  and  this new picture format is set to replace GIF and is more
compressed  too)  and  Targa.   And the modules will be updated/improved.
For each of modules it has the relevant options like what quality to save
JPEGs in and stuff like that.

Image Studio has a number of built in effects.  Like greyscale, pixelise,
flip x, flip y, crop image, scale and quite a few more.  This is probably
the  only area where Image Studio is lacking a little, I would like a few
more  effects such as smooth and starburst and other frilly stuff, at the
mo'  it  only  has  the  most popular effects, however I expect this will
improve  in  later versions as the authors have promised when the effects
are modules too.

What  I  really  love about Image Studio is the use of convolves, this is
basically  a way to make your own effects such as emboss, weird textures,
blur  and other cool stuff.  Nothing amazingly mind blowing but its still
really cool and makes you think you have some power.

Also  Image  Studio  supports the use of Arexx, though I admit I've never
bothered  with Arexx in any package including Image Studio.  But it looks
powerful with commands covering loads of Image Studio's functions.

Yet  another  thing  I  like about Image Studio is its speed, the preview
image  comes  up quick and the images are loaded in at a decent speed and
most  of  the  effects  are  done  at  a  decent speed.  The convoles are
slightly  slower but still okay.  The only problem is when you reduce the
amount of colours in an image with using one of the six dithers these are
slow  but  its  usually worth the wait, and you have a little bar to show
you  how things are progressing.  Anyway you've got a multi-tasking Amiga
you can write a review for an Amiga based disk mag while your waiting.

Talking about colours you can reduce them, load in palettes to your image
or just mess about with them by using the balance interface where you can
fiddle  with  brightness,  poke  around with contrast and get confused by
gamma.

I  could  go for quite a while with all the cool little things I've found
like  a  colour  averaging scale which produces a better image than `fast
scale'  and that you can try most of the functions on small parts of your
picture.

The Amiga Guide manual is helpful, but it doesn't tell you all the little
secrets, tricks and ideas which you'll want to discover your self.

So Image Studio 2.1.1 gets a hearty...................................94%

Its  cool,  it  uses  little memory, works on all Amigas, loads and saves
loads  of  picture  types, does Arexx, has the most popular effects, uses
virtual  memory  and  has  convolves.   Its  pretty  cool with its future
looking bright.

If you haven't seen the earlier versions you won't know how much its been
upgraded but its always evolving with newer versions appearing regularly.
By heck even Amiga Shopper has put on a version (not fully usable) on its
cover  disk  and  so  has  AUI.   Its  well worth getting hold of and far
cheaper than your `high-end' crap.  Oh and updates are completely free as
they are PD and you use a key-file to make it fully usable, cool huh?

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