CompuServe Messages

Dan, Some answers: >> What about to batches of single images, could I apply a given color correction to 40 existing scans, or read 100 compressed TIFs and write them as uncompressed TGAs? Yes – WinImages is designed to do exactly those types of operations, and very easily. >> Can you batch load images from your file open, i.e. hold down the control key and select more than one file name? You can batch load files with control-click into the Timeline, which is where you specify things like mass color correction and so on. Animations also load multiple frames for processing in the timeline. You can't, at present, batch load them so they're a bunch of concurrently available image windows for individual editing as you would load an image in Photoshop… you would have to load individual frames, one at a time, for hand-tweaking. Would you want that capability (multiple individual load), considering that your previous question refers to batch processing and the timeline handles that (with the multiple select from file open you mentioned)? >> You mention compositing, do you have 32 bit i/o, either TIF or TGA? Yes, to both. And a powerful suite of Alpha tools (channel-direct harden, soften, shrink, grow, shave, create, clip… plus you can use _any_ tool in the program on a alpha channel withor without affecting the other channels). >> How's the memory usage? I sometimes need to work on very large images in 16 megs of RAM, and the speed hit makes virtual memory not an interesting option. I don't need it often enough to buy another $1000 worth of RAM, but it does make me aware of some performance control issues. The program itself is reasonably effcient. Takes about 2 megs of ram, uses about 15% of resources from a normal Windows 3.1 environment. Images take X times Y times 3 (with no alpha channel) or X times Y times 4 (alpha present) bytes. There are many variables regarding memory usage: number of undo levels, size of undone region(s), filmstrip present or not, if present, how many frames, what size the film frames are, and what size the film bitmaps are (different from the frames… live rescaling, you know… 🙂 Black Belt Systems supports the Memory Rule Of Thumb: "Open wallet, use thumb to peel off dollars, give to memory vendor". >> Can you turn off the undo? Matisse's undo is always on, immediately cutting my RAM in half. That hurts. Yes, you can. Setting Undo levels to zero "turns it off". You can have as many levels of undo/redo as you like, keeping memory constraints in mind, of course. Our undo technology only uses the amount of memory required to pack away the affected region, if we can determine what the region was (usualy that's no problem)… that makes it more effcient that a full-image undo with regard to memory usage. >> Can you keep images from being promoted to greater bit depths than needed? PictureMan promotes everything to 24 bit regardless. Not needed if all I want to do is crop an 8 bit image. No. Images are promoted to 24 bits in all cases, as you describe for "PictureMan". There are tradeoffs here in program design which we elected not to make… coding for multple channel operations takes more time, creating a hit over the lifetime of the program's development. Memory, on the other hand, is getting less expensive all the time. There you go. >> How about image size limitations? Halo Desktop Imager has a hardwired 2048 pixel limit. Too small by half. There are no size limitations imposed by the software. Windows can, in some cases, impose total memory allocation limits on the program from outside, however. This is not true under Windows NT. There you go… I'm ready for the next volley. 🙂 BTW, the reason I didn't answer until today was that I was in California at a show… I'll be gone for a week around xmas also, then back for the forseeable future. Ben