#Photostyler vs TempraPro
20 messages in this thread
Dear all,
I am on the threshold of buying a 24-bit paint/image package and, I think,
I've narrowed it down to Photostyler or Tempra Pro. I tried out the
Photostyler trial version and love it's capabilities but hate it's speed in
windows (I have a 486/33 16mb RAM, gigs of disk space, Diamond Speedstar
vga 1mb) and also the fact it's not optimized for 386/486. Apparently, the
Tempra Pro package is fast and has a turbo mode optimized for 386/486
systems which sounds good, but I don't know if it has some of the cool
image effects of Photostyler. Also, can it edit images larger than you can
display (2k res, for example) and does it make use of extended/expanded
memory?
I would appreciate any tips from any dealers or users of these products.
TIA. God bless y'all.
Martin
Martin, I've got Photostyler here. We don't use it much for painting,
etc., but we use it regularly to view high resolution TARGA images before
sending them to the slide imaging bureau.
We use a TARGA 64+ with Windows/Photostyler to allow panning of large
images in full color. However, you are exactly right about the
speed……poor. Also, Photostyler cannot accept compressed TARGA files,
so….if you're doing high-res images such as 3000×2000…they can take up
a *HUGE* amount of space on your drive, in order to get them loaded to
Photostyler.
Personally, because extensive painting features are not important to me,
but speed, panning high-res and 24 bit display is, I am searching for an
alternative to Photostyler….preferably DOS/386 based.
Let me know how you make out in your search…!
-Jeff
Jeff,
Yes I also noticed the lack of compressed targa support which is not
good for us 3ds hacks, but I hadn't thought about the huge uncompressed
size of a 4k x 3k .tga image would be, yuck! They do, however, include jpeg
support so I might consider that if I was sure of no image loss. Anyone out
there with Tempra Pro experience? Speak up don't be shy! <g>
BTW, I put a message up in the Aldus customer support forum asking about
future plans for Photostyler, re: 386/486 versions or Windows NT support.
So far no response in last 48 hours (bad sign). I'll keep you posted.
Martin
Martin,
There is a Tempra section in the Graphics Vender forum (GO GRAPHVEN). That
would be a good place to get specific answers about Tempra Pro. I've used
Tempra (not Pro) in the past to edit high res (3k x 4k) Targa files, so I
assume Tempra Pro will handle them, too.
Dennis Bragg
Martin,
There is indeed a TURBO option. It's right up there, next to the exit
icon, think there's any relationship? <G> As far as I know it is an
extra-cost option; they didn't send one to me & I assume it's because I
didn't buy it. They say it speeds up operations by a factor of 4-10 or so.
It could really be worth it!
The base 3.0 system is fairly quick as it is; it loads 1kx1k compressed
24Bit .TGAs pretty quickly. Must be under 10 seconds.
Good luck!
-Mike.
Dennis,
I posted a message on both Tempra's (go tempra – within Graphven)
and on the Aldus customer service forum. Nobody has responded in 48 hours
so they must all be asleep, on vacation, disinterested etc. Maybe I should
be less polite and more controversial like the chap who insulted animator
pro and pc's in general and got 47(!) messages on that thread. Maybe this
is just a more lively forum, I dunno?
Martin
Martin,
No response in 48 hours? You may consider complaining to CIS. Each forum is
supposed to have somebody log on and answer questions at least once a day.
If that fails, you may have to resort to a more obsolete form of
communication: the telephone<g>!
Dennis Bragg
I use Winrix I shopped around for a long time and was most interested in
scanning abilities and since the price for the winrix was only
$195(upgrade) i bought it. I'm not sure it can view larger than normal
files but it seems to be pretty fast in windows. anyway it does what I need
it to do. Thought I might confuse you with a new option Rock, exit
Rock,
If it can't edit larger files than screen res than I couldn't even
consider it. Also, I've heard that it's even slower the Photostyler – ouch!
Major nap time!
Martin
Martin-
Are photostyler and TempraPro the two best choices? I think we're looking
for what you're looking for. Our big deal is that we need to edit
+-30Mbyte images as efficiently as possible.
We made some calls and PixoFoto from PixoArts Corp. in Menlo Park,Ca seems
pretty interesting. It is a 32-bit non-Windows application with the
standard image editing features. Their benchmarks show speeds for
loading/panning/etc. far faster than PhotoStyler or ImageIn (not compared
to TempraPro). Uses all the RAM you have and then pages. Interestingly
also, it allows you to editing alpha channels in 32-bit files.
Its a bit pricey but price breaks don't seem unavailable.
Does anyone else know anything about this?
–Noah
Noah,
I should have qualified my criteria as being price THEN performance
(within that price bracket). If my price bracket was higher I would be
looking at Lumena, Hires QFX and RIO, but I'm looking in the $500-$800
price bracket. I've heard good stuff about Tempra's speed esp. with the new
Turbocharger upgrade which utilizes 386/486 processing power, unlike
Photostyler. I like everything about Photostyler except the speed and I
don't know if I can live with that – Windows NT may make a difference but
how long will that be? And will Aldus do an NT version of Photostyler. That
could put it a year away and that's an eternity in this biz.
Martin
Noah,
How expensive is PixoFoto? Also the turbocharger feature makes Tempra
Pro very fast – probably faster than anything else. Plus, it will use any
memory you have, so cough up for some more RAM, dude! <g>
Martin
Jeff & Martin-using PhotoStyler 1.1 for quite some time, and in my modest experience with
Tempra and (choke!) Lumena, PhotoStyler has annihilates both for features
and interface. However, PhotoStyler 1.1 is hampered by not supporting more
than 16 Mb of extended RAM, very slow processing, and of course, a lack of
support for compressed TGA files.
What I know: I do not have 1.1a yet–they haven't shipped the upgrades out
yet, and I do not know if anyone has it yet. There is a press release
available for downloading on the Aldus forum (it's the only file in the "PC
Photostyler" section) which discusses the new release. They say that the
program is MUCH faster. They say it, with Windows 3.1, supports as much RAM
as you can cram into your computer. They say it supports JPEG (see note
below). They do not say that it supports compressed Targa files. I have
heard that it DOES, but that info is second-hand.
If you have never experienced JPEG, I recommend that you do. A convenient
way to do this is to download the shareware program "Image Alchemy" from
the graphics support forum. At default image compression levels, you will
NOT see any difference in the image, even though JPEG is a "lossy"
compression approach. In my experience, that default compression level
usually does better than 10x compression. An example: I recently sent a
series of 2k images (done in 3D Studio and finished in PhotoStyler) to a
service lab to be printed on an IRIS. As uncompressed Targa files, these
were 12.5 megabytes each. As compressed Targa files, they ranged between 7
megabytes and 12 meg. As JPEG files, they were at most, 700k. Now the IRIS
is a pretty good pre-press printer… I can't tell the difference between
the originals on the computer and the printouts which are now in my
portfolio! Think about it. BTW, with Alchemy, you can batch from Video Post
and have your Targa files turned into JPEG files as you render–Gene Bodio
(PCA) has been successfully rendering animations like this for weeks now.
-Martin Doudoroff
p.s. I suppose my recommendation is to wait for Photostyler 1.1a before
making
Thanks for the info. BTW, have you tried Tempra PRO 3.0? I have a trial
version of Photostyler 1.1a and it's supposed to be the same as the full
blown version, except it won't save output. It does support JPEG, it does
NOT support compressed targas, it is still painfully slow, maybe faster
than before but still too slow for my liking. One of the most discouraging
aspects has been lack of response from Aldus on their own forum to my
inquiries – I have posted messages, I have sent e-mail and have not
recieved any kind of response in 72 hours. This really ticks me off,
especially when I've recieved such good response on this forum. To be fair,
Tempra has been almost equally as bad by not replying to my inquiries on
their forum (go tempra) in 48 hours.
Martin Foster
Martin,
This month's Byte magazine has a comparative review of Photostyler, WinRix,
and Image-In (sorry, no Tempra Pro). You may want to check it out.
Dennis Bragg
Denis,
Thanks, I do subscribe to Byte and have been waiting impatiently for
Mr Posty to deliver it to me – sounds like a bunch of interesting stuff in
June's issue.
Martin
I just want to jump in here regarding lossy compression, since concern has
been mentioned about it several times recently on this forum. In recent
issues of Seybold, compression techniques have been discussed at length.
Standard JPEG, while lossy, results in almost utterly indistinguishable
loss of actual image quality, as demonstrated by 4-color prints of original
and JPEGed files. In fact, to my eye (tho' this had to be wrong) the
compressed one looked a little better, here and there. As a bit of
background, I've been an artist for 30+ years, work with computer graphics
people at work, have a good eye and sit on the right hand of God <g>. Hope
that imparts a bit of useful info.
David Taffet
Martin, We use PhotoStyler, but ours runs on a Truevision 1024-32 card
(1024×768 non-interlaced at 24-bits). Besides being an accelerated card
for Windows and AutoCAD (also drivers for 3D Studio & VESA), it allows an
*additional* 4M or 16M module to be plugged on (Truevision's of course, not
standard SIMMs). This allows the image to be in memory directly accessible
to the 34020 processor, so panning around the image is very fast. Most
paint speed though is a function of the speed of the cpu.
Kevin Krell – Computer Support Associates
Martin,
Through 7 years of experience on every personal computer platform I've
learned one thing about paint programs — the more you have the better off
you are! I currently run PhotoStyler, Image-In, Tempra (for the Illuminator
16) and (of course) Animator Pro. Count on Aldus supporting *anything* that
makes windows go faster -certainly a full 32-bit system like NT. There are
other great reasons to own a least one Windows-based Paint program…
Tempra Pro (from what I've seen from their Demos) looks to be a quite
capable Paint package and if it's as fast as my version, it should move
right along. Also, I believe you can get it bundled with Tempra Show for a
pretty reasonable price. I was told you can link .FLCs with sound files,
among other things. This would seem to make a cost-effective companion to
PhotoStyler — What one doesn't do – the other probably does!!
Good luck!
-Alan Iglesias
Alan,
Thanks for the info. However, you must have considerably more
financial resources than I! I can only afford one 3d animation package (3ds
2.0), one 2d animation package (anipro), one paint package (Photostyler of
Tempra Pro – probably the latter), and one computer. If I ever have a
closet full of extra cash, I may be able to afford an alternative to each
of the above. I probably would go for Photostyler if it wasn't impaired by
Windows and I can't afford the hardware to speed up Windows. I would guess
that a Photostyler Windows NT version would still be one year away – just
like a 3ds Windows NT version <g>.
Martin Foster