#WinImages Release 3
28 messages in this thread
Just a note to say that Release 3 is on schedule and will meet the specified
ship date. Technical support released the final version of the documentation
today, and we're into the test suite for installation (PC's can "feel" very
different from one another to the install program… this is a big part of
getting a release out the door).
We've closed the feature set for 3.0 and the programming group is now proceding
on with the next phase of product development, which we are tenatively planning
as a July "event". All suggestions are VERY welcome at any time. Good ones will
get into the product.
Ben Williams
I see where MicroWarehouse is advertising a $50 competitive upgrade to
WinImages 2 from just about anything, including Picture Publisher. Should I do
that and then upgrade to 3 next week, or wait? What's the status of someone who
buys 2 right now?
And the big question, can you describe what F/x does? You've tried before, and
I still don't have a clue. The price is so low I'll probably get it anyway, but
it'd be nice to know. What are some typical uses?
Hi Dan…
Bruce
Dr. Bruce! Howdy.
You sysoping here? Make sure Ben and Chris play nice, OK? <G!>
Hi Dan,
I like your questions, and Yes, I am in all the Vendor fora…Including, but
not limited to, the Video Card areas…I will make sure that they play by the
rules <g>. Regards to all in Graphdev…I don't get much time to visit anymore.
Bruce
Dan,
Actually, Micro Warehouse will be shipping Release 3, not release 2. Those ads
are prepared well in advance of publication time, and we were not comfortable
assuming that we would have R3 ready when the MWH book shipped. In point of
fact, the books a little early anyway, but we felt people would be less annoyed
with the delay in receiving R3 than they would be with finding out they could
have had R3 in just a few days. 🙂
So to answer the question, your $50 can go either place. You can't buy R2 right
now from us, at least not without some fairly dire warnings. We'll take your
order for R3, though – it really is just around the bend.
What does F/x do?
The answer is fairly simple. F/x applies special effects or photometric
operations (like contrast, that type of thing), and other classes of operations
(composition, clipping) to single images (so far, think Photoshop and you have
an idea… R3 has many similarities to Photoshop)… and also to streams of
images, unlike Photoshop… when you have an effect, you can cause any part of
that effect, including it's location and affected region, to change over time.
If you like messing about with images and/or animations, F/x is sure to
delight.
For some examples of types of effects, check out the images in DL8 of the libs
here. I've not posted any animations from F/x (although there's a nice morph
there) yet, but I will when I get back from the VTU show in California next
week.
In the meantime, if this provikes more questions, feel free to ask.
Ben
>>So to answer the question, your $50 can go either place.<<
You're offering the same deal directly? Cool.
Good answers so far, and yes they raise more questions. <G>
>>to single images (so far, think Photoshop and you have an idea… R3 has many
similarities to Photoshop)… and also to streams of images, unlike Photoshop<<
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?
Can you batch load images from your file open, i.e. hold down the control key
and select more than one file name?
You mention compositing, do you have 32 bit i/o, either TIF or TGA?
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.
These, for instance, are problems I have with some programs that I otherwise
quite like.
Can you turn off the undo? Matisse's undo is always on, immediately cutting my
RAM in half. That hurts.
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.
How about image size limitations? Halo Desktop Imager has a hardwired 2048
pixel limit. Too small by half.
— Dan Richardson Northampton, MA, US 11-Dec-94 11:28p —
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
Reasonable answers all around. Thanks. I'll hit your order line tomorrow.
>>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<<
Yes, I find that very useful. It's nice to be able to open several variations
on a scan, or several related files that you want to cut and paste between,
without having to look and see which ones you've already opened. The niggling
little stuff like that makes a world of difference.
Dan,
And that, in turn, was a good answer. We'll add multiple load from the normal
file open dialog using the usual windows click/shift paradigm. Consider it
done.
I agree completely that the small stuff in the user interface is what makes the
difference between a highly usable product and one which, regardless of power,
doesn't get used to its fullest capacity. We are trying to pay as much
attention as humanly possible to the UI for WinImages, and _all_ suggestions
are welcome. Keep that in mind once you begin using it. That's not to say we'll
implement every suggestion, but we will certainly listen.
Ben Williams
for Black Belt Systems
To all:
let me vouch for Ben on this one! When Imagemaster, the Amiga predecessor
to WinImages and WinImages:Morph, was developed, Black Belt actively
sought out and implemented user suggestions. Some vendors put up a front
of openness, only to callously follow their own misguided insights; Black
Belt really means what they say. The day when they decided to bless the PC
market with their creativity and competence was a bright day for PC users
indeed.
Hmmm. Must be the Christmas spirit taking over. (Or is that Christmas
_spirits_? <g>)
Blaq!
Gee, Blaq… uh, when do I get the bill? <grin>
Thanks for the kind words.
Ben
Ben,
your answers reveal some very intriguing aspects of WinImages. I can only
hope that the Amiga situation picks up and some of that software
engineering trickles over to Imagemaster. WinImages sounds like it has
some incredible functionality!
Blaq!
WinImages is, in point of fact, what Imagemaster V10 was intended to be, the
design having been changed only to accomodate the new environment (not to say
that was trivial!).
We're watching the Amiga situation as closely as possible. The plan is to
continue Amiga development as long as it is viable; and if it becomes more
viable, then to increase the pace. Some elements of WinImages will be appearing
in the next release of IM R/t, due in about 4-6 weeks or so: these will be
effects, generally, though we expect to surprise a few users. 🙂 However, the
v10 project involves two man-years, based on the 4-my it took to create it for
Windows (it would be a port now, of course, instead of a new development). That
means the Amiga market has to be *very* stable in order for us to undertake the
job. We'd like to.
Ben
<<
We've closed the feature set for 3.0 and the programming group is now proceding
on with
>>
Not to sound snide, but a great feature would be to ge the software to run. I
version 2.0 and its bug fix version never managed to work on my system. All
other graphics software does.
When it first happened, your tech support said it was a heap or stack problem
and the bug fix version would work. It didn't and I gave up.
Martin Kunert
The Kunert/Manes Company
Martin,
The software runs on by far the vast majority of systems without problems. If
tech support said it was a heap, or stack problem, it should be solvable. If
you gave up – as you say you did, then how do you expect us to help you? We
can't solve problems you won't work with us to fix – in order to solve a
problem that we can't reproduce, we need extensive help from the individual
with the unusual system, surely you can see that.
Ben
<<
The software runs on by far the vast majority of systems without problems. If
tech support said it was a heap, or stack problem, it should be solvable. If
you gave up – as you say you did, then how do you expect us to help you? We
can't solve problems you won't work with us to fix – in order to solve a
problem that we can't reproduce, we need extensive help from the individual
with the unusual system, surely you can see that.
>>
Okay, true. I gues after a while frustration got the better of me. I'll give
your tech support a call.
Later
Martin Kunert
The Kunert/Manes Company
Ok, great. I'd really like to see problems such as this solved.
Something I should have thought to mention previously is that WinImages is now
a 32-bit application, and the current version no longer really relies on the
normal ideas of resources in Windows… it uses flat memory, so this should
decisively eliminate your problems if that in fact was the basis for them.
Ben
Instead of futzing with the software and since I run NT… what's teh upgrade
policy for release 3, or the NT version?
Martin,
Upgrades for NT are, I *think*, about $125. The MSRP is $499.95 for the first
copy. Hold on a bit though if you're thinking of becoming a new customer…
We're talking about a competitive deal here, and I'd like to gather some
opinions… perhaps we can do better.
Just to "sweeten the pot", we just put a bunch of features from the R4
development leg into R3, because one of our pro customers needed 'em _real_
bad… see the pic of lightning in the library here for one example. We call
these "Plasma" effects, and there is a huge range of them.
Ben Williams
for Black Belt Systems
<<
Hold on a bit though if you're thinking of becoming a new customer… We're
talking about a competitive deal here, and I'd like to gather some opinions…
perhaps we can do better.
>>
What new customer? This whole discussion was started from me commenting how I
had your software but gave up on it. The last version I bought was #2, I think.
Check you files, I should be in there. Look for my last name or "Martin
Dziewanowski". I still would like to get an 2 to 3 upgrade price.
Thanks
Martin Kunert
The Kunert/Manes Company
Martin,
I'm sorry, I lost track of who was doing what to whoom.
You can upgrade to the NT version for about $125, I think, from the Windows 3.1
version.
The upgrade from 2 to 3 is $25, however, if you're unable to run the software
as it stands I suspect technical support will elect to provide you with R3 in
order to solve that problem first – that's standard operating proceedure.
You should absolutely note that R3 will NOT run under Windows NT; you must be
running Windows. Only the NT version of WinImages runs under NT, beginning with
Release 3.
Ben Williams
Ben,
I order my PC upgrade a couple of weeks ago and was delighted to see you now
offer an NT version. What appalled me was the price you charged for the
upgrade– unacceptable when you consider that Adobe and Microsoft are provide
the NT version at no additonal cost!
Check your records, I have been trying to convience you to come out with an NT
version for two years, How about a reasonable price!!! for your existing client
base. Incidently while we use PC for much of our work, we also use 275 mhz
Alphas for computation intensive projects. I guess I don't think you need to
provide the Alpha version at the same price as the pc, but it would be nice.
Kent
Kent,
The development of the four NT versions consumed a great deal of resources.
Various computers had to be obtained, special code was written to handle the
SMP capabilities, exceptions made for the differences in VFW tools and so on.
However, because there are _very_ few NT systems, and correspondingly fewer NT
sales, amortizing the costs of the development work out with an entirely
different set of economics. Ergo, the higher price.
Comparing us with Adobe and MicroSoft is hardly fair… Microsoft already "got"
you by making you purchase the Operating system for more than our upgrade.
Adobe generally makes you purchase the products for more than our retail is by
a fair margin. And we give a LOT of value for the price.
I don't think we're out of line here – you have to remember that developing for
multiple product targets costs a great deal of money, and that will end up in
the product cost, there's just no way around it.
Ben
Hi Ben,
I just wanted to jump in a offer a different customer perspective.
I recently 'cross-graded' over from the Amiga to the MIPS NT bundle. While I
would like to pay the very least for every product I buy, I think that the
price I paid was a STEAL! I doubt that I could have paid twice the price and
found half the features.
From what I have seen, when you move up to a platform that costs as much as a
MIPS does (or an Alfa), you better readjust your budget for software.
Typically I have found three or four times the expense of a comparable Mac or
PC version.
Thanks for a wonderful product.
I would only ask that you consider a Twain complient scanner driver and
Photo-CD capabilities in the near future.
Matt
Matt,
I – no, we – thank you very much for your kind words. 🙂 🙂 🙂
> I would only ask that you consider a Twain complient scanner driver and
Photo-CD
> capabilities in the near future.
Twain is absolutely planned, and PhotoCD is possible… we've got some looking
into that to do.
Ben Williams
for Black Belt Systems
Ben:
You gentlemen were kind enough to send me WinImages:Morph r3.0 before my
recent trip to Miami Beach. I had about 6 hours all together to play with it
while I was there and have found it to be confusing and powerful. I have a
problem: In Winimages F/X when I click on HELP– getting started, or display
quality or keystrokes I get an informational message ! INVALID KEYWORD. In
Winimages Morph when I click on HELP–getting started, or display quality, or
Manual or search for help on; I get an informational message ! CANNOT OPEN HELP
FILE. What Have I done incorrectly to cause these responses?
Request: I use a winvisions Pro frame grabber which is a twain compliant video
grabber board to access images of antiques I have video taped I would
appreciate if twain compliance could be shoehorned into winimages.
Regards:
Charlie Phalon
Charles,
> In Winimages F/X when I click on HELP– getting started, or display quality
or keystrokes I get an > informational message ! INVALID KEYWORD.
Our fault, and you can't fix it – this was only in the first couple of hundred
disk sets shipped. I've told Dave in tech support, and he's sending you a new
disk set. That will fix it. In the meantime, you should be able to get to those
help entries from the table of contents in the main help file.
> In Winimages Morph when I click on HELP–getting started, or display quality,
or Manual or search
> for help on; I get an informational message ! CANNOT OPEN HELP FILE. What
Have I done
> incorrectly to cause these responses?
Our fault, and you CAN fix it. The new disks will fix it for you of course, but
you can at least solve this in the interim. The help file was named morpkep.hlp
(or something very similar) during development in order to keep the morph.hlp
around for comparison. We mistakenly moved the file over without changing the
name to morph.hlp on the first set of release disks.
To fix it, CD to C:\WINIMAGE and REN MORPKEP.HLP to MORPH.HLP. If it's not
MORPKEP.HLP you'll find something just like that… DIR M*.HLP will show it up
immediately. Sorry!
Request: I use a winvisions Pro frame grabber which is a twain compliant video
grabber board to access images of antiques I have video taped I would
appreciate if twain compliance could be shoehorned into winimages.
Twain compliance is on the list of important things to add.
Ben Williams
for Black Belt Systems