Jerusalem Post
05-30-1999
Pictureman Painter
One of my kids recently came home with a school project that required her to find out about her grandparent's life and times. Questions, pictures, drawings - a cute little family heritage scrapbook for showing and telling.
It's become obvious to me that at some point, her teacher is going to ask her to find out about my history. So I hauled down my old elementary school yearbook and took a look at what I used to look like.
All I can say is, you wouldn't believe the kind of hair styles they used to have in 1972.
My first urge was to burn the book. That way, no evidence would exist (I'll just have to make sure my kid's never get near my cousin's copy of that yeabook).
But instead, being ever practical, I downloaded Pictureman Painter from Stoik Software (http://www.stoik.com/products/painter/pt1.htm). This program can make anybody's elementary school yearbook picture look good - and it's easy to use, too.
Pictureman Painter is the kind of program that can teach you a new set of skills and even lead you on a new career path - it's that good. You get to use the kind of image manipulation tools and effects found in major commercial programs, like Adobe Photoshop. You can use the programs built-in drawing and graphics tools, which include rectangles, circles, polygons and text shapes. You can fill these shapes with colors from the color bar, including a gradient (color changing across the spectrum between two colors, like yellow and blue, with small changes in hue and tone. The effect is lovely).
Most users would probably prefer to manipulate their own images, which you can do by scanning a picture directly into Pictureman Painter, providing you install your scanner's driver into the program (You can get a basic, good-quality scanner today for barely $100). Otherwise, you can open up pictures already saved in many popular formats, including TIFF, JPEG, GIF and bitmaps (generally, oictures you capture from the internet are GIFs or JPEGs). Once you've scanned or opened an image, you can select any part of it using the selection tools, which include a lasso and even a Magic Wand (used for selectiong from an image on the basis of color - a most useful selection tool). There are tools to manipulate the color level of an image - adding more red to a washed out background, for instance - or changing the brightness and contrast of the image. In fact, this program has most of the color manipulation tools found in professional programs like Photoshop. And, you can apply a whole bunch of fun effects to the picture: embossing, engraving, curling the corner of the image, mosaic and oil paint effects are just some of the ways you can dress up a picture and create a photo-based work of art.
There is also an excellent help system built into the program. An on-line manual gives useful explanaitions of tools and techniques, and there is even a daily tip designed to help you get more out of Pictureman. And if the features seem somewhat overwhelming at first, you can start out in "beginner" or "medium" mode. When you first open the program, you have the option of starting with basic tools which will limit available options (you can change to a higher level any time), allowing you to concentrate on learning the basics of each tool and command.
I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical when I first looked this program over, having been burned too many times by graphic manipulation programs that just don't stack up, that just do what they claim to without a great deal of effort and patience. I am somewhat spoiled, because I use Photoshop on a regular basis, and Photoshop is, without doubt, the standard by which to measure image programs. Of course, Photoshop costs hundreds of dollars, and nobody could expect to get something in that league for far less, right?
Well, yes and no. Any Photoshop user will feel right at home with Pictureman - the interface is very similar, the tools are more or less the same, and you use the same techniques to get your work done - but it doesn't have all of Photoshop's tools and techniques. And, it only saves images as RGB files, making it useful only for screen images and websites. However, you can save images as TIFFs or even Photoshop files, allowing you to make any conversions in Photoshop later on.
If you want to learn professional image-manipulation techniques or want a low-cost image program which will allow you to prepare files for a website, screensaver, wallpaper scene, or even eventual printing, you just can't go wrong with Pictureman Painter. Requires Win 95/98/NT; Free for 15 days, afterwards $69.
PhotoModeler Lite
If the ancients' dream was to make gold out of tin, the modern computer graphics dream is to make a 3D out of a 2D.
Yes, it's true: computers can do just about everything (whether they do them well is another question). But how could a computer achieve such a seemingly impossible goal?
Photogrammetry, dear Watson, Photogrammetry is how. This is a technique whereby the computer looks at two images and sort of plays "connect the dots." The result can be a lifelike 3D image of almost anything: A car, a person, a head shot, even the stars above.
An excellent way to experience and apply this technology for free is to use Photomodeler Lite (http://www.eossystems.com/Lite/index.html). This program will allow you to learn how to build 3D models using photos and scans. Lest you think that 3D is a passing phase in the computer world, akin to 3D glasses at the movies, just do some random internet surfing - within a few minutes you will find dozens of sites that feature a 3D picture, graphic or image. The process, if not the technique, is similar to that found in higher-end 3D modelling programs, like Bryce 3D, and the interface in Photomodeler is easy to use, making it a good introduction to the world of 3D modelling.
You set up the 3D image basically by drawing lines between matching points in more than one picture. Because you want to get a 3D image, the more views of the item you want to model, the better. There is a downloadable tutorial for building a 3D Ferrari, for example, based on 6 regulars photos of the car (http://www.eossystems.com/Lite/_dl/index.htm). A model of children's alphabet blocks used 3 photos. If you were doing a 3D car model, for example, you would draw a match line between the hood ornament on both cars. And so on, until all the features of the car are included in the matches.
After you apply the 3D building commands, you can adjust the marks to provide a more realistic looking match. You can also view the image from different 3D angles, like right, left, top or bottom. This is useful because while the roof of the car might be correctly aligned, for example, the bottom right tire might be in the passenger door. So checking the model from different directions is essential!
After you're done, you can export the model into various graphic formats. The program is free, and if you spend a few hours with it, you may be pleasantly surprised at what you can accomplish. Requires Win 95/98,
Family Archive
Since you can do so many nifty things with digital images, you will no doubt find yourself scanning and downloading them until all hours of the night. And soon you will find your hard disk crammed with unidentified and unclassified images of all sorts of things. What's needed now is a little organization. And organization is what you get when you download Family Archive
(http://ism.sptl.org/products/famarch/famarch.htm). This program is essentially a database which will keep track of your digital images by type, location and category. You enter an image into the database and classify it according to an archive name that you set up. You can then comment the picture with a note or even a sound file, ensuring that l know exactly what the image represents and when it was archived.
You can also search for pictures in an archive (Family Archive uses a powerful database engine for it's searches). Searching can be conducted by name or category. If you want, you can even attach a "hot zone" indicator to a person or place in a photo. If you attach a hot zone name of "mom" to the section of each picture you mother appears in, for example, you can search with "mom" as a keyword and display the appropriate photos, with the focusd on Mom. Once you find the pictures, you can display them as single images or thumbnails, allowing you to pick the one you actually want easily.
Because the program is called Family Archive, the designers apparently felt that it needed a homey interface, so accessing archives is done by clicking on a book in the "library." Definitely a pleasant way to store and access information. But don't let that interface fool you: this program is powerful enough for business use, too.
Requires Win 95/98, Pentium 133. Free for 30 days, $24.95 afterwards.
Copyright 1999 Jerusalem Post. All Rights Reserved
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