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Random thought:

Fun with PhotoSuite, MGI's $50 photo editor

Sometimes the price is too low. MGI's PhotoSuite 4 claims to be easy to use and competent. But there's that price. Many competing products sell for twice what MGI charges. Or more. Sometimes lots more. Can this program do the job?

The answer is a qualified YES!

Here's the qualification: PhotoSuite isn't CorelDraw or any of the other high-end graphics programs. Draw, for example, includes a vector editing program, an image editing program, lots of typefaces, clip art, and utilities. PhotoSuite is solely an image editor. And a little more. Positioned to compete with Microsoft Picture It 2000, Adobe Photo Deluxe 4, and JASC Paint Shop Pro 6, the program offers a number of features the others don't.

What we can do

The picture below is one I took several weeks ago when I brought one of the cats to the studio on Sunday. You can click any of the pictures to see a larger image, then use your browser's back button to reutrn here. As a snapshot, the picture is OK, but I thought I could improve it or have some fun with it.

The original picture of Scampi the Hacker Cat sitting on the production room console. Taken with an Olympus C2000Z. (Original image was 1600 pixels wide.) << Click this picture or any of the pictures that follow to see a larger version.

	A basic crop.
	Now I've put a "spray-on" piece of candy on kitty's head. I think it looks like a tiny party hat.
	Here's the first real improvement. Changing the gamma makes the picture a bit lighter. I've also increased the sharpness a bit. These are features commonly found in professional editing programs.
	This is a watercolor effect. Instead of having the cat sit still long enough for me to do his portrait in watercolors*, I simply applied PhotoSuite's filter to the image. << Look at the larger version to see the difference. *Time estimated for me to actually paint a watercolor: 15 years. First I'd have to learn how to paint.
	I didn't like the chair in the background. It's now gone. I used the "rubber stamp" tool to duplicate the wall where the chair was so that it went away. You can still see a little of the chair through the microphone bracket because I was too lazy to remove it.
	Don't tell Scampi about this one. Cats can be turned into silly putty with this program. I used a distortion tool to make some parts of the cat larger and other parts smaller. No actual cats were harmed in this experiment.

And then it was Scampi's turn

You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you that Scampi edited the following pictures, so I won't tell you. And he didn't.

	A picture of me in the office. Note the beacon-like lights on my forehead, the result of too much head or too little hair. (Tests are underway.) This is why the Federal Aviation Agency requires that I wear a hat if I'm within 2 miles of a major airport.
	Now I've toned down the highlights a big, but I still look rather green. That's because the room is lighted with flourescent lights. Photographers used to make corrections like this on negatives. It took a long time and still needed some additional touch-up work on finished prints.
	Here I've lightened the image a bit (gamma adjustment) and I've modified the color by adding some magenta. Again, this is something that could be done previously only in the darkroom.
	Now this is more like it. I have hair again! Even when I had hair, I didn't have hair like that!
	But wait ... there's more! PhotoSuite makes it easy to assemble a photo collage such as this one, and without cutting or gluing pictures.

But that's just the beginning

PhotoSuite gives you a quick, easy way to share pictures -- as calendars, cards, prints, slide shows, and more. If you carefully compose a series of up to 48 photos, you can even stitch them together into a seamless 360-degree panorama that you can e-mail to friends or put on a Web site.

This probably isn't a program for professional graphics artists (although I'll bet they'd have fun using it). Instead, it's aimed at home users who want to improve their pictures, do something with their pictures, and share their pictures.

When it comes to that, MGI PhotoSuite is very successful.

For more information, see MGI Software's Web site.

Nerdly News

Time Warner gets AOL Mail

And the natives are restless. The New York Times reported this week that more than a few feathers have been ruffled at Time Warner as the company switches employees from a corporate e-mail system to AOL.

As I was telling a client this week, there's AOL and there's the Internet. They are not the same thing. The Internet was there first. AOL came along later and decided to rewrite the rules. When AOL software can't communicate properly with the rest of the world, users often whine about the Internet. That would be like me moving to England, jumping into a car, driving on the right side of the road, causing a wreck, and then whining that all those damn British drivers are wrong.

But that's another story.

The story in the Times by Susan Stellin notes "From the employer's perspective, it is reasonable, and generally cost effective, to install the company's own brand of computers or software, throughout its network. But the complaining that often takes place among the cubicles reveals a somewhat less politic perspective: a competitor's product may actually be better for the job at hand."

Apparently Time Warner's existing e-mail system is nothing to brag about, but most employees still seem to think ti's better than what they're getting from AOL. "Simple" and "easy to use" are the terms used to describe AOL, not "full-featured" or "powerful". AOL is designed for home users who don't need to do very much and don't want to learn very much.

Again, the Times report: "Employees who have used AOL at home voice a variety of complaints. It is less efficient than some rival systems in attaching files to messages and in including the original message in a reply, they say, and it lacks a way to set up an automatic response to incoming messages (for example, indicating the recipient is on vacation)."

As big as Time Warner is, one would expect them to have their own servers, more than a toy for an e-mail program, and a real Internet service provider.

Free(?) Internet service?

Both Gateway and Juno settled with the Federal Trade Commission this week. Seems the two had been playing a bit fast and loose with the word "free".

Gateway used to offer "an unbelievable computer that actually comes with a year of Internet access." Way down at the bottom of the page (in tiny type) was the rest of the story: Use more than 150 hours per month and you'll pay $1.50 per hour for that "free" service. (This sounds like a current offer from AT&T!) Gateway also offered toll-free numbers for uses who didn't have local dial-ups, but neglected to mention the $4 per hour (oh, all right, it was only $3.95 per hour) fee for using those numbers.

Juno used to offer a 150-hour free trial. The ads didn't mention that the 150 hours had to be used in a single month and that the clock started ticking when you placed your order. Since Juno took 2 or 3 weeks to get the software to users, the 150 hours had to be used within a week or two.

Oh -- and if you wanted to cancel, you couldn't do it on-line. Instead, you had to call a long distance number. And, by the way, the long-distance number you had to call wasn't a published number.

Let us know what you think about this program! Write to:
Bill Blinn --
(wtvn@blinn.com still works)
Joe Bradley --

Joe
(Photo by Sally)

Bill
(Photo by Scampi)

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