{fh41000ffPhotodesk
{fb1000000Photodesk from Spacetech is a 24-bit art and photo- retouching system. It can do just about anything you could possibly imagine, and a whole lot more, to bitmapped images.

If you've never used an art package much more sophis- ticated than Paint, then Photodesk will knock your socks off. It's phenomenal.

All images are handled internally with 24-bit colour plus 8 mask bits per pixel. Images larger than the remaining memory are handled in virtual memory, but a minimum of 4Mb is required. Unlike some similar packages, you don't need to have a Risc PC, or a graphics card, the program is perfectly usable in 256-colour modes.


{fb1886600   ILLUSTRATION MODE
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{fb1000000Photodesk has two main modes, Illustration mode (in which you do most of the painting), and Montage mode (in which you do most of the cutting and pasting oper- ations).

A significant aspect of this package is that any of the effects can be applied to the image with any of the tools, no matter how inappropriate the combination may seem. So the airbrush doesn't just spray colour, it can spray gamma correction or filters or any of the many other effects that are available.

The undo facilities are remarkable. A normal pack- age might be expected to be able to undo the whole of the previous operation, but Photodesk allows you to apply undo-ness onto the image with any of the tools, by brushing with ADJUST instead of SELECT. If you happen to paint too far with the paintbrush, you can swap to the airbrush and gently brush away the excess.
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I couldn't possibly describe all the ways that you can affect an image with Photodesk, but here is an example that shows the sort of complexity that it can handle:-

I've got a scanned image, and I want to apply some solarization to the background but without affecting the man standing in the foreground. I first create a mask over the parts of the image I don't want to affect - in this case it happens to be easy, I just choose the magic brush tool to apply 100% mask to the man with the parameters set appropriately. In some cases the figure may not be so easily separated and I'd have to paint the mask on with, say, the paintbrush.

Now I choose the SOLARIZE effect, guess a suitable strength and apply it to the whole image. No, I don't like that, it's too strong at the top and not strong enough at the bottom, so quickly undo it, and set up a gradient effect, so that the strength of solarization is 20% at the top and 72% at the bottom of the image. Now the top and bottom are OK, but the middle is a bit weak, so lets try changing the transfer function of the gradient so that it rises steeply then flattens off. It that's a bit too smooth, I can add a tool texture to the solarization, and that can be controlled by its own transfer function. If I don't want to slap this across the entire image, I can apply it where I want it with, for example, the paintbrush.
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Despite the power and complexity of the facilities available, the operation of the program remains very intuitive, and there are are lots of nice little touches that help to make life easier.

If it hasn't got your favourite smoothing function, it's easy to add your own. If there's not enough airbrush shapes, define your own. If there's not enough gamma correction functions, add your own (and don't feel that they have to apply the same gamma correction to red, green, blue, cyan, yellow and magenta). If you don't like the default functions, you can remove them from the menus.

There's a palette which contains 256 colours readily at hand, and Acorn's colour picker for picking any of 16 million colours which can then be put into the palette, or you can scan the current image and find its 256 most frequent colours.


