Photoshop Alternative Provides Simpler Tools at a More Affordable Price.
Bruce Fraser
Reviews Graphics
Photoshop's complexity, high price, and ferocious RAM requirements aren't for everyone. If all you need is a basic, reliable image-editing program that lets you do simple compositing and retouching, you'll probably be better off with Microspot's $249 PhotoFix, an easy-to-use program with a full complement of paint and image-editing tools. PhotoFix is packaged with PhotoFix Browser -- an equally easy light-duty image-cataloging application -- and a Photo CD disc with 100 attractive, royalty-free images.
Essentially Easy
Simplicity is the quintessence of PhotoFix. If you are looking for curve-based color and tone editing, unsharp masking with fine control over various parameters, and CMYK editing features for prepress work, you'll need a more sophisticated graphics program. But if you simply want to, say, create a collage or touch up a photograph on your computer and print the resulting image -- with predictable color -- on a color printer, PhotoFix fills the bill. It reads and writes only PICT and TIFF files, but with the help of Apple's QuickTime and Apple Photo Access extensions, it can also open Photo CD images as PICT files.
One of PhotoFix's niftier features is its simple printer-to-monitor calibration routine, called HQP (high-quality printing). On one page, PhotoFix can print 9 or 15 variants of your image, using either different brightness and contrast settings or different amounts of cyan, magenta, and yellow in each variant. You select the variant that looks best and type its values into the Image Corrections dialog box. Overall, this approach is simple and quite effective.
Another nifty feature is PhotoFix's minimal RAM requirement. The program will run with as little as 2.5 MB of RAM, although 8.5 MB is the recommended configuration. With 8.5 MB allocated, PhotoFix easily handled 18-MB Photo CD files. Each file took a minute or so to open, but once a large file was open, we were able to perform many operations without time lags or delays. Although large, 264-pixel brushes were noticeably slow in PhotoFix, 128-pixel brushes were very responsive in 18-MB files. This is remarkable, considering that Photoshop is glacially slow in similar situations. You need about three times your file size available as free disk space for PhotoFix's temporary file, but disk space is much less costly than RAM.
PhotoFix's tool palette has every kind of tool you would expect in an image editor, including a magic wand for selecting color; an airbrush; a cloning tool; and dodging, burning, and sharpening tools. You set tool parameters -- such as brush size and opacity -- by double-clicking on a tool icon and changing the values in a dialog box. This approach takes a little longer than using Photoshop's floating palettes, but on smaller monitors, it's much easier to deal with.
Color Correct
You can do a surprising amount of color correction with the modest amount of control you have. You can adjust contrast; brightness; and the red, green, and blue intensities. There are no curve or gamma adjustments. For more-exacting color control, you can adjust the brightness and contrast of the individual color channels, but if you're sufficiently color-savvy to be looking for those kinds of features, you probably need something that is more full-featured than PhotoFix.
You can create simple masks with feathered edges by using any of the selection tools. You can also adjust the opacity of floating selections, for smooth compositing effects, but again, PhotoFix emphasizes ease of use over industrial-strength professional capabilities. You can also easily rotate, crop, and resize images.
PhotoFix works with all third-party Photoshop plug-ins, including scanner plug-in modules and printer-export modules. We found that HSC Software's KPT Convolver was particularly useful with PhotoFix -- Convolver plugs some gaps in PhotoFix's lineup, particularly in the areas of sharpening and color correction.
PhotoFix Browser is a handy little image-cataloging program. Each catalog can hold a maximum of 150 images. You can ask Browser to search through a folder or an entire disk and add all the images it finds to a catalog. This is a particularly useful feature if you want to catalog a Photo CD. Once the images are in a catalog, you can add a short text description plus as many as four keywords to each image. You can search for images by name, by keyword, or by specification of a minimum and maximum file size, and you can search through all open catalogs at once. Double-clicking on an image in the catalog launches PhotoFix and opens the image.
The Bottom Line
It's refreshing to find an unassuming little program that meets its basic, realistic goals for features and performs elegantly with a minimum of fuss. PhotoFix is well suited to budget-conscious users who don't need the sophistication and complexity of a professional program.
