September Macintosh Shareware

This month we look at several graphics applications, which range from simple Web page animators to more sophisticated design tools.

By Steve Cooper

A sequence of frames is designed using Animation MakerÆs painting and text tools, or may alternatively be imported from PICT or GIF source material. Numerous colour palettes such as Web Safe 216 are available, as are standard QuickDraw patterns and transfer modes.

Frames may be reordered at will in the play list, and the timing for each frame is defined individually. A system of aliases permits frame duplication without adding to animation file size. A graphic can be rolled within the frame or slid across it pixel by pixel, though there are no tweening functions or transition effects. Playback speed is variable, and any subset of frames may be specified to loop. Animations may also be scaled as required, at any stage of construction.

Completed animations may be saved in native AM format for further work as animated GIFs (with transparency) for the Web, or as PICS files for use in other programs such as games.

To compensate, it has more comprehensive import facilities. Source files may include an existing animated GIF; a collection of PICT, GIF, TIFF and/or Photoshop files; a QuickTime movie, a PICS file, a Premiere FilmStrip, or the layers of an RGB or greyscale Photoshop file. On the other hand, it exports only GIFs with transparency.

Usefully, GifBuilder does not require that frame size be defined in advance. As an animation takes shape, frames may be moved relative to one another, and various masks applied to the result. Final masking/cropping may be left until the animation is otherwise complete.

Some useful transition effects are available including wipe, peel, push, slide and dissolve. Though not especially sophisticated, these will serve the needs of many Web designs. There are no tweening functions apart from these.

GifBuilder makes an ideal companion to Animation Maker, as it is both complementary in function and free of charge.

GraphicConverter incorporates most of the essential image manipulation functions: scaling, cropping, changing resolution and colour depth to name a few. It can also adjust sharpness, gamma, brightness, contrast and levels, and apply a number of common filters. In addition, it offers a fairly complete set of retouching tools, lacking only a rubber stamp or clone tool -- a somewhat surprising omission.

When saving images, it is possible to generate thumbnail icons, as well as to define the size of previews shown in Open dialogs.

An excellent Browse function shows resizable thumbnails of the images in a selected folder and its subfolders, together with an enlarged view of any selected thumbnail, and if desired, a Finder-style list of the disk concerned to aid in folder selection. This arrangement allows all the images on a disk to be reviewed quite efficiently, and a catalogue of the images in any folder may be printed if desired.

Usefully, the contents of a folder may be shown as a slideshow, with the expected variety of controls. In fact, flexibility of control is the essence of GraphicConverter, which has no fewer than 31 panels of Preference settings covering its various functions.

The main window has three tabbed panes. The first is a file list in which any of 18 file properties may be shown -- from file type and colour depth to keywords and author. The second shows thumbnails of the catalogued items, the size of which can be changed at any time. The third shows the original of a selected thumbnail, scaled from 25% upwards.

At this stage, many catalogue and file operations are available, and if a number of catalogue items require the same operation, they can be marked for simultaneous application of menu commands. Items can be launched, located in the Finder, printed, or run as a slideshow with numerous controls. Importantly, they can be annotated with captions, credits, keywords and categories, with which the catalogue may subsequently be searched. A built-in screen capture utility can add new items to the catalogue on the spot.

A catalogue may be printed in æcontact sheetÆ form with control over many settings, or impressively, it may be exported to an HTML gallery displaying the thumbnails on the index page, with links to the original files. This can easily be edited further in a WYSIWYG Web page authoring program, to suit an existing site design.

An attractive and logical interface complements this applicationÆs slick operation.

In static screenshot mode, Snapz Pro can capture a region, window or full screen with or without cursor, and save it to clipboard, file or printer. If a region is selected, the selection marquee can be moved and resized.

Shots can be scaled from 10% to 400% on the fly, and the colour palette changed to System, thousands, greyscale or Windows (though surprisingly not to Web Safe). A number of file formats are available for saving your screenshots, including PICT, TIFF, PNG, GIF and JPEG.

The new movie-capture facilities enable you to record QuickTime movies showing video, animations and game sequences, with accompanying audio. Camera modes include fixed, follow cursor and smooth pan, and the resultant movie can be compressed using any standard QuickTime codec. The movie may be dubbed with sound from the MacÆs microphone or other sources, making this an ideal tool for the creation of instructional videos.

As a long-time user of Screen Capture, I miss the ability to capture the shot to a window where it can be checked before saving as a file, and also the availability of a Web-safe palette and dithering options. Still, Snapz Pro2 offers other functions that are unparalleled.

Still images may be rotated, resized, cropped, zoomed and importantly, saved in any of 10 formats -- a function sadly missing from PictureViewer. The movie viewer has a few functions not found in the QuickTime 4 player, including the ability to vary frame rate on the run.

The application includes the ability to save a æsnapshotÆ of a particular window arrangement for later restoration, but the documentation does not make it clear why this would be a good idea.