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Gold Medal Software - Volume 5 (Gold Medal) (1995).iso
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cyberr02.arj
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HIJAAK
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1994-10-18
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Hijaak Pro Version 2
review by
Eliot M. Gelwan
From humble beginnings as a screen capture utility, Hijaak has
grown so powerful that it has appended 'Pro' to its name with this
upgrade to Version 2. It's the first utility you should have, and
perhaps the only one you need, for the manipulation of graphics
images in almost any format anywhere on your system. For screen
capture, graphic file format conversion, basic image editing and
processing, and file viewing, it takes the place of the plethora of
shareware utilities with which I previously clogged my hard disk,
even supplanting my previous favorite, Graphics Workshop for
Windows. You don't even need to know the format of an image file to
work with it in Hijaak Pro.
Image conversion in Hijaak Pro is powerful and easy. The
program knows more than 70 vector, raster and fax-image formats,
although some are import-only or export-only. There are 24
supported fax flavors alone. Windows clipboard images, JPEG
compressed graphics, and Kodak Photo CD images are among the new
formats supported in Version 2. My major disappointment in this
regard is that, although it can export to .EPS (encapsulated
PostScript), it cannot import .EPS images. Macintosh, Amiga and
even Sun image f ormats are fully translatable.
Effortless screen capture in any video format is one of Hijaak
Pro's greatest assets. You can capture the entire screen, a
cursor-defined area, or a specific window or icon as easily as
hitting a predefined hotkey combination while Hijaak Pro is iconized
in the background. Once defined, the image can be captured to the
Windows clipboard or to the Hijaak window, saved to a disk file in
any of the supported formats, or output directly to your printer or
plotter. A separate 6K TSR for DOS-session screen capt ures can be
loaded from within Windows or from the DOS prompt. In addition to
acquiring images from screen capture, you can scan a graphic image
directly into Hijaak Pro from any TWAIN-compliant scanner.
Hijaak Pro integrates directly into many major word processing
and page layout (desktop publishing) applications, so that you can
use it from within those applications to import graphic images in
formats the native application does not support directly. For
example, I'm no longer limited by the graphic import filters that
come with Microsoft Word. If Hijaak is running in the background
while I'm in Word, all the Hijaak-supported graphics formats
magically appear in the drop-down menu in Word's "Insert Pic ture"
dialog box, and can be directly imported without jumping over into
Hijaak Pro for the conversion.
Although they will not replace PhotoShop or even PhotoFinish,
Hijaak Pro has image editing and processing capabilities which are
adequate for many "quick 'n' dirty" jobs. These include the ability
to crop, rotate, stretch or shrink the image, change resolution,
change number of colors, smooth, invert colors, convert to
greyscale, optimize palette, do histogram equalization, and adjust
brightness and contrast. There is a small preview image which
changes as you apply your edits, and you can undo your last c hange
if you don't like the result. You can also clone your image and
manipulate the clone, leaving the original intact in case you aren't
satisfied with your experimentation.
I love the Hijaak Browser, which you can run from inside Hijaak
Pro or as a standalone. If you're like me, your hard disk is
clogged with a variety of graphics images, from clipart you've
acquired with various applications, to downloaded .GIFs, to the
.BMPs and .ICOs that are ubiquitous in Windows. I also scan in a
lot of photographs and diagrams to use in my academic presentations
and even correspondence. With the Browser, I've been able to build
a browseable database of my images in the form of a catalog ue
folder for each of my image-laden directories. This process
collects images from all of the graphic formats supported by Hijaak
Pro. Once the catalogue folder is built, the Browser displays a set
of bitmapped, full-color preview images, or "thumbnails," sorted
however I please whenever I open that directory. You can also make
a custom catalog file that contains images from diverse directories
across your disk, e.g., united by a single theme, and you can create
nested subfolders inside any catalogue folde r.
Unlike other graphics viewers that produce thumbnails, the
Browser puts all the images for a directory into this single file,
as opposed to space-gobbling individual thumbnail files for each.
Image files can be copied, moved or deleted by dragging and dropping
the thumbnails without going into File Manager or the equivalent. A
click on any thumbnail opens the full image for conversion, export
or image manipulation. I did find, however, that my system froze
when a catalogue folder got sufficiently enormous, i.e., several
hundred images. It's easy enough, though, to split it into several
smaller folders by selecting only a portion of the images in the
directory at a time. Several dozen images won't cause you any
problems in a given folder.
My only other complaint about Hijaak Pro is what a resource hog
it is. I have a fast 486 with 8 Megs of RAM, but I still have to
shut down everything extraneous I might have running to use it with
Microsoft Word. Loading, zooming and scrolling images, on the other
hand, are not intolerably slow on my system; I really have no
business doing graphics-intensive work with only 8 Megs of memory
anyway! Anyone with more than a passing need for screen capture,
graphic image browsing and cataloging, conversion or basic
processing, could wrap it all up in one package with Hijaak Pro.
Requirements: Windows 3.1
4 Mb RAM
6 Mb free hard disk space.
Inset Systems, Inc.
71 Commerce Drive
Brookfield, CT 06804-3405
(800) 374-6738