PictPub 10: the Photoshop 6 killer!

[Klaus Nordby]

That one got your attention, eh?

I've been trying out the 30 day demo of Micrografx Picture Publisher 10 - and I LOVE it! In particular, its thorough support for 16 bit grayscale, 48 bit RGB and 64 bit CMYK is going to save me a LOT of grief. As much as I admire Photoshop 6, its support for high-bit color is shockingly meager for such a professional program - no layers allowed! But PictPub 10 really shines in this area. So if you produce complex, layered files and are troubled by all the inevitable banding produced in the 8-bit/channel Photoshop world, I totally recommend this great app. It can't replace Photoshop, of course, but it's a great companion, especially since it reads and writes layered PSD files. It's also very fast and very stable - I have thrown some horrible tasks at it, which maxed out my system, but it just kept crunching away until the mega-files were done.

It's $99 for an upgrade and $149 for the full version - I'm buying this baby shortly, as it's worth every cent. Alas, PictPub's future may be very uncertain, as Corel has bought up Micrografx, so get yours while they still sell it!

K
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/
www.klausnordby.com/xara

[Klaus Nordby]

That one got your attention, eh?

I've been trying out the 30 day demo of Micrografx Picture Publisher 10 - and I LOVE it! In particular, its thorough support for 16 bit grayscale, 48 bit RGB and 64 bit CMYK is going to save me a LOT of grief. As much as I admire Photoshop 6, its support for high-bit color is shockingly meager for such a professional program - no layers allowed! But PictPub 10 really shines in this area. So if you produce complex, layered files and are troubled by all the inevitable banding produced in the 8-bit/channel Photoshop world, I totally recommend this great app. It can't replace Photoshop, of course, but it's a great companion, especially since it reads and writes layered PSD files. It's also very fast and very stable - I have thrown some horrible tasks at it, which maxed out my system, but it just kept crunching away until the mega-files were done.

It's $99 for an upgrade and $149 for the full version - I'm buying this baby shortly, as it's worth every cent. Alas, PictPub's future may be very uncertain, as Corel has bought up Micrografx, so get yours while they still sell it!

K
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/
www.klausnordby.com/xara

[Steve Newport]

Did you say there are no layer options?? I absolutely NEED layers when working w/ photos!

Steve Newport

[glyph]

Hey! Nice to hear from other PicPub enthusiasts! I was concerned also about PicPub being too good to incorporate with Corel. I hope this is not the case and PicPub continues to grow.

[Klaus Nordby]

Steve, it is Photoshop which has no layer support for 16-bit/channel images - that is THE great trouble with PS6! But PictPub DOES have full layer support in the high-bit range, (though they call the layers for "objects") - THAT is what's so great about it! It's great in many other ways to, but this high-bit support is a rarity. (PhotoPaint does have it to some extent, but it crumbles with large files, and many of the paint tools are 8-bit.)

I've been using PictPub since version 3.1, back in early 1994. It was way ahead of Photoshop in many ways - and it still is in some respects.

K
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/
www.klausnordby.com/xara

[Steve Newport]

I'll have to give it a try, thanks for the info Klaus!

Steve Newport

[dk_art]

I finally found a download spot for the demo ...

http://seascape.tucows.com/files5/PP10engEval.exe

The Micrografx site seems to be non existant.

After some use , it appears to have a wide range of things. One thing I thought was really neat were the effects such as the paint studio ... you can adjust the whole image to give it many many different looks. A great way to give a more natural media effect.

David K ... www.dkingdesign.com

[Klaus Nordby]

D. King: "The Micrografx site seems to be non existant."

It was down for a while, but functional again now - the download file is easy to locate. Though 46Mb, it contains a lot of goodies and it worth the download.

What's even better than PictPub's Paint Studio is the Light Studio! It can create fantastic light effects with great 3D-ish bump maps, and is much better than Painter's lighting tools.

I've ordered my copy now, as I'm on day 22 of my 30-day trial!

K
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/
www.klausnordby.com/xara

[dk_art]

Thanks Klaus ... I did get it from tucows and played with it yesterday ... I'm a big ulead PhotoImpact fan and it still appears to be my favourite (every program has there unique points though) ... but I do like the paint studio effects a lot ... the light studio is impressive too ........ the mirrored clone brush setting is something I've never seen before and is neat. Anyway, thanks for the word as I'm always looking for a graphics demo to try being the graphics demo junkie that I am. I'll play some more and maybe post something in the gallery.

David K ... www.dkingdesign.com

[georgetroy]

I found on Ebay Version 7 of Micrografix Picture Publiser paid $16.95 including shipping. I intend to use it for an upgrade to 10. I'm a software junkie and master of none. However I do pretty good swinging my mouse around.