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

[gidgit]

Hey, Hey,RJ...too bad about the download bit...really, I have PP v8 and since this thread I have gone back into it to see what if anything that I have missed along the way...wow, I have spent way too much time on only a few apps and not enough time fully tring out all the bells and whistles offered by many...with not fully experiencing just what PP had to offer, well I am not sure exactly why I didn't dig deeper...perhaps it is the fact that the default layout did not show as much right from the git go as does say Photo Impact...perhaps it is because Windows Draw seemed to be rather old fashioned in layout and appearance that I really did not give PP too much extra thought...and what a drag...I agree with DK in that the lighting effects and so many other presets are actually really cool...and that's just in v8, I really am curious to se just what they have to offer in PPv10...sooo, I agree in that Picture Publisher can offer some pretty nifty tools for anyone looking for such....which is basically all digital artists alike...cool app... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Now then, Photo Impact... RJ, when you are going to apply an effect through the "easy pallette" simply right click on the thumbnail of the effect you are choosing and a pop up will appear that will allow you to tweak the effect the way you wish...as for objects and layers, all things brought out on to the canvas become objects which are essentially layers in the up down positioning area of things, and if you click on one you can appy most effects directly to the object...if you are working on a pic, simply select an area with the Standard Select Tool, be it rectangular, circular, eclipse, square...or use the magic wand, or bezier....anyways select the portion you wish and cop and paste, now you have a "layer" object of that area for tweaking.....soften the edges and blend it right in to the original...on and on it goes...no matter the tools, once ya learn where they are and how they work your off and running... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]and for the money spent RJ, it really provides quite a bit for the buck...and as I use the many features it offers, I must say it is about time that many other apps are only now coming out with file browsers and such..It's not that this app really lacks much in any area, but rather knowing how to utilize the app itself...for the most part PI allows you to do things much quicker than several others that should have the same capabilities but really and truly don't...ya know though, there really is not one app out there that does it all, not even PI... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

I am really begining to love them all...

[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[maeve]

PP10 rules! I downloaded the demo from tucows a few days ago and haven't been able to keep my hands off it since. Love the Effects, the Light Studio, the Paint Studio, the Undo controls (more sophisticated than Painter's) and best of all, the Mask Paint tool. Its use of Objects rather than layers threw me at first, but I get it now (mostly).

cheers

[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

[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.

[Steve Newport]

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

Steve Newport

[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.

[Earl]

It's nice to see some 2d raster programs beginning to support higher end image formats.

What I'd really like to see is a professional bitmap editing program (such as Photo-Paint or PhotoShop) with support for HDRI formats.

[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

[RJ Swift]

Hello,

The PP that I downloaded would not install on my comp. It must have been corrupted. I'm looking for a reliable site since I hear so much about this app. Photo Impact IS a great app dispite that it doesn't support PS effects when you open a .psd file, OR, you can only use the effects on an image and not put them on a layer by themselves. Plus, you have no control over the effect when it IS applied to an image such as positioning it just the way you want it, brightning it, dimming it, streching, or shrinking it... But, it's still cool considering it's no Photoshop (But then again, what is?).

Anyone know of a reliable link for the PP demo, let me know. Thanks for your time.

RJ (The Post-man)