This is a review of a graphic editor, PhotoImpact 3.01 (PhI), a 32 bit application designed for Windows 95/NT and aimed at interfacing easily with Office 95; it also works with other word processors.  PhI requires a 486 or better CPU, 8M of RAM, and 30M of storage.  At its input it can interface with 16/32 Twain-compatable devices such as scanners, digital cameras, image grabbers.  At its output it can it can interface with the most professional printing devices like image setters or film recorders.  Finally, PhI can support over 35 different file formats ... which, one soon learns, is an highly desirable feature.

The editor comes in two separate parts (two CD's) one for the basic editor itself and the other, called WebExtensions, for facilitating a design of a web page.  Included in the software, are a wealth of tools for editing, modifying, combining, recombining, and generating graphics.

The price of PhI, about $100, is about twice the price of a much simpler editors like Adobe PhotoDeluxe, and is about one fifth the price of editors like Adobe Photoshop.  However, the power of PhI is substantially more like that of Photoshop than like that of cheaper software.  PhI appears to be a good investment for a beginner who wants to do a lot more than wipe out some red eye in a digital photo.

The large number of advanced features in PhI present a formidable problem to beginners.  There are just lots of complex ideas and operations to learn.  At minimum, a learning process requires a good text and perhaps a hands-on tutorial.  PhI has both.  To start with, its User Guide contains a set of eight exercises covering fifty eight pages and leading to the creation of a travel brochure.  These exercises cover simpler operations like cropping, style, resizing, layering, etc.

Following chapters cover more esoteric image correction and enhancement tools and operations like color correction, mapping curves, special effects, filters, cloning, etc.  In addition, PhI also contains capabilities for the fast gross types of image editing that less powerful software does.  Thus, PhI contains textures, color pallets and a fast overall graphic editor; given a graphic, one can switch to set of nine, variable, suggested alternatives.  It should be understood that competent use of this software requires mastering a fair amount of the material in this basic 222 page User Guide.  Helpful in this process, and included in the PhI software, is a beginner's tutorial covering explanations and guidelines for basic technical knowledge.

Concerning knowledge, the achievement of quality output graphics, requires:  a) good technical understanding of how color, scanning, and printing are tied together by an image editing software and b) the software/hardware capability of achieving the smooth coordination of these elements.  The coordination of these three fundamental aspects of image production is achieved by a set if calibrations, calibrations of monitor, scanner and output device (printers, etc.); PhI software contains calibrations between monitor and input devices.

Installation of the software was straightforward and recognition of my Microtec E6, 30 bit scanner worked OK after a few tries at getting a suitable color-map calibration of the interface.  PhI did not contain my scanner color map but did contain the map of the Microtec E3, 24 bit model, which I used.  I speculate there must be a difference between the two calibrations and that not adjusting for this difference would make a high quality output difficult.  PhI does allow generating one's own color map, but this process takes experience in evaluating color images and I didn't get into that process.  Sticking with the Microtec E3 calibration, I scanned some camera snapshots, magazine photos, drawings involving shades of gray, clip-art type photos.  These were printed out on a Hewlet Packard 1200C ink-jet printer using HP glossy paper; paper type is important to the quality of the printed image.  The following results were obtained:  color consistency from scanner input to printer output was acceptable but not close.   Scanned color-camera photos were just about acceptable; aside from color shifts, they were grainy and probably required better resolution and color calibration across the reproduction chain scanned black-and-white camera photos (shades of gray) came out excellent with a number of tries; black and white sketches (shades of gray) also came out excellently.  Color photos, aside from tolerable color shifts, came out well for the most part clip-art type photos, which do not suffer if color-shifts occur, came out excellent It should be kept in mind that first rate outputs require a lot of experience and a lot of trial and error.

The WebExtentions (WbEX) part of the software was separately installed without problems and used but not tested to any extent.  A couple of simple Web pages were designed to check some features out.  The designs went smoothly but their functioning on the Internet was not tested.  The software allows page backgrounds, 3D buttons, 15 different image formats, animation, and interfacing with Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc.  To achieve the fastest possible download time currently available, images are saved in the most commonly used, Internet, graphics-compression formats, GIF or JPEG.  Documentation for the WbEX in the package received is meager; suggestion is that the Ulead Systems Web site is contacted for information on WEBEX1 use.

One last caveat.  A large screen monitor is a tremendous asset in working with the color and image modifications one runs into.  This is so, despite the capability of blowing up ("zoom" into") portions of the image being processed.