Yeah, I know everyone's focusing on
Pixelmator,
Acorn, and all the other Core Image apps, but as a Panther user I can't use those, and so have been having a look around on the web to see what else there was. I found two professionally priced apps (one garbage, one not), one shareware app I'd tried a while ago but didn't quite realise how capable it was, and one old piece of excellent freeware that must have slipped past my radar. For the record, I also played around with
Beautiful Dorena and
Teal but found them too odd and limited, respectively, to include here. I also discovered M$'s free
Expression3, which is actually quite good (they bought it off someone else), but vector-based and thus doesn't belong here.
Anyway, I've been tossing the same photo at all four apps in an attempt to showcase some part of how they work. Didn't try to do the same in each app, just things that seemed distinctive and/or useful.
Original pic:
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PhotoRetouch Pro
Doesn't use layers, but it's possible, and easy, to tweak just about every aspect of a photograph in what feels like a very professional manner. The shortcuts are a bit odd, Cmd-H brings up a histogram, for instance. It's not immediately apparent you're working with a demo version. The company seem to be selling a variety of calibration tools, apparently you have to own some USB or web-based dongle in order to be able to save and/or snail-mail some registration form that comes with the app. Strange, but it's clearly a very powerful application.
($300-1000)
PRP's automatic enhancement action:
Clearly improved picture, imo.
Additional warps on a few areas, plus a selective colour adjustment:
Finally, a water colour effect:
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Cafe' Bauld
The programme comes with a few good filters, such as the B/W ‘sand’ one below, but most of them don't seem to have much of a practical application. According to the online tutorials, Cafe' Bauld would seem to be mostly about two things: Making photos look like paintings, and ‘Image Hoses’. It doesn't do the first one very well, and the second really does hose the photos. I don't think they'd get the irony, though, not when they can't even spell ‘café’ correctly. There are also a number of usability problems, such as disappearing and unclickable menus.
($225)
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Compositor
Although at first glance it might appear that the app's main forte is in its massive collection of predefined combined filter actions, there are also plenty of additional ways in which you can mess around with the picture via all sorts of distortions and adjustments on either selections or the whole image. I think you can also record your own actions, but I haven't experimented with that bit, yet.
($35)
Just a few quick and dirty swirls, motion blurs and fills:
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ToyViewer
More than a viewer, the app offers some standard correction tools as well as a neat Aquaesque rounded rectangle (pictured below) or bubble effect, but where it shines is in its very straightforward and comprehensive scaling and printing features. Silly name, but who cares?
(Free)
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Overall verdict: PhotoRetouch Pro is excellent (I guess it should be, considering the price), Cafe' Bauld is garbage, Compositor is fun, and ToyViewer is a must.
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