Subject: REVIEW: Imagemaster version 9.21
From: [email-masked] (Daniel Barrett)
Date: 19 Jan 1993 16:13:30 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	Imagemaster version 9.21

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	Imagemaster is an image-processing program with hundreds of
	capabilities and special effects, including the ever-popular
	morphing.  It supports ARexx and many image file formats.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:		Black Belt Systems
	Address:	398 Johnson Road
			Glasgow, Montana, 59230
			USA

	Telephone:	(800) 852-6442		(Sales)
			(406) 367-5509		(Tech Support)

	BBS:		(406) 367-2227

	E-mail:		[email-masked]

LIST PRICE

	$249.95 (US).  I received my copy for free directly from Black Belt.

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	HARDWARE

		The box states that Imagemaster runs on the Amiga 500,
		2000, and 3000 series computers.  I am fairly sure it
		runs on the new AGA Amigas as well (A1200, A4000).

		Image processing uses a lot of RAM.  Imagemaster requires
		at least 4 megabytes.

		Also, image processing is computationally intensive.  An
		accelerated Amiga is recommended by the manufacturer.

	SOFTWARE

		Imagemaster is AmigaOS 2.0 compatible.  I did not test it
		under AmigaOS 1.3.

COPY PROTECTION

	None.  The program installs very easily on a hard drive, thanks to
an excellent installation program.

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	Amiga 3000T (25 MHz 68030 + 68882), 8 MB Fast RAM, 2 MB Chip RAM,
Quantum 200 MB hard drive, AmigaOS 2.1.

OVERVIEW

	Before I begin, I want to say that I have very little experience
with image processing.  Imagemaster is the first such product I have used.
On the other hand, I am a very experienced Amiga user and professional
programmer, and I enjoy playing with graphics as a hobby (who doesn't?), so
I think my review can serve a useful purpose.  If you are a graphics
professional who is trying to decide between several Amiga image processing
programs, this review will not help you compare their features and power.
However, if you want to have some fun with graphic processing and do some
real work too, this review should help you to understand what Imagemaster
is all about.

	Imagemaster is a 24-bit image processing program.  This means that
it stores the images internally using 24 bits per pixel.  However, your
Amiga does not need 24-bit hardware in order to use Imagemaster, because the
program can display an approximation of the the image using HAM mode.  To
use Imagemaster, you load a graphics file (often created by another program,
such as a digitizing or paint program) and then alter it.  Imagemaster can
be used for simple "touch up" operations as well as very complex
transformations of the image.

	Imagemaster is a HUGE program, both in actual size (the executable
program is 1.3 megabytes) and capabilities.  It has so many different image
processing operations that if I typed in all their names, my fingers would
fall off!  Imagemaster separates the processing effects into Standard
Adjustments (Contrast, Brightness, etc.), RGB Corrections, Filters (sharpen,
contour, smear, remove pixel/streak/chunk/feature, anti-aliasing,
low/highpass filters, etc.), Geometric Transformations (flips, rotations,
blurs, spirals, mirrors, wave "ripple" effect, zig zag, etc.), Special
Effects (tile, pseudo-color, pixelize, melt, blueprint, etc.), analysis of
the image, clipping, ...whew!  I am not even done describing the Process
Panel yet!!!  I give up.  Seriously:  there is a LOT of power here!!

	So, does all this processing work?  Are the results interesting and
effective?  YES!!  I had great fun taking my favorite pictures and turning
them into bizarre images.  My favorite effect is called "Caricature."  It is
designed to alter an image of a face (you supply the picture) to look
"cartoonish" -- big nose, funny eyes, and so on.  It works great!!  Another
great one is "Relief" which finds the highlights of the image and make it
look like it has been carved in stone.

	In addition to special effects, Imagemaster is a paint program.  You
can draw all the usual shapes (lines, rectangles, ellipses, arcs, etc.)  and
use images as brushes.  The user interface is nowhere near as streamlined as
Deluxe Paint's (see LIKES AND DISLIKES, below), but it is usable.  Realize
that Imagemaster is *not* a real-time paint program.  After you draw, the
program takes a few seconds to update the image.

	Imagemaster's user interface consists of "control panels" which
are sets of gadgets lined up in rows.  Clicking on one button of a control
panel causes a new panel to be displayed.  For example, to use the
"Caricature" effect I described above, from the main panel you click on:

	"Process Panel", which opens a new panel.  Click on...
	   "Geometric Transformations", which opens a new panel.  Click on...
	      "Caricature", which opens a new panel.  This is...
		  The "select region" panel.  Select one, and...
		     A panel appears for selecting the effect intensity.
		     Set it and click "DONE", and the processing begins.
		     (Note there is no "Cancel" at this stage.)

When finished, you are returned to the main control panel.  Each panel has
anywhere from 2 to 50 (!!) buttons on it.  This hierarchical panel approach
allows Imagemaster to conceal its vast number of options.  (This has
disadvantages, though, as I describe later.)

	Imagemaster supports dozens of file formats:  all of the Amiga
formats, plus JPEG, GIF, Targa, various Amiga graphics boards, and others.
Much of this support is implemented in ARexx, so it's certainly possible
for the user to make Imagemaster support other formats.  Imagemaster read
every image I threw at it.

	Speaking of ARexx, just about every aspect of Imagemaster is
accessible by ARexx.  There are somewhere around 300 commands!  This makes
the potential of Imagemaster truly awe-inspiring.  If I were a graphics
professional with a programming background, I'd be blown away by the
potential.  I did not experiment with the ARexx interface, though, mainly
because this is just a hobby for me and I didn't have the time to spend.

	Judged only on its image processing capabilities, Imagemaster is
amazing.  There is real power here.  However, I have a lot more to say about
Imagemaster's user interface, so please see LIKE AND DISLIKES, below.

DOCUMENTATION

	Imagemaster comes with a beautifully typeset, 200-page manual with
a thorough index.  I found the text fairly easy to read, except that a few
operations were not explained enough to satisfy me, and I would have liked
more example pictures for the effects that had none.

	Unfortunately, the manual is for an older version of the program, so
Imagemaster 9.21 comes with a 250 Kilobyte "addendum" on disk.  I found this
arrangement inconvenient; a complete manual would have been far better.  I
can understand that if Imagemaster is updated as often as the company
indicates, then it's probably not cost-effective to print a new manual for
each version.  If this is the case, then Black Belt should consider using a
ring binder for the manual and distributing new pages as needed.  By the
time the "addendum" file gets to be 7000 lines long, it's definitely time to
print a new manual!

	There are many grammatical errors in the manual, but the writing
is fairly clear and understandable.

LIKES AND DISLIKES

	My main "like" is the sheer power of the program.  There are so
many combinations of effects that I could use Imagemaster full time and not
exhaust the possibilities.  And this is not even counting the ARexx port,
which lets you effectively design your own image processing commands.
In a word:  wow!

	I also liked the painless installation.  With regard to the user
interface, I particularly like the "Previous Region" button which saves
me the trouble of reselecting the portion of the image I want to use.

	My main "dislike" is the user interface.  In my opinion, it is
quite poor.  In the following paragraphs, I will describe my complaints in
detail.  Needless to say, Imagemaster does NOT conform to the guidelines
established in Commodore's User Interface Style Guide, but this is not the
worst of its problems.

	Imagemaster's hierarchical menu interface is, I am sorry to say,
virtually identical to the menu system on my Dad's 15-year-old, dedicated
IBM word processor.  The IBM displays a menu of numbered choices, the user
types a number and presses ENTER, the next menu appears, and the process
repeats.  As a result, even simple operations like copying a file require
the user to traverse 3 different menus.  With Imagemaster, you get the same
interface, except instead of typing numbers, you click on gadgets.  To do a
simple operation like drawing a line, you have to move through 3 control
panels!  This kind of interface is outdated, inefficient, and difficult to
memorize.  Compare it, say, to the original Deluxe Paint, now 7 years old,
and you'll see how cumbersome Imagemaster's interface is.

	A problem that goes hand-in-hand with the hierarchical interface is
that Imagemaster is very "modal."  This means that depending on "where you
are" in the hierarchy, you can access only a small set of operations.  This
modality is contrary to the principles of modern user interface design found
in many Amiga and Macintosh programs.  There is no real reason, for example,
why Imagemaster should force the user to exit the Processing Panel in order
to draw a freehand line.  In a non-modal (or less modal) interface, as many
operations as possible are available at all times:  just use the menu bar
and choose what you want.

	If you want to perform the same operation several times in
Imagemaster, you must traverse the same path through the control panels over
and over.  This gets boring really fast.  In addition, the buttons in each
control panel do not appear to be in any particular order.  To my eye, it
looks like Imagemaster's designers were more concerned with making the
buttons line up perfectly on the left and right sides of the screen than
ordering the buttons in any logical way.

	My next gripe concerns a fundamental design error in Imagemaster.
In order to perform an operation on an image, the user first selects the
operation, and then outlines the region which should be affected.  But this
ordering -- selecting the operation before the region -- is markedly inferior
to the opposite ordering found in so many programs today.  It is far more
convenient, not to mention safer, to select the region first and THEN choose
the operation.  Under the current system, if you mess up while selecting a
region, the operation (already chosen) often begins processing immediately.
The user can only cancel the operation and try again.  If Imagemaster had
reversed the operations, the user could spend lots of time selecting and
reselecting the region until he/she got it right, and THEN invoke the
operation.  Once again, this design decision illustrates an obsolete view of
user interfaces.  After all, when was the last time you saw a word processor
that makes you choose the "delete" operation BEFORE you select the text to
be deleted?

	A similar problem is found in Imagemaster's (non-standard) font
requester.  The moment you click on the font name, you've chosen it.
There should at least be "OK" and "Cancel" buttons!

	Speaking of "Cancel" buttons, Imagemaster's use of "Cancel" is
inconsistent from panel to panel.  Sometimes, clicking "Cancel" will take
you back to the top-level control panel (e.g., Special Effects/Asterize/
Entire Image/Cancel). Other times, it will take you back to the previous
control panel (e.g., File IO/Set Amiga Render Mode/Cancel).  In addition,
often the "Done" button really means "Cancel" (e.g., Macro Panel/Execute
Macro/Done) because it returns you to the previous panel without doing any
operation.  Black Belt should make up its mind just what "Cancel" means.

	Another user interface problem is that there are two kinds of gadgets
that look identical but act differently.  There are toggle gadgets, which
change state (on/off) when you click them.  And there are action gadgets
which initiate an operation as soon as you click them.  On some control
panels, I could not tell (without trying first) whether a given gadget would
exit the panel or not.  For example, when doing a "Render to File", the
button "Hold Aspect From Current" is a checkbox, but "Entire Image"
initiates an action. 

	I had a lot of difficulty saving images as files, and I think the
process of doing it -- while very flexible and powerful -- is more difficult
than necessary.  Your current image is displayed in whatever resolution you
choose.  Before saving it to a file, you must choose the output format (HAM,
IFF24, etc.) and the resolution (hires, lores, interlaced, noninterlaced,
etc.) to be stored.  However, as far as I could tell, there is NO simple way
to tell Imagemaster, "Save my current image in the same format as it is now
being displayed!"  Personally, I found it easier to save the screen image
directly using a 3rd-party screen saver commodity.

	The above problem is complicated by the fact that the "Save Setup"
command does not save your current display preferences.  So if you do a
"Save Setup", exit the program, run it again, and reload your image, the
image is not guaranteed to look the same as before you exited.  For example,
Imagemaster doesn't remember whether you want an interlaced screen or not.
(Default is "not.")

	Imagemaster's overall feel is "jumpy" when you click on gadgets in
control panels.  This is because the next control panel's buttons are drawn
BEFORE the panel background is moved to accommodate them.  The effect is
that the panel full of buttons "pops upward" slightly (or a lot).  I'd
suggest moving the panel background first and then rendering the buttons.
Along the same lines, Imagemaster's mutual-exclusion gadgets are very slow,
even on a 68030 Amiga.  Try switching between Hi-Res to Lo-Res on the "Set
Render Mode" screen and you'll see what I mean.

	From my above complaints, it should be obvious that Imagemaster does
not conform -- even slightly -- to Commodore's published user interface
guidelines.  But the real problem is that the interface is just plain sloppy
and archaic.  Designing a useful interface for a program as huge as
Imagemaster is certainly a difficult task.  But I can't help wondering how
much more streamlined the interface would be with standard Amiga menus and
gadgets instead of the current overly-modal menu hierarchy.

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	I have not used any other image processing programs, other than
traditional paint programs (Deluxe Paint, etc.).  Imagemaster is a different
kind of program entirely.

BUGS

	o	The "load image" file requester generates 5 Enforcer hits
		and pops up on the Workbench screen instead of Imagemaster's
		screen.

	o	Imagemaster crashes the Amiga when I try the "Melt" special
		effect on an entire image.  It generates dozens of Enforcer
		hits, and the machine hangs.

	o	Click on "Set Amiga Render Mode".  If "HAM" is currently the
		default, then the first 5 "Bit Depth" gadgets are enabled.
		However, if you then click "Register" followed by "HAM", the
		5 gadgets are now disabled!

	o	While rendering in 4-bit hires noninterlaced using "Render to
		File", while it is rendering to the screen (full image, keep
		aspect), drag the control panel screen downwards using
		ALT-LMB (as set in SYS:Prefs/IControl).  When the rendering
		finishes, the computer hangs.  I think Imagemaster doesn't
		expect the user to drag its screens around.

	o	If you click "Cancel" during "Render to file" while
		rendering, you still get a file requester which you must
		also cancel.  It's even worse when rendering a multi-frame
		sequence -- you must click "Cancel" after EACH frame!!

	o	Imagemaster activates its screen several times while an
		image is loading (and during other operations).  This makes
		it impossible to get any other work done while Imagemaster is
		in the background.  It keeps stealing the active screen away
		from you!

Then there are some minor nits:

	o	There are no version strings in imf nor filmview.

	o	The copyright notice is not legal.  It must be:
		"Copyright <YEAR> <ORGANIZATION>."

SUPPORT

	Several months ago, I contacted Black Belt to ask some questions
about Imagemaster.  To my surprise, they sent me a free copy.  If that isn't
great support, I don't know what is!!

	I tried to send in a bug report by e-mail to a Black Belt
representative.  He told me to call their Tech Support line to report it.
Since this is a long-distance call, and bug reports benefit Black Belt, I
would have preferred if the BB rep had forwarded the bug report to his
company himself.  But this is only a minor nitpick; it's good that they
have someone on the Net answering questions.

CONCLUSIONS

	Imagemaster is an astoundingly powerful package which is
unfortunately combined with a cumbersome, outdated user interface.  The
product is fairly stable and produces some amazing image effects.  I have
had great fun using it, and I have barely scratched the surface of its
potential.

	On a scale of 1 (terrible) to 10 (perfect), I rate the image
processing software as a "9" and the user interface as a "3".

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	Copyright 1993 Daniel J. Barrett.  All rights reserved.  This review
may be freely distributed as long as it is distributed unmodified and in
its entirety.  It may not appear in any publication without the author's
written permission.

---

   Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
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