Software Review:
Micrografx Webtricity 2
(Part 3)
By David Fiedler
Picture Publisher
Picture Publisher is the centerpiece of Webtricity, and the program you'll probably be using most often.
It outputs GIF, JPG, and PNG, as well as EPS, AVI, Flashpix, and Photoshop formats; while I counted 32 separate input file formats.
It's hard to say exactly how exciting Picture Publisher is. OK, there are a lot of features.
But some of them are pretty much unique, like the photo-realism. You can not only add simulated lens flare to a picture, but also animated lens flare...and you can modify virtually any of the parameters and watch your changes take effect in real time. There's also a "camera aperture" simulator, which lets you change the apparent depth of field of an image based on a simulated 35 mm. camera lens (you can pick any focal length from 20 to 500 mm., although you won't see a change in perspective, just depth of field).
You can easily add drop shadows, convert images to buttons, create about a dozen "cool text" basic effects, generate backgrounds and textures automatically...let's put it this way, there are so many choices that there's an internal browser just for the over 100 effects, wizards, and macros!
I'm going to use this banner
to lure you to a page on Micrografx' Web site so you can get an idea of just what it takes to create such a cool graphic quickly. Then you can look over some more of their tutorials
to get the full impact of why I'm so fascinated by this product.
But wait, there's more. You get the same kind of "image in a can" random sprayer as in Paint Shop Pro, except that here you can add your own images easily and directly. You can warp, ruby overlay, bevel, layer, animate, mask, and save optimized graphics. And there's unlimited undo.
Even the toolbars make a lot of sense. Instead of endless separate toolbars or little windows that you have to figure out how and where to dock, Picture Publisher has a basic set of tools along the left edge of the screen. Click on an icon there, and you "drill down" to a little horizontal bar menu of more detailed, related icons (such as different views, filters, or fill tools).
[ Move on to the last part
of the review ]
This article first appeared in June, 1998.
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