Sign Up For Conduit's Pocket Artist 3.0 Beta

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.conduits.com/company_news.asp?nfti20050301.html">http://www.conduits.com/company_news.asp?nfti20050301.html</a><br /><br /><i>"Pocket Artist 3.0 has finally arrived! We are currently in the beta testing phase of the new version and hope to have it released soon. New and exciting features include layer masks (and custom alpha channels), multiple undo levels (keep a running history of your work), caption editing (full IPTC support), more filters (Unsharp Mask, Difference Clouds and Noise, to name a few) and file formats (GIF/PNG saving), and much, much more!"</i><br /><br /><a href="http://www.conduits.com/news/pa3betafull.png"><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2005/20050302-pocketartist3.gif" /></a><br /><br />There are instructions at the site for applying for the beta. This should look especially good to those of you on VGA devices. :mrgreen:

[x999x]

Thanks for the headsup, this is the first piece of software I bought when I got my pocketPC, and I can't live without it.

[Gerard]

Good grief, I always find out secondhand. Every time there's a PA beta I have to remind Jason P. I exist... to which he apologises... I grab the beta, try it a bit, report bunches of errors they missed... he offers thanks along with a "we should have brought you in earlier" ... Is he just being polite? :) Off I go, emailing Conduits again. Thanks for the news!

I've been bugging him for GIF writing support for 3 years, dammit. Well, XnView Pocket does that now, so it really doesn't matter so muoh anyway. Now how about GIF animation support?

[Menneisyys]

caption editing (full IPTC support)

At last! All the other PPC-based apps are pretty bad at this. I've scrutinized the PPC-based image veiwer / editor apps in this respect too (it's always good to have an image viewer that can add comments to an image 1, in a standardized way and 2, without touching/recompressing the image itself). Here's an excerpt from my forthcoming review of image editors/viewers that discusses this stuff:

"The next section, starting with "EXIF display?" and ending with "Standard IPTC edit &amp; save?", discusses the ability to read/ modify / add / resave additional EXIF/IPCT information ( more on them at http://www.pcplus.co.uk/tips/default.asp?pagetypeid=2&amp;articleid=5695&amp;subsectionid=390 ; I've used the EXIF/IPTC Viewer at http://www.takenet.or.jp/~ryuuji/minisoft/exifread/english/ to check whether the apps save comments in a standardized way). Unfortunately, there weren't any application to resave them all without problems.

I've paid special attention to quality loss thorough the entire test. It may result in quality degradation by, for example, recompression after a "simple" IPTC caption information editing (and, incidentally, that was the reason I've also checked whether the given application also supports losless JPEG rotation) upon exporting a JPEG image. So, I've checked that – aside from the mundane "Can the app display existing EXIF infos at all?" ("EXIF display?") question – the apps are able to, upon modifying their EXIF / IPTC comments ("EXIF ImageDescription comment editing?", "IPTC display?"), can they update the JPEG images without re-saving them. Unfortunately, only the bug-ridden ACDSee Mobile 1.0 was able to set the EXIF ImageDescription comment, and the apps that were able to set the IPTC fields, DIGIVUE and the two Idrune applications, did it in a non-standard way and with recompression, respectively.

In a word, for now, there is no easy way for EXIF/ IPTC-based in-the-field image commenting. This is why I've also included the "Comment in a separate text file in &lt;picfilename>.ext ?" test case. Some programs export their (mostly slideshow-related) commants in a plain text file under the same name as the original picture, so desktop tools have an easy time associating comments with an individual image. Unfortunately, Resco exports its comments to a generic, proprietary file that is pretty hard to process and Spb Imageer, the other "killer" image viewer app, embeds them in the images themselves, in a non-EXIF/IPTC-compliant way."

[Jason Patterson]

Gerard,

Off I go, emailing Conduits again. Thanks for the news!
Unfortunately the beta was launched/announced before I had the chance to go through all my contacts here.

Now how about GIF animation support?
That's certainly a possibility with Pocket Artist 3 -- let's discuss the possibilities over email.

[Jason Patterson]

caption editing (full IPTC support) At last! All the other PPC-based apps are pretty bad at this. ... In a word, for now, there is no easy way for EXIF/ IPTC-based in-the-field image commenting.

Pocket Artist 3 has full EXIF viewing and full IPTC caption (category, keyword, etc - see screenshots at our website) editing support, including loading and saving to a file (for batch captioning).

We would certainly like to support captioning of JPEGs without re-saving the image itself. This is something we will add before Pocket Artist 3 is released, but it didn't make it into Beta 1. Lossless JPEG rotation is also on the list.

[SteveHoward999]

This is pretty cool - but I don't know how useful it would really be. With a VGA screen it would be more fun.

I think it is fantastic that tools like this are available for PDA - and more so that our PDAs have the grunt to run them! I really really want it ... but I don't know that I would ever really use it. I have PhotoShop and Fireworks on my laptop and PC, and cannot really see me wanting to do image creation and editing on the PDA unless I had some sort of emergency need and was not near any of my Windows machines.

[SteveHoward999]

Now how about GIF animation support?
That's certainly a possibility with Pocket Artist 3 -- let's discuss the possibilities over email.


I downlopaded version 2.7 last naight. I notice version 2.7 does not like the layers in Fireworks PNG files - is there plans to support these in 3?

[Jason Patterson]

I downlopaded version 2.7 last naight. I notice version 2.7 does not like the layers in Fireworks PNG files - is there plans to support these in 3?

PNG support is certainly being increased for 3.0. Could you send us a problem PNG file to [email protected]? Also, have you signed up for the beta of 3.0?

[SteveHoward999]

PNG support is certainly being increased for 3.0. Could you send us a problem PNG file to [email protected]? Also, have you signed up for the beta of 3.0?


I mailed sample files. I haven't signed up for the beta - but I mentioned it when I mailed support.

Thanks!


Steve

[Gerard]

Thanks a lot Jason. Sorry for the melodramatics above - meant largely tongue in cheek. I've registered with the Conduits forums now and will begin testing today on 3.0. GIF animation will be awesome in just about any form really. It's more at the level of a 'toy' functionality I'm interested rather than any hardcore graphics application stuff... though knowing Pocket Artist in general it seems likely that it'll be awesome if it's included.

My kid loves to draw on the old Casio EG-800, she's getting pretty good too. We've cobbled together a couple of little 'movies' using a combination of Pocket Artist and then Ulead GIF Animator on the PC... but that's not so much fun as beginning-to-end animation on the Pocket PC. My little brother is an animation director for TV and feature films, formerly a Pixar animator. A few years ago he tried to coach us in animating simple things using the only semi-working animation program for the PPC, a freeware available from SourceForge. That was fun, but he found it frustrating and buggy just as I did. If PA had some basic tools for this then he could take us a bit further, show us the tricks of effective motion transitions for a couple of animation styles, sort of get the ball rolling for the kid and see if she runs with it. PC-based solutions so far have too many confusing elements for a kid, seems to us anyway. So simple but solid would be nice. I'll email you with specifics.

And thanks so much for this. PA 2.7 has been great, but with a program like this there's always room for adding a bit more depth. If any one thing is pushing me towards saving for a good VGA device with a bigger screen, Pocket Artist is it. It'd be great if there were a 5" screened PPC. They could ditch the front buttons for all I care, just make the whole front of the device but for a 3mm frame into the screen, put all the buttons on the upper sides with a cursor-joystick slide-out from the bottom or something.

[Jason Patterson]

Steve: Thanks! We'll look into supporting both layered and animated PNG files; though it looks like Fireworks saves different layers per-animation frame, which might get complex.

Gerard: VGA screens really do add value to Pocket Artist. Regarding buttons, you might want to take a look at the new button mappings we've introduced in 3.0 -- holding a button down can temporarily switch to the hand, eyedropper, etc.

[Jason Patterson]

I downlopaded version 2.7 last naight. I notice version 2.7 does not like the layers in Fireworks PNG files - is there plans to support these in 3?

Steve: According to some websites (http://www.dreamweavercafe.com/cafe/viewthread.php?tid=25585), the layered PNG format that Macromedia uses is a proprietary extension to the PNG file format. At the moment it looks like we're not going to be able to support it.

Regarding the animated PNG file you had sent - can you only view that in Fireworks? It might be another proprietary extension - we can't get it to animate in any non-Fireworks PNG viewer here, and it doesn't seem to be a MNG file (the PNG group's standard for animations).

[SteveHoward999]

Hmm - shame. This makes sense though since PhotoShop cannot see the layers in Fireworks' files either. Shame.

PhotoShop does not see the frames in the animated file either, so as you say this is probably also a proprietary Macromedia file format.

:-( When it comes to animations Fireworks is easier for me to use. Maybe you guys should take the time to see how it works. Obviously you cannot reverse-engineer what Macromedia has done, but if you can learn from how they handle the animation layers in FW by looking at the interface that could be a cool new feature to add to Pocket Artist.

[Jason Patterson]

Steve,

We've released Beta 2 of Pocket Artist 3 now, with some features we hope you like. Posting it here just to make sure you get a chance to see it. Enjoy!

[Gerard]

Thanks Jason. I've been trying the new GIF animation wizard for a few days now, and it's really quite a nice start. The odd glitch, like no images in the frame-building view in my tests and the odd crash when I use a Photoshop layered document (made in Pocket Artist of course) with too much data... but this latter is more a limitation of my Dell X5's memory I think. WM2003 is a lot leaky and unstable in the X5. All in all a wonderful new version, and I'm looking forward with some excitement to beta 3!

[SteveHoward999]

Steve,

We've released Beta 2 of Pocket Artist 3 now, with some features we hope you like. Posting it here just to make sure you get a chance to see it. Enjoy!

Cool thanks - heading off to download it now.

Also I have a Toshiba e830 to test it on now. I did a couple of quick tests yesterday and it seems to work fine in True VGA mode using SE_VGA.

[Gerard]

Oops. Seems I jumped the gun. Jason wrote to say he's sorted out the bugs I mention above in the release beta2, so pretend I didn't say anything. ;) Downloading this version now. Now how am I going to get any work done today?!