Conduits Pocket Artist 3.0 Released

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.conduits.com/products/artist/default.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.conduits.com/products/ar...ist/default.asp</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Conduits Technologies, Inc. announced today the release of Pocket Artist 3.0 for the Windows Powered Pocket PC, Pocket PC 2002, Windows Mobile 2003 and Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition-compatible devices. Pocket Artist is a drawing and image manipulation program for Windows powered devices, and has been awarded the Graphic Design and Drawing Application prize at the Best Pocket PC Software Awards three years in a row. Pocket Artist 3.0 provides full color graphics editing on mobile devices. The user interface is optimized for small screens while retaining a full set of features-supporting both digital photo management and original art development. Pocket Artist fully supports a variety of graphics formats, such as JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP and the multifaceted PSD format. With Pocket Artist 3.0, users can open, edit and save multi-layer images with their Pocket PC."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20050426-PA3.jpg" /><br /><br />Beta testing this product was a whole bundle of fun, and suffice to say, it's packed with more features than ever before. Some of the newer features include: WM2003SE/VGA support, batch JPEG processing, animated GIF wizard, twelve new filters with a plugin framework, IPTC/EXIF support, caption editor, multilevel undo, virtual memory swapfiles engine, layer masks and alpha channels. The full press release can be read <a href="http://www.conduits.com/company_news.asp?pr20050425.html">here</a>. Existing Pocket Artist customers can purchase the upgrade for $19.95 (a free upgrade is available for those who purchased Pocket Artist after November 1st, 2004). Otherwise, new users can download a trial version from <a href="http://www.handango.com/ampp/store/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productId=11011&productType=2">Handango</a>, and purchase the full version for $49.95. [Affiliate]

[Gerard]

You're not kidding. Beta testing these past few weeks has been rather ridiculously fun! I'd begged for years for animated GIF authoring, half the time figuring it just wasn't going to happen... and of course the nasty copyright law was in the way. That's no longer an issue, it expired, so now we've got a wicked animation tool with proper stylus support. My kid's loving it. Here's my first semi-presentable effort - kinda bad, I know, but I'm a woodworker not a painter:
http://www.luthier.ca/other/forum/sunset-coffee.gif
If that's too much (about 200kb) I'll pull it down, just let me know.

I think it's amazing PA still costs $50. When I paid that back in fall of 2000 the program was already intense, but the price scared a lot of people. With all the new features this is a steal at that price.

[BUMP THAT]

Hey that is really good, you are an artist. :D

[Paragon]

Here's my first semi-presentable effort - kinda bad, I know, but I'm a woodworker not a painter:


From one woodworker to another.....very cool, Gerard! Nicely done.

Dave

[juni]

Does it support PSP9's pspimage format with layer groups already? ;)

I guess I'll buy the upgrade (I did it last time too). :)

[Jason Patterson]

Does it support PSP9's pspimage format with layer groups already? ;)

I guess I'll buy the upgrade (I did it last time too). :)

Pocket Artist 3.0 doesn't support the native PSPIMAGE Paint Shop Pro format, but you should be able to save as PSD from PSP9, and Pocket Artist will read those files. Pocket Artist doesn't yet support layer groups, though we did enhance our PSD file format support in other ways for this release.

[JMac]

Looks great!

The price IS quite steep, but I think I would go for it if it was directly compatible with PSP9 and layering! :D

Is that a possibility in the near future?

[Jason Patterson]

Looks great!

The price IS quite steep, but I think I would go for it if it was directly compatible with PSP9 and layering! :D

Is that a possibility in the near future?

It's certainly something we could add for a future 3.x release -- this is essentially the only requests for PSPIMAGE support, since Paint Shop Pro 9 can also Save As PSD format. Just so there is no confusion, Pocket Artist 3 does support layered PSD images, including blending modes, opacity, masks, metadata, etc.

In addition to our image processing plugins, we hope to support file format plugins in a future 3.x release too - after looking at the PSPIMAGE specification, it doesn't look too hard to implement, and we'll add that to the to-do list. It seems there might even be a market for a PSP-to-PSD converter (http://www.google.com/search?q=psp-to-psd) that Pocket Artist would become, as a side effect.

[juni]

PSP9 saves as psd, but I use the layergroups all the time (I haven't used Photoshop in a long long time. I sort of assumed it had that function too). It is one of the best features of PSP. :)

[JMac]

Looks great!

The price IS quite steep, but I think I would go for it if it was directly compatible with PSP9 and layering! :D

Is that a possibility in the near future?

It's certainly something we could add for a future 3.x release -- this is essentially the only requests for PSPIMAGE support, since Paint Shop Pro 9 can also Save As PSD format. Just so there is no confusion, Pocket Artist 3 does support layered PSD images, including blending modes, opacity, masks, metadata, etc.
I understand that it supports PSD, and that is certainly a much more widely used photo software. I'm certainly not knocking that compatibility! :D I have been using Paint Shop Pro for almost five years now, and on the occasions that I had to use PSD it was a bit confusing - mostly due to my familiarity and comfortability with Paint Shop Pro I'm sure.

In addition to our image processing plugins, we hope to support file format plugins in a future 3.x release too - after looking at the PSPIMAGE specification, it doesn't look too hard to implement, and we'll add that to the to-do list. It seems there might even be a market for a PSP-to-PSD converter (http://www.google.com/search?q=psp-to-psd) that Pocket Artist would become, as a side effect.
The converter idea sounds like a winner. As it stands now, I may have to end up switching photo software anyway, since Corel purchased Jasc and doesn't appear to be fully supportive of PSP. Of course I may end up with another application altogether - possibly Ulead. But that's hopefully in the future!

BTW, your quick reply is very much appreciated.

I also see that you have a responsive user forum on your website, which is a must-have for me. Excellent!

One more question...I see on your site that the current price is an "introductory price". What does that mean? Looks like this is a special price that will be going up shortly. 8O Any details? Such as, I should purchase by a cetain date or......

Thanks!

[Jason Patterson]

BTW, your quick reply is very much appreciated.

I also see that you have a responsive user forum on your website, which is a must-have for me. Excellent!
Thanks! Our support staff is also readily available at [email protected] for more direct questions. Also, we plan to open up some new pages highlighting user-submitted brush packs, gradients, palettes, and filters, in addition to our picture gallery.

One more question...I see on your site that the current price is an "introductory price". What does that mean? Looks like this is a special price that will be going up shortly. 8O Any details? Such as, I should purchase by a cetain date or......
We certainly will not be raising the price; it seems that word was left in by mistake. We'll correct it, thanks!

[Andy Whiteford]

Jason,


I'm unable to get the preview in Animation to work - I can save the GIF animations and they work fine however when I try to preview them during creation I just get a blank screen with the 'Tap screen to close preview' message. Any ideas?
Also, is there a way to view a previously created GIF animation as I can't see this in the documenation and I don't have any other software installed on my device to view GIF animations.

[Jason Patterson]

I'm unable to get the preview in Animation to work - I can save the GIF animations and they work fine however when I try to preview them during creation I just get a blank screen with the 'Tap screen to close preview' message. Any ideas?
Also, is there a way to view a previously created GIF animation as I can't see this in the documenation and I don't have any other software installed on my device to view GIF animations.

We've heard another report of this behavior and believe we have narrowed down the problem. Could you see if closing your original PSD file, exiting out of Pocket Artist, and then reopening everything allows you to view the preview properly? The problem has to do with the animator not utilizing Pocket Artist's scratch memory, so that if you currently have Pocket Artist's memory allocation filled with your document edits, the preview frames aren't allocated properly.

[Andy Whiteford]

Typical that it is no longer an issue for me today now! I'll try and recreate the issue though and feedback.
Is there an option to view previously created GIF animations?

[Andy Whiteford]

Okay, it seems if I try to create an animation with a complex image i.e. a crop from my camera then the preview does not work however if I create a simple animation such as a very basic drawing then the preview does work so I imagine this is a memory / scratch file issue.
I didn't have a scratch file set up in preferences so I created one (max 4mb) on my storage card however when I restarted PA and tried the complex animation again, the preview still failed.
Hope this helps but we can take this out of the forum if you wish to research it further - I just wanted to post it here in case others were getting it too.

[Jason Patterson]

Andy,

Can you try this with the new version 3.1? We essentially fixed every bug that was reported, including some critical JPEG-saving related ones, and also have File Format plugin support.

Thanks!

[Andy Whiteford]

Andy,

Can you try this with the new version 3.1? We essentially fixed every bug that was reported, including some critical JPEG-saving related ones, and also have File Format plugin support.

Thanks!


I don't have it but I'll download the trial of 3.1 and try it out. Will this work okay if my v3 trial expired?

[Jason Patterson]

Andy,

It should reset the trial period on your 3.0 installation, giving you 30 more days. Thanks!