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Photobie from Xuedong Cheng (Freeware)
By admin | May 29, 2007
Photobie is a complete image editing software customized for photo retouching. Unlike other commercial and free image editing softwares, Photobie has its unique identity and is more like a homemade cookie. Photobie developers intend to build an easy-to-use and feature-packed tool for graphics amateurs. Although, it is not yet a perfect tool for professionals, it does contain many handy tools to help professional to achieve simple task quickly.
Photobie is featured with an unique intuitive layer manager, which enable our users to handle multiple layers with ease for advanced image editing. It beholds a wide variety of painting tools that are crucial for photo retouching. Photobie supports Photoshop filter(.8BF) plugins, which means that our users can apply thousands of free filters to their images. Meantime, Photobie provides an advanced screen capture tool, the simpliest gif animation tool, and a photo framing tool. Photobie integrates an image directory browser with batch resize/rotate, full screen slide show features.
Photobie was initially developed by Cheng (real name: Xuedong Chen, Ph.D. candidate at UMass Boston) as a special gift for his new baby, Cindy, in 2005. Photobie is loaded with full of Cheng’s wishes for his baby. Photobie is more than just a software, it is alive, and it grows fast as a baby. In Photobie, you will find a special flash player for kids, with which you can play a list of flash movies. Photobie developers are also currently working on a simple intuitive flash editor so that our user can create more fancy flash animation other than relatively old GIF animation.
The Main menu of the application consists of 14 options: File, Edit, Selection, Layer, Filter, Frame, Browser, ScreenCapture, GIF_Animation, Flash, Color_Setup, Output, View and Help.
The option Help initiates Help popup contaonong options About Fotobie (calls a window containing information about the application and its developer and how to contact him) and Acknowledgement (opens a window in which the author thanks all those who helped him by the developing the program), help links on the web FAQ and Tutorial, Photobie manual, and useful links in the Web for Photobie users (Go to Photobie.com, Go to Photobie forum and Go to Photobie Gallery).
The options FAQ and Tutorial are Internet links; the option Photobie manual opens a help file in the Microsoft Help format.
The option File opens a File Dialog popup. It contains options of creating a new image New, opening an existing image or a whole Image Directory Open, saving the currently selected image to a disk Save, printing the selected image Print, and cancelling the program execution and quitting the application Exit.
The option Edit opens an Edit Dialog popup containing options: undoing/redoing changes Undo and Redo, cropping the current image to the chosen size Crop, Cut and Copy, and pasting Paste as new layer and Paste as new image.
The option Layer opens a Layer handling popup. You can add a new layer in the image (Add a new blank layer), Make current layer new image, Layer color balance adjust, Layer rotate and much more.
The option Filter deals with various filters which you can apply to the image and/or the layer of the image. The first option of the Filter popup Apply filters to current layer only is checkable and manages how the filter is applyed. Then there is a sub-popup of available filters in the application Embedded filters and a sub-popup Photoshop 8BF filters. This option allows loading and applying to the image of Photoshop filters (if you have Adobe Photoshop installed) as plugins.
The option Frame allows handling the current image as a photo frame, and vice versa. The Frame popup has a link Go Photobie free frame Gallery.
The option Browser opens an image browser embedded in the application. The browser has a taskbar in the lower part of its window with buttons for various file handling actions.
The option ScreenCapture allows screen capturing with or without the cursor in the ScreenCapture mode of the application.
The option GIF_Animation allows handling layers in the image as an animation. It calls a special window for animation control. In this window you can see all the frames in the .gif file, set the mode for animation (repeat or additive), set delay for changing frames in milliseconds, etc. In the animation control window you can test-mode the animation, too.
The option Flash is rather unique for image editing software. It calls an embedded flash player designed especially for kids fun. This flash player has been a special gift of the author to his daughter 
The option Color_Setup manages color handling in the application. You can Set Current Panel Color as Global Transparent Color or Set Current Panel Color as Layer Transparent Color. You can Set the selection mask color, too.
The option Output manages output in the GIF-format or icon-format. It calls a window in which you can set some characteristics of the output.
The option View of the Main menu opens/closes the Layer manager and Flat toolbar view.
In the Main window of the application there is a window of the Layer manager (if enabled in the option View of the Main menu). It allowse to see image layers and handle them. In the Layer manager window there are a taskbar with layer handling buttons, a Transparency bar control, and a table for setting layer properties. You can also enable or disable automatic layer generation.
Under the Main menu of the application and at the left edge of it there are two taskbars of the application. The one under the Main menu contains buttons for more or less standard file handling actions and zooming, while the one on the left edge deals with specifically image editing (mainly for the choice of an editing tool).
Downloading Photobie is available at the download link at the web-site
Download.com or directly from the site Photobie.com. But you must take into account that a photobie is not a standalone application. It is a .NET windows application, so it requires installing a .NET Framework package. You can also download it directly here. However, if you’re a Windows XP user, most likely you’ve already had .NET Framework 1.1 installed through live Windows updates. You can check it in the Windows Control Panel.
Topics: Computers & Software |