Monday, February 9, 2004
I'll Show You Mine! Spb Imageer Reviewed
Posted by Anthony Caruana in "SOFTWARE" @ 10:00 AM
So you've embraced the digital age. The old paper diary has been replaced by a desktop PIM and a Pocket PC. Your old SLR camera is in a cupboard, destined to never again see the light of day. Most of what you do is tied up to some device or other. But, one of the things you find really annoying is that while you're on vacation you take a pile pf photos with that digital camera and you can't clean your images up. And then you get home and you need an easy way to share them with all your friends and family. Well, the team at Spb Software House has an answer to your problems; Spb Imageer 1.0. This app is brilliant as an "on-the-go" image organiser and editor.
Imageer 1.0 is Spb Software House's latest foray into the world of digital imaging on the Pocket PC. If you're looking for Photoshop on the Pocket PC, then Imageer is not for you. Spb has designed Imageer around the premise that users would be focused on specific functions that they would want to perform on the Pocket PC. Imageer's user interface makes performing the most common image manipulations quick and simple. There are some improvements I'd like to see but Imageer gets close to the target in this first release.
So, What Does It Do?
When you look at what Imageer does, it's hard to believe it achieves so much with a simple set of toolbars and menus. The screen is very uncluttered, making it easy to use. Among the key features are:
In order to put Imageer through its paces I used Spike, my iPAQ 2210. I installed Imageer to a Sandisk 256 MB SD card and accessed my photos from a Kingston 128 MB CF card (love those dual slots ;-)) One of the neat features of Imageer is that it auto launches when you reinsert a storage card into your device. All the pictures I worked with were shot with my Canon PowerShot A40. None of them had been altered in any way prior to manipulating them with Imageer. The images I worked with were between 700 K and 1 MB in size. They were shot with my two megapixel camera at the highest resolution and image quality settings.
Installation
Installation is a snap - you'll need to set aside just under 2 MB. Of this, about 1.6 MB goes to the installation location and the rest to the /Windows folder on your device, even if you install it to a storage card. You can reduce the amount of system RAM used up by deleting the sample photos and album that the installer deposits in the /My Documents folder. This gives you back about 200K. The only option you need to consider is whether to include the Activesync filter.
Figure 1: Installing Imageer.
On the Pocket PC side of things you'll need to decide whether to use Imageer as your default viewer for most common image types. However, this can be easily changed from within the application options if you change your mind later.
Figures 2: Setting file associations during installation.
Figures 3: Setting file associations through the Options Dialog.
Imageer 1.0 is Spb Software House's latest foray into the world of digital imaging on the Pocket PC. If you're looking for Photoshop on the Pocket PC, then Imageer is not for you. Spb has designed Imageer around the premise that users would be focused on specific functions that they would want to perform on the Pocket PC. Imageer's user interface makes performing the most common image manipulations quick and simple. There are some improvements I'd like to see but Imageer gets close to the target in this first release.
So, What Does It Do?
When you look at what Imageer does, it's hard to believe it achieves so much with a simple set of toolbars and menus. The screen is very uncluttered, making it easy to use. Among the key features are:
- Picture editing (red-eye, brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, and more);
- Read-ahead caching to make image loading faster;
- Storage card notification with common tasks;
- Desktop ActiveSync conversion filter;
- One-click slideshows with smooth transitions;
- Multiple thumbnail options with multi-threaded thumbnail generation;
- Batch optimizing of photos;
- Web publishing to Fotki.com;
- Album creation and sharing;
- Rich picture notes (text, drawing, and sound).
In order to put Imageer through its paces I used Spike, my iPAQ 2210. I installed Imageer to a Sandisk 256 MB SD card and accessed my photos from a Kingston 128 MB CF card (love those dual slots ;-)) One of the neat features of Imageer is that it auto launches when you reinsert a storage card into your device. All the pictures I worked with were shot with my Canon PowerShot A40. None of them had been altered in any way prior to manipulating them with Imageer. The images I worked with were between 700 K and 1 MB in size. They were shot with my two megapixel camera at the highest resolution and image quality settings.
Installation
Installation is a snap - you'll need to set aside just under 2 MB. Of this, about 1.6 MB goes to the installation location and the rest to the /Windows folder on your device, even if you install it to a storage card. You can reduce the amount of system RAM used up by deleting the sample photos and album that the installer deposits in the /My Documents folder. This gives you back about 200K. The only option you need to consider is whether to include the Activesync filter.
Figure 1: Installing Imageer.
On the Pocket PC side of things you'll need to decide whether to use Imageer as your default viewer for most common image types. However, this can be easily changed from within the application options if you change your mind later.
Figures 2: Setting file associations during installation.
Figures 3: Setting file associations through the Options Dialog.
