 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group ixla Photo Scanner Suite 1.2 Bernadette Houghton bernieh@iaccess.com.au |
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ixla Photo Scanner Suite (iPSS) offers a terrific way to maximise the fun
you get out of your photographs. Create personalised photo albums, cards or calendars and tart them up with
snazzy effects, sound or animated text. Print the results, publish them to the Web or e-mail them to your
friends and relatives.
How it works
I had no problems installing iPSS, which uses the standard Windows 95 setup procedure. Once installed,
learning it is also quite straight-forward, with a video tutorial offering a short, no-nonsense introduction
to the main concepts.
When you first run iPSS (and thereafter, any time you choose), the Activity Guide offers some suggested
activities. Among other things, you can create a calendar, Web page or greeting card, catalogue your photos
or print an album. If you still don't know what to do, 101 Ideas offers further inspiration. Choosing
any idea or option either performs the activity without further ado, or invokes a helpful Assistant to walk
you through the steps. Almost anything you can think of doing with iPSS, you can do with an Assistant at your
side. I found the Assistants worked well most of the time, but occasionally started off with the wrong
template. While it is not difficult to change templates when this happens, I sometimes didn't realise I was
using the wrong template until some confusing minutes had elapsed.
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Another interesting option on the Activity Guide is "Mix'n'Match". Here you
click jigsaw puzzle pieces until you find a match. For example, clicking on Albums and Slideshow offers the
opportunity to turn your album into an interactive slideshow; choosing Blank Design and Albums invokes the
Photo Album Assistant. Mix'n'Match doesn't offer any new activity, but simply presents an alternative way to
explore iPSS's capabilities.
iPSS classifies its resources into four types - photos, backgrounds, stencils and frames - which display in
the Browser on the bottom of the screen. The Catalog toolbar on the far right displays the catalogues
available for each resource type. iPSS comes with 100 MB of resources, organised into catalogues, and you can
add as many more as your hard drive will support. You can create additional backgrounds, stencils and frames
in any paint program. You'll have to follow iPSS's specifications, but these are fairly simple. For example,
stencils - which add visual interest such as fading edges and fancy borders or corners - use two special
colours to determine which parts of your photos will display, and which parts will remain transparent.
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To create an album (or card or Web page or whatever) without an Assistant's
help, you drag resources from the Browser and drop them onto the page. If you want photos to fit into a frame
automatically, just drop them on the frame moulding. Whether iPSS fits a frame to a photo or vice versa
depends on which option you have set previously. Stencils always resize to fit the photo.
You can manipulate your photos by cropping, resizing and rotating, and applying some effects. Effects include
Brightness, Contrast, Emboss, Transparency and some dozen others. Drawing tools include Line, Polyline,
Rectangle, Curve and Text, and there are a few simple drawing commands such as Order, Align and Make Same
Size. If you can't think of any text of your own, a Text Assistant offers a variety of common phrases. You
can animate your text (and also each page) with fade in/fade out effects, add navigation buttons and
hypertext links, and attach sound files to each album page. iPSS has a built-in sound recorder, but you can
attach existing sound files if you prefer.
Before you can actually start working with your photos, you need to get them into your computer and into a
catalogue. iPSS supports a large range of graphic files, including AVI. You can download photos directly from
a digital camera or scanner; alternatively, you can have them scanned, either at the time of processing or
afterwards. I don't have a digital camera, so I couldn't test iPSS's download facility; however, the process
seems quite straightforward. I do have a hand-held scanner, but couldn't get it to work with iPSS for some
unknown reason.
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Once you've created an album, you can view it as a
slideshow, or export it in a variety of formats. Export formats include HTML, VRML, animated GIF or a Player
package that you can distribute to others. Choosing the Player option packages your album and the Player
installation files so it will run on another PC. If you have a MAPI-compatible e-mail system, you can also
e-mail your iPSS output.
Assessment
Despite a few hiccups with iPSS - the Assistants missing a beat or two, an inability to get my scanner to
work with iPSS, slow speed on my 486DX2-66 and a couple of interface quibbles - I had lots of fun. If you
have a fast machine and are entranced by ixla Photo Scanner Suite's possibilities - go for it!
Reprinted from the February 1998 issue of PC Update, the
magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
