|
|
MGI PhotoSuite Ver. 8.05 
Selected "Help File" Information
|
|
Scanning Glossary |
Evaluating Scanners |
MGI PhotoSuite has a wide variety of features and functions, here is an overview of the many things that you can do with MGI PhotoSuite.
What is MGI PhotoSuite?
MGI PhotoSuite combines the features of many popular image manipulation and presentation programs into one easy-to-use application. MGI PhotoSuite allows you to enhance any image with a wide variety of special effects, includes a host of paint and drawing tools and allows you to create your own photo slideshow complete with music. For more information, please refer to the printed user manual or the comprehensive on-line Help system at any time. Product support is available to all registered users, so please be sure to register your copy of MGI PhotoSuite today. We recommend that you use the MGI Direct on-line registration system located in the MGI PhotoSuite Help menu.
An electronic image can take almost any form such as a photograph, drawing, painting, etc. that has either been created using a computer or digitally "imaged" and stored in one of a number of popular graphic file formats. MGI PhotoSuite supports almost any type of image - from simple black and white images to photographs containing as many as 16-million colors. As a rule, the more colors, the more realistic the image will look. However, more colors means a larger amount of information must be stored. High-resolution images require many megabytes of disk space, so for this reason, you may choose to work with images having only 256 or even 16 colors. MGI PhotoSuite also allows you to transform a color image to black and white, as well as "upgrade" a color image to 16-million colors. In many cases, this will allow you to apply a wider range of special effects "filters" and tools to your image including adding new colors. However, you will have to save the modified image in the higher resolution format if you want to preserve these changes. See Information on Image Files.
How do I transfer my photographs to digital format?
There are many ways for you to get your photos onto the computer. You can retrieve photos from your hard disk, floppy diskette, digital camera, scanner, CD-Rom, or directly from the Internet. If necessary you can convert them to digital format by scanning them. Select the photo that you want to use and follow the instructions provided with your scanner to scan them in and save the photo to your hard drive or a floppy diskette. There are scanning services that exist for converting photographs and negatives to digital format. Consult your local print shop, camera store, film processor or desktop publishing bureau to see what is available.
MGI PhotoSuite supports the Photo CD image format. This allows you to store and view your photographs at several different resolutions ranging from small, low-resolution "thumbnails" to high-resolution images. Almost any camera store or film processing outlet will take your unprocessed films and have them reproduced in Photo CD format in addition to standard prints and slides. Prices vary, but unlike prints, photographs stored on a CD-ROM can be preserved almost indefinitely. Once stored electronically your photographs can be used with any application that supports Photo CD.
MGI PhotoSuite allows you to cut and paste images between popular applications in seconds. For example, MGI PhotoSuite supports a wide range of industry-standard file formats which makes it ideal for copying, modifying and pasting images from an Encyclopedia program into any word processing document. You can also enhance an image on the fly using MGI PhotoSuite’s built-in special effects (sharpen, brighten, emboss, etc.) and image editing tools. MGI PhotoSuite lets you change colors, zoom in on the smallest detail, insert text, add and delete objects, apply special effects, rotate and stretch images, create posters and preview your changes on the fly - you can do just about anything you can imagine. It’s fast and it’s fun. And don’t worry, you can use the Undo/Redo feature of the program at any time. You can also create a "duplicate" image while you are working so that your original photograph remains untouched. See How to with MGI PhotoSuite.
MGI PhotoSuite comes with a full range of paint and drawing tools that allow you to create original computer images and artwork or enhance existing ones. Just start with a blank page and let your imagination do the rest. You can also use tools to enhance any image, including the air brush, flood fill, color eraser, eyedropper, and definable brushes that let you express yourself. See MGI PhotoSuite Tools.
What is a computer-based slideshow?
MGI PhotoSuite’s slideshow feature allows you to easily create your own multimedia slideshow complete with full color images, background music and colors. Simply select the photographs you wish to present, choose the speed (automatic or manual mode), and if you like, add a sound (WAV or MIDI) file or animation/video (AVI) file to enhance your presentation. MGI PhotoSuite takes care of the rest. It’s ideal for business users, friends and family alike.
MGI PhotoSuite as an Internet Helper App
With its fast image viewing, multimedia album cataloging and slideshow capabilities, MGI PhotoSuite makes the ideal Internet helper application. Use it to keep track of the graphics and multimedia files that you have retrieved from the Internet.
This handy feature lets you capture and edit anything you see on your computer screen at any time. It’s ideal for use with documents, presentations, icons, faxes - anything that requires precise and clean capture of on-screen images. Once captured, these images can be enhanced using any MGI PhotoSuite tool or special effect. See Screen Capture.
Web Page Graphics
MGI PhotoSuite supports two features in the GIF file format specification that enable you to create interlaced and transparent GIF graphics for your Web pages. See GIF and Web Page Graphics for more details.
Output
MGI PhotoSuite supports all Windows compatible output devices and printers. See how to print with MGI Photosuite.
An image can be represented in many forms, such as a painting, picture, etc. In the computer world an image is made up of a collection of dots called "pixels" arranged in a rectangular grid of rows and columns. Each pixel is a specific color. The number of possible colors in an entire image can vary from two to 16.7 million. The simplest type of image has only black and white pixels and is referred to as a "monochrome" image. "True Color" images can contain any of 16.7 million colors and offer the widest range of colors available using MGI PhotoSuite.
Image sizes can vary from a single pixel to as large an image as system memory and resources can accommodate.
The type of image data determines the range of colors that the image may contain. "Color Depth" is a term that is used to specify the maximum number of colors available. In the simplest type of image, each pixel can be either black or white. Since each pixel can have only two different states, only one "bit" of information is required to store each image. However, an image with 8 bits of color information per pixel allows 256 possible colors (2 to the power of 8 equals 256).
MGI PhotoSuite supports the following color depths; Black and White (1 bit per pixel), 16 color (4 bits per pixel), 256 color (8 bits per pixel) and 16.7 million color (true color, 24 bits per pixel). In addition, MGI PhotoSuite allows you to work with grayscale images containing either 16 or 256 colors. The actual number of colors you will see on your monitor depends on the type of video hardware and video drivers you are using.
MGI PhotoSuite allows for the conversion, from one to another, of the following data types.
Monochrome
One-bit data type. Each pixel can be either black or white.
Grayscale
Grayscale images can contain black, white and a range of grays. 16-color (4 bits per pixel) grayscale images contain 16 shades of gray ranging from pure white to pure black. 256-color (8 bits per pixel) grayscale images contain 256 shades of gray ranging evenly from pure white to pure black.
Indexed 16 and 256-color
Indexed, or color-mapped, images contain colors specified by a table of color values. The color values may be chosen from a larger range of available colors, but only the colors actually in the table are displayed in the image. For example, your system may be able to display 256 colors simultaneously, but if you load a 16-color image, you can only draw in the image using the 16 colors contained in the color table for that image.
Indexed 16-color images use 4 bits per pixel to represent the image while indexed 256-color images use 8 bits per pixel.
True Color (16.7 Million)
True color images use values of red, green and blue to represent colors. Each pixel can contain 256 different intensities of red, green and blue which are combined to obtain the final color. For example, if red, green and blue all have a value of zero, the final color is pure black. If red, green and blue all have a value of 255 (the maximum intensity), the final color is pure white. If red and green have a value of 255 but blue is zero, then the final color is pure yellow, since red and green combine to produce yellow when displayed on a computer monitor.
True color images use 24 bits per pixel to represent the image, divided into 8 bits for each primary color (red, green and blue). Certain file formats store true color images as 32-bit images, which have an extra 8 bits to store transparency or overlay information. MGI PhotoSuite will load these files, but ignores the extra data.
Images are stored in a variety of file formats. Many different image file formats have been developed over the years for specific applications and hardware. MGI PhotoSuite supports a large number of commonly used file formats. These include.
The Windows Bitmap file format is the standard file format used by Microsoft Windows. Bitmap files can contain either 2 (black and white), 16, 256 or 16.7 million colors. Most Windows Bitmap files are not compressed. It is possible to save 16 and 256 color images in a compressed format (See Run-Length Encoded below) but some applications (notably Windows Paintbrush) are not able to read the compressed files.
The default file extension for Windows Bitmap files is ".BMP". Occasionally you may see bitmap files with the extension ".DIB".
Windows Run-Length Encoded (RLE)
The RLE format is a variation of the Windows BMP format that offers a modest degree of image compression. It has two primary uses under Windows. It can be used to create compressed wallpaper files and it can be used to replace the opening Windows logo screen with a file of your own choosing. RLE files are always either 16 or 256 color image files.
The default file extension for Windows RLE Bitmap files is ".RLE".
CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)
The GIF file format was developed by CompuServe Inc. for use on their on-line service. GIF files are color-mapped files that can have anywhere from 2 to 256 colors. MGI PhotoSuite supports both the 87a and 89a versions of the GIF standard. GIF files are always compressed and offer an efficient way to store large images.
The default file extension for CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format files is ".GIF".
Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG)
The JPEG format uses a method of compression that reduces photo image file size by selectively reducing image detail and by transforming the image data into a format more suited for compression. Photos with fewer details compress extremely well, while pictures with a high degree of random detail may show some degree of image degradation. The relative amount of detail removed is specified by the JPEG quality item in the "Save Image" file selector. Because of it's efficient compression, JPEG is an excellent format to use if you plan to upload photos to the Internet. It is not the best format to use if you plan on editing the photo, however, because each time you re-save the photo, there will be some picture degradation. This is referred to as "Lossy" compression, where some image information is lost in the interest of better compression. For editing purposes, use a format like TIFF or BMP, and then save to JPG as your final image.
Tip: At the default value of 75, relatively little picture degradation will take place, and a significant amount of compression will be obtained. Lower values will give you even better compression, but with a marked loss of image quality. JPEG images are either true color or grayscale (256 shades of gray).
Note: The MGI PhotoSuite JPEG implementation is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.
The default file extension for JPEG files is ".JPG".
FlashPix (FPX)
– available only with the 32bit version of MGI PhotoSuiteA FlashPix file contains the complete image plus several smaller copies, all within the same file. This has the advantage of producing highquality printouts using the higher resolutions, along with fast image manipulation by using the smaller resolutions for screen display. Images at each resolution are also divided into tiles, which enables the application to minimize the amount of data processed while accessing, displaying or printing a portion of the screen content. MGI PhotoSuite will load .FPX images and preserve all transformations, and also has the ability to save your image to .FPX for loading into other programs that support FlashPix.
MGI PhotoSuite is well suited to creating original .FPX files from your scanner or digital camera originals. Note that FlashPix uses JPEG compression, which means some picture degradation will take place if the file is saved multiple times in .FPX format. For editing purposes, use a format like TIF or BMP before saving to .FPX, and then save to .FPX as your final image.
Photo CD (PCD)
The Photo CD format is a proprietary format developed by Eastman to store digitized photographic images on CD-ROM disks. These images are always converted to true color (24-bit) images when loaded into MGI PhotoSuite. Photo CD CD-ROM disks produced according to specifications include one or more Photo CD images as well as an overview file containing small "thumbnail" versions of each image on the disk. The Photo CD image files always reside in a directory named d:\PHOTO_CD\IMAGES on a Photo CD disk.
However, you may also encounter Photo CD image files on networks, bulletin boards and other types of CD-ROM disks which lack the overview file. MGI PhotoSuite can read Photo CD files even in the absence of the overview file, by using the file selector to select the Photo CD file by name.
Note: MGI PhotoSuite does not save images in Photo CD file format. If you wish to save an image you have loaded from a Photo CD file, we suggest you choose either the JPEG or TIFF file format.
Each Photo CD file contains a number of scans of the same image at a number of different resolutions. MGI PhotoSuite supports the following Photo CD resolutions: 192x128 pixels, 384x256 pixels, 768x512 pixels, 1536x1024 pixels and 3072x2048 pixels. If you only have four megabytes of memory installed in your computer, you may not have sufficient free memory to edit the 1536x1024 or 3072x2048 pixel Photo CD formats.
The default file extension for Photo CD files is ".PCD".
Truevision Targa (TGA)
The Truevision Targa format was originally developed by Truevision Inc. for use with their line of graphic display cards. The Targa format is used by several high-end paint and CAD programs. Color resolutions range from 256 color, 32768 (16-bit) color, 24-bit true color and 32-bit true color formats. The 32-bit Targa format contains 24 bits of color data as well as 8 bits of transparency (overlay) data. MGI PhotoSuite extracts the color data from 32-bit Targa files but ignores the transparency data. Targa images exist in both compressed and uncompressed formats.
The default file extension for Targa files is ".TGA".
PC Paintbrush (PCX)
PCX files were originally developed for Z-Soft’s PC Paintbrush package. These files come in monochrome, 16 color, 256 color and true color (24-bit) varieties. PCX files are compressed using a method that offers a modest degree of compression compared to other compression formats.
The default file extension for PC Paintbrush files is ".PCX".
Tagged Image File Format (TIF)
The TIFF format was developed by Microsoft and Aldus Corporations as a portable method of storing bitmap images. MGI PhotoSuite supports the current 6.0 specification for TIFF files. TIFF files come in monochrome, 16-color, 256-color, 16-color grayscale, 256-color grayscale and true color (24-bit) varieties. When saving files in the TIFF format, MGI PhotoSuite automatically recognizes that an image is in grayscale format and saves it in the appropriate format.
TIFF files exist in both compressed and uncompressed formats. The compression format offers a high degree of compression. However, certain older paint programs that use an early version of the TIFF format may have difficulty reading compressed TIFF files. If you find that a program will not read the compressed files, try saving the file in the uncompressed format.
The default file extension for TIFF files is ".TIF".
MGI Album File (CTF)
The CTF format was developed by MGI as a means to store thumbnails for cataloging images and multimedia files. Thumbnails of images can be either 256- or 16-million colors and one of any nine sizes, allowing great flexibility in size vs. quality vs. performance.
• Did you know that thumbnails (miniature visual representations of your photos) are great for keeping your photos organized and in full view whenever you want them? Consider how much easier it is to choose the photo you want to work with in MGI PhotoSuite when a whole group of your photos can be displayed at once, in thumbnail form. As well, you can use this feature to create a series of albums, each one containing photos relating to a particular theme, such as your wedding or recent ski trip. From there, you can build slideshows to present the photos in any sequence you set!
Thumbnails of photos can be either 256 or 16million colors and one of any nine sizes. You can change display options as desired.
MGI PhotoSuite uses a customized Windows file selector dialog to select the files to open or save.
The title bar of the file selector identifies the operation being performed, i.e. "Open Image". The drive and directory are automatically set to the last selected path. All files of the selected image type are displayed in the file list box.
To see a list of all files in a drive or directory with a specific file name extension, type an (*), a period (.) and the file name extension in the "File name" field, and then press [Enter]. For example, to see all files with a "BMP" extension in a directory, type "*.BMP" in the "File name" field. To see all files in a directory, type "*.*" in the "File name" field.
To see all files of a specific image type, click on the "Files of type" drop down list box and select a file type from the list of available types. The file list will be updated to display only files of the specified type.
To select a file, either click on the file name in the file name box or type a file name in the "File name" field. If you do not see the file you want, select a new drive or directory. In some cases you may be able to select a different type of file by using the "Files of type" or "Save as type" list box. After you have specified the file you wish to access, click on the Open (or Save) button.
Naming your Files
Under Windows 95 and Windows NT, a file name can be from 1 to 260 characters long. You can use any combination of characters on your keyboard to make up a file name, except for the following: * ? \ / : | < >.
Different types of files are distinguished by the file name extensions. For example, Windows bitmap files have the extension ".BMP" while TIFF files have the extension ".TIF". To avoid confusion, use the default extensions when saving image files.
To change the size of an image, choose "Resize" from the Image menu. The Change Image Size dialog will be displayed.
This dialog is used to change the size of an image. You can choose a standard size from the list on the left side of the dialog, or enter a custom size.
If you select "Stretch to Fit", the current image will be stretched (or shrunk) as required to fill the new image size. If you do not select "Stretch to Fit", then the image will remain in the upper left corner and an empty border will be added on either the side or the bottom. If the new image size is smaller, then the image will be cropped to the new size.
To maintain the aspect ratio of your image (that is, it’s width relative to it’s height), enter a custom size so that the width remains the same multiple of the length. For example, if your image has a current size of 600 x 350 and you wanted to reduce the size by half, divide both values by 2, and enter 300 x 175.
Reducing a photo’s number of colors has the advantage of reducing the disk space (or file size) of the image. This is useful if you want to minimize transfer times when placing the photo on the Internet or other on-line service. The down side is that some photos may not look as good when the number of colors are reduced. To help compensate for this, there are several optional dithering techniques that MGI PhotoSuite can employ to maintain as much of the original photo clarity as possible. You are encouraged experiment with the photo to find an optimal combination of file size and quality. To perform a color reduction, choose "Decrease Colors" from the Image menu. Then select the desired option.
If you choose a color reduction to 16 or 256 colors, the Color Reduction dialog will appear. This dialog allows you to reduce the number of colors in an image.
Select "Default Palette" to use a standardized palette for color reduction. This palette gives a wide range of colors, but may not always give a good representation of images that do not have a wide range of shades.
Select "Optimal Palette" to create an image with colors that best represent the colors in the original image.
Select "Dithered Colors" to create an image that uses a standardized palette, but uses a dithering technique, to better simulate the colors in the original image.
MONOCHROME (B & W) To perform a color reduction to monochrome, choose "Decrease Colors" from the Image menu. Then select Monochrome. The Monochrome color reduction dialog will be displayed.
This dialog allows you to reduce the number of colors in an image with the option of dithering or no dithering.
Select "Use Dithering" to create a monochrome image using a dithering technique to simulate shades of gray.
Select "No Dithering" to transform the image to black and white without any dithering pattern.
|
Selected MGI Photosuite© Help files were converted into this |
