Picture Window Specifications
Picture Window offers a full array of powerful digital tools for the photographer. The following sections highlight selected aspects of the Picture Window system.
Basic
Image Editing
Retouching Tools
Printing
Album Feature
File Browser
User Interface
Importing and Exporting Images
Masking
Color Management
Hardware and Software Requirements
Basic Image Editing
The following is a sampling of Picture Window's basic image editing features.
Cropping
You can crop images to any desired proportions with Picture Window's Crop transformation. The cropping rectangle is adjustable and can be locked to standard or custom proportions. It can also crop to oval or diamond shapes, rotate the image before cropping, control the softness of the edges of the image, and add a solid color border around the image.
Image Rotation
The Warp transformation lets you rotate an image by any desired angle and, with the aid of a grid overlay, make a horizon level on the first try. Image rotation in 90 degree increments can also be performed using the Mirror/Rotate transformation, and arbitrary rotation can also be done in the Crop transformation.
Brightness, Contrast, and Dynamic Range Control
These controls let you lighten or darken an entire image or just selected parts. You can adjust shadows, mid-tones, and highlights separately for more precise control, or break down the brightness scale into as many parts as desired and adjust each separately. This can all be done without altering the color of the image.
Color Correction
Color balancing is used to remove subtle or obvious color casts from pictures. Picture Window supports the traditional approach to color balancing using combinations of CC or Wratten filters as well as its own Color Balance transformation for even greater control. This lets you salvage photos taken with daylight-balanced film in fluorescent or incandescent lighting or correct for film processing problems. It is also possible to add a color cast to warm up early morning or afternoon light, or color-balance skin tones in one image to match those in another.
With Picture Window Pro, you can also perform selective color corrections, modifying some colors in an image while leaving others unchanged. This is the same feature as the Color Mechanic plugin for PhotoShop and compatibles.
Adjust Color Saturation
The color saturation feature lets you deepen the colors in an image, effectively turning Ektachrome into Velvia, or even create otherworldly effects. The user can adjust the whole image or just selected parts, without making the image lighter or darker.
Perspective Correction
The geometric transformations built into Picture Window let you straighten out converging verticals in architectural photography without expensive perspective control lenses. The unique grid overlay lets users remove perspective distortion without guesswork, and even crop, scale, stretch, and rotate an image at the same time.
Compositing
You can create a photomontage by extracting objects from one image and placing them in another image, scaling, rotating, or even warping them in the process so they fit exactly where desired. You can make overlay objects take on any desired amount of opacity or transparency, and even place them behind another object so they appear to be part of the picture.
Blurring and Sharpening
With Picture Window, you can blur or sharpen any part of an image. An example of this feature would be softening a portrait or selectively defocusing a distracting background. Sharpening can help bring out detail and tighten up an image that is a little too soft. Picture Window Pro adds a special Advanced Sharpen transformation which addresses image noise and dust, allowing application of much more aggressive sharpening than would be possible for many images.
Filtering
The filtering feature lets you simulate placing a colored filter over an image -- the filter color and the filter factor are both adjustable. You can create your own custom color gradients or other patterns and use them as filters as well.
Text
The Text feature lets users annotate images with text, using any existing TrueType or Postscript font, in any desired size, color or style. All text is antialiased for maximum sharpness.
Converting Color Images to Black and White Using Colored Filters
Picture Window's monochrome transformation lets you simulate photographing a color scene on black and white film through different color filters. As you adjust the filter color, a preview of the results appears instantly onscreen. You can also convert an entire image to monochrome, leave parts of an image in color, or even use a color filter that has different colors over different parts of the image.
Colorizing Black and White Images
Picture Window's tint transformation lets you apply color to black and white images by converting different gray levels to different colors. For example, this feature can be used to create a sepia-toned print from a black and white image. Or the freehand paint tool can be used to apply color to a black and white image while preserving the brightness of the underlying image.
Page Layout
Picture Window's powerful page layout transformation lets you arrange multiple images and blocks of text over a background page of a specified size. Each element of the layout can be positioned and resized independently, and you can save and restore page layouts for later editing or reuse. This feature is perfect for creating album pages, photo business cards, ad layouts, real estate brochures, slide show templates, or any other situation where you need to arrange images and text on a background for viewing or printing.
Resizing
The resize transformation lets you stretch or shrink an image, adjust its resolution, and set its height and width. Picture Window uses highly advanced resampling techniques to minimize loss of image detail or sharpness when resizing images.
Vignetting
Vignetting makes it possible to isolate parts of an image and fade the rest to black, white, or any other color.
Special Effects
You can experiment with solarization, posterization, embossing, adding noise, false coloring, kaleidoscope, spiral, edge enhancement, morphing, and many other special effects.
Color Gradients
You can create linear, radial, square, or oval custom color gradients that fade smoothly from one color to another, or specify as many intermediate colors as they want, and even control the transitions from color to color. Gradients can be used to create masks (see below) or custom color color filters or backgrounds.
Stereo Photography
Picture Window's stereo transformation lets you prepare pairs of stereo photographs for viewing, either with red/blue colored glasses or with a standard side-by-side stereo viewer. The horizontal and vertical offsets between the two images can be adjusted for the best viewing while previewing the results on the screen.
Full support for 16-bit Black and White and 48-bit Color Images
Picture Window Pro fully supports scanning, read, writing, and editing images with up to 16 bits per component. Increasingly, scanners are being introduced with the ability to deliver 30-bit, 36-bit, or even 42-bit color data to your computer. This extended dynamic range gives you more leeway to adjust the brightness and contrast of the image without losing the smooth tonal range in the original image. If your scanner's TWAIN driver supports this feature, Picture Window Pro not only lets you read 48-bit color images into your computer, but all of its tools, transformations, and commands can be used to save, load, and edit these images without first reducing them to 24 bits.
Picture Window Pro can read and write 16-bit black and white images in either TIFF or FITS format, and it can read and write 48-bit color images in TIFF format.
Retouching Tools
Image Retouching
Picture Window's painting and cloning tools let you remove tears and stains from old or damaged images, or, just as easily, erase unsightly power lines, remove facial blemishes and wrinkles or eliminate a hand or elbow that has somehow found its way into the frame. With a little more work, you can even remove or replace entire objects.
Speck Removal Tool
Picture Window's unique speck removal tool lets you remove dust specks and other small imperfections by simply clicking on them to interpolate the surrounding background over the defect.
Dodging and Burning
Picture Window's lightening and darkening tools let you lighten or darken selected areas of an image.
Other Tools
Picture Window also has special tools for painting over images, eliminating red eye, drawing lines or arrows on an image, sharpening, blurring, smudging, and increasing or decreasing saturation.
Printing
Picture Window can print images on any laser, inkjet, or other printer that has a Windows printer driver. Features include:
Print image to exact dimensions and margins.
Crop within print dialog. (Original file is not affected)
Print captions.
Multiple images per page -- see Album Feature
Make poster-size prints using Picture Window's tiled printing feature.
Album Feature
Automatic layout of images in a wide choice of standard sizes lets you quickly layout and print an entire memory card's worth of images. After automatic layout you have the opportunity to review images, and edit, zoom and crop them before printing
Very flexible manual layout -- create your own photo essays and entire multi-page photo albums
A drag and drop interface for printing of multiple images on a page. Just drop your images in, quickly make cropping and size adjustments and print
Fully integrated with PW editing functions - edit images directly from the album
File Browser
Picture Window's File Browse command lets you view miniatures of all the images in a folder in small, medium, or large sizes. The Browse Search feature lets you find ll images based on keywords in the EXIF comments, EXIF or file date, and file name, over any selected subtree of your file system. Browse also supports printing of index prints, including CD jewel case inserts. It is integrated with editing, letting you drag and drop images into the main window for editing and into album, layout and slide show windows.
User Interface
Tool Bar
Picture Window's tool bar gives you quick access to common features. And you don't have to remember what each of the icons does -- just leaving the cursor over one of the tool bar icons for a second pops up a short description of its function. The tool bar can be displayed at the top of the screen, along the side of the screen, or hidden.
Context-Sensitive Help and Tips
Every feature of Picture Window is documented in its comprehensive help file. Context-sensitive help is always available by pressing the F1 key or by clicking on the Help icon on the tool bar. The help file also contains many tips that explain how to get the most out of Picture Window's features.
Electronic Manual
The complete Picture Window manual is available from our web site, on the optional Picture Window CD-ROM, or in hard copy form. (Hard-copy manual is reproduced in black & white). The electronic manual may be accessed from within Picture Window via the Help menu. You can install the manual on your hard disk for fast access, leave it on the CD-ROM to save space, or access it via the web. (High speed web access recommended. In addition to the manual, there are white papers that explore a number of topics like scanning, retouching, and histograms in depth.
Multi-Level Undo
When working with Picture Window's retouching tools, you can undo your work a stroke at a time all the way back to the beginning of a session.
Resizable, Zoomable Preview Windows
Picture Window's preview feature lets you see a proposed change to an image before actually making the change. This instant preview encourages experimentation since many different options can be explored in a short time. You can trade off preview detail and image size against response time.
Magnifier Tool
This tool lets the you magnify any part of an image without having to zoom the entire image.
Zoom Tool
This tool lets you zoom in on a specific feature of an image or zoom out.
Readout Tool
This tool acts like a densitometer that can read out the precise position and color of any part of an image.
Clipboard
Picture Window supports use of the Windows clipboard, letting you exchange images with other programs without having to save and load files.
Color Selection
Picture Window's color picker lets you select colors in four different ways:
1) By choosing hue and saturation from a color wheel and
brightness from a slider
2) By selecting any combination of standard Kodak Wratten or CC filters from
a palette
3) By clicking on an image to select the color of that image at that location.
4) By entering numeric values.
Importing and Exporting Images
Full Photo CD Support
You can select from a contact sheet view of all the images on a Photo CD, and
specify a desired resolution and image orientation. You can adjust the shadow,
midtone, and highlight brightness, the saturation, and cropping for an image
before reading it into computer memory.
Picture Window also supports the new Professional Photo CD format which lets you work with negatives or transparencies from 35mm to 4"x5" at resolutions up to 4096x6144 pixels.
Scanner Support.
Picture Window supports any TWAIN-compatible scanner, frame grabber, or other input device to capture images without leaving the program.
Support for All Popular Image File Formats.
Picture Window users can exchange data with other programs and with other computer platforms, such as Macintosh or UNIX computers. The program supports the following file formats:
Masking
Picture Window uses masks to restrict the effects of a transformation to a specific part of an image, to protect part of an image from the effects of freehand tools, or to specify what parts of an image are to be composited with another image. You can create masks for use with any image with Picture Window's mask tool -- this versatile feature lets you create, view, and save masks using many different techniques.
Viewing Masks
Masks are normally viewed as a semitransparent red overlay which gives a visual indication of which parts of the image are currently masked. To make the mask or the underlying image easier to see, you can change the color of the mask as well as its transparency.
Creating Masks
Picture Window provides many powerful tools for creating and editing masks:
Lasso Tool
The lasso tool lets you specify a region to be masked by simply outlining it using the mouse. You can refine the mask by either adding to or subtracting from the currently masked area.
Rectangle/Oval Tools
The rectangle/oval tools let you define rectangular or elliptical areas to be added to or removed from the currently masked area. Before applying the new region, you can reposition the location and size of the rectangle or ellipse.
Polygon Tool
The polygon tool lets you define a polygonal region to be added to or removed from the currently masked area. You can add or remove vertices to the polygon one at a time and reposition each one independently before applying the mask. Vertices can be positioned very precisely by zooming in on the underlying image.
Spline Tool
The spline tool is similar to the polygon tool except that the polygon is drawn with smoothly curving edges rather than straight lines. You can precisely control the shape of the curves by adding control points as necessary.
Brush Tool
The brush tool lets you apply or remove parts of a mask by painting with a variable size brush over the image. The brush tool can also be restricted to areas defined by the Color Range Tool (see below). Other advanced brush options help you separate complex objects from their surrounding background.
Color Range Tool
The color range tool lets you select areas to be masked based on their color as defined by ranges of hue, saturation, and brightness or red, green, and blue.
Feather Tool
The feather tool lets you soften the edges of a mask by a specified amount, either by expanding or contracting the mask.
Blur Tool
The blur tool lets you soften the edges of a mask by blurring the mask by an adjustable amount.
Brightness Curve Tool
The brightness curve tool lets you define a density mask with great precision, based on the brightness of the underlying image.
Combine Tool
The combine tool lets you combine two separate masks to create a new compound mask.
Saving Masks
Masks can be saved (as a black and white image whose dimensions are the same as the underlying image) and later reused.
Color Management
Color management provides a tightly controlled system for ensuring accurate color matches among scanners, image files, monitors, and printers based on industry standard ICC color profiles. Picture Window Pro supports comprehensive color management via the ICM 2.0 color engine built into Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
For a detailed discussion of color management and how it works in Picture Window, please click on the following link:
Hardware and Software Requirements
Picture Window 3.5 runs under Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP or Windows NT 4.0 or later. It requires a mouse or equivalent pointing device, a color monitor, a video card that can display at least 256 colors at a resolution of at least 800x600, and a CD-ROM drive.
To input scanned images, Picture Window supports Photo CD-compatible CD-ROM drives (all current drive models are compatible) or any TWAIN-compatible scanner, digital camera, or other source of digital images.
General Recommendations
The faster your computer and the more memory it has, the better. For best performance we recommend the following minimum configuration:
Pentium processor with at least 512MB of RAM
24- or 32-bit video card capable of 1024x768 pixel resolution
You will also need enough free space on your hard disk to save working copies of your images and, if you work with large images or a lot of small ones, you may need to allow extra space for your Windows swap file.
Detailed Memory Recommendations
Picture Window makes full use of a feature in Windows called virtual memory. Virtual memory permits programs to use more memory than is physically present on your computer by reading and writing blocks of memory called pages to an area of the hard disk called the swap file. When using Picture Window, virtual memory lets you work on images that are larger than the available memory, up to the size of the swap file. The only problem is that when Windows swaps memory to the hard disk, the system slows down significantly. For best performance, there should be enough memory in the computer to hold Windows, Picture Window, and all the images you are working on.
The required image size depends on the size of prints you wish to make. To create good quality 4x5 prints, an image size of at least 1.5 megapixels is recommended; to create good quality 8x10s, an image size of at least 6 megapixels is recommended.
As a general rule of thumb, for good performance, you should have 4-5 times as much RAM (over and above that used by Windows) as the size of the largest image you expect to work on.