Picture Window
Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Digital Light & Color?

You may be wondering who we are and what we know about creating quality software. My name is Jonathan Sachs and I founded Digital Light & Color in 1993 after working for five years on a series of digital photo editing systems. Prior to Digital Light & Color, I co-founded Lotus Development Corporation and wrote the original version of Lotus 1-2-3, the best-selling application software of all time.

After leaving Lotus in 1990, I decided to pursue some of my own personal interests, especially photography. Before I knew it, I was reading everything I could find about image processing and starting to experiment with programs to scan, edit, display, and print photographs.

Now, at Digital Light & Color, we're trying to do for photographers what Lotus did for business users -- to unlock the power of the personal computer and help people solve everyday problems.

Picture Window is not a toy. It's the end product of a long evolution, and some of the most powerful, easy to use image editing software for your PC you can find anywhere, at any price.

Why is Picture Window so reasonably priced?

We're offering Picture Window for $49.95 ($89.95 for the Pro version) because we want to bring digital photography to the widest possible audience.

Expensive software products like Adobe Photoshop are designed to help professional graphic artists and illustrators create commercial print advertising. That's why they're full of complicated features like four color separations, duotones and tritones, and CMYK editing -- all of which are useless to photographers. By contrast, Picture Window was created by photographers for photographers, and it uses terms and techniques you already know.

Not only does Picture Window cost a tiny fraction of what Photoshop does, but if you take a close look at the features that are really important to photographers like color balancing, perspective correction, tiled printing, and precision compositing, you'll find that Picture Window is easier to use, more precise, and more powerful.

What is Photo CD?

Photo CD is a system developed by Kodak for digitizing and storing film on compact disks your computer can read.

Photo CD FAQ

How does using my own scanner compare to Photo CD?

There are three different kinds of scanners: film scanners (sometimes call slide or transparency scanners), flatbed (sometimes called reflective) scanners, and drum scanners.

Photo CD

Photo CD scans are amazingly good considering how inexpensive they are. The Photo CD process uses a special film scanner that Kodak designed especially for the Photo CD authoring workstation. This scanner has excellent color registration and resolving power -- it's main weakness is a slight loss of shadow detail when scanning transparency film.

Flatbed Scanners

Flatbed scanners are good for scanning prints and other flat opaque material such as printed documents, designs drawn on paper, or even objects like leaves or slices of fruit. If you are going to use Picture Window to retouch old black and white photos or to work with prints for which you do not have negatives, a flatbed scanner is a good choice. To accomplish this task using Photo CD you would first have to photograph the print or object and then send the film out to be scanned onto a CD.

For scanning color prints for which you do have negatives, Photo CD almost always produces better results than using a flatbed scanner for two reasons:

1) You eliminate an image generation so the image is sharper and, since the original is almost always more vibrant than the print, scans of the original film often have much truer colors.

2) Photo CD does a better job of color reproduction than most flatbed scanners. Even if the print is good, many flatbed scanners distort colors in a manner which is often difficult to correct for later.

You should be aware that using a flatbed scanner to scan printed matter such as magazine photos, in addition to being a violation of copyright law, gives rise to moiré patterns caused the interaction between the scanning raster and the halftone dot matrix used in the printing process. Some scanning software is at least partially successful in removing these patterns, but it can be a real problem.

Another problem with some flatbed scanners when working with color images is that the three different color scans (red, green, and blue) may not be perfectly registered. For this reason there is a command in Picture Window to let you shift the different color scans horizontally and/or vertically in increments of a single pixel to realign the different color layers. On the other hand, all the Photo CD scans we have seen so far have been perfectly registered.

Film Scanners

If you are working from 35mm film, the real choice is between using Photo CD and purchasing your own film scanner. There are now several good film scanners available for less than $2000 street price. For those of you working in medium or large format, there are also a number of more expensive film scanners that accept larger format film or you can use the new Pro Photo CD.

Drum Scanners

Drum scanners are the standard against which other scanners are measured. Typically costing $20,000 or more, these scanners are designed for commercial prepress shops which handle a lot of volume and need the highest possible quality. You can have either transparencies or prints drum scanned by a service bureau for about $25 to $200 per image, and you will need some kind of exchange medium like Syquest or Zip cardridges or CD-R disks to hold the digitized images.

Summary

Photo CD - Pros

High image quality
Convenient, inexpensive archival off-line storage
Lowest initial investment.

Photo CD - Cons

You have either have to get the CD at the same time you have your film developed or send it out a second time
You need to scan images in batches.

Slide/Negative Scanner - Pros

You can scan one image at a time
No worrying about sending your originals out to be scanned

Slide/Negative Scanner - Cons

Some compromise of image quality
High initial cost
Requires additional off-line storage to archive images

Drum Scanner - Pros

Highest image quality

Drum Scanner - Cons

You have to send your film out to be scanned
Slides must be removed from mounts, coated with oil, and taped to drum
Most expensive cost per scan
Large image files require off-line storage and interchange medium

How to test a scanner for color registration

There is an easy way to test the color registration of a scanner. All you have to do is make a color scan of a piece of crisp black and white line art, such as text or a line drawing. If you see color fringes in the scanned image around the edges, then the three color scans are misaligned. Picture Window has a special command that lets you reduce color misregistration by shifting the color layers independently. In some cases, where the registration error is consistent, this can dramatically improve scanning results.

How to test scanner resolving power

The actual resolving power of a scanner has little to do with advertised resolution. The only way to measure resolving power is by scanning a test chart and looking at the results. Some scanners have high advertised resolving power but, since the pixels actually overlap, the useful resolution is much lower. Software interpolation is just a trick -- it adds no real information to the scan and just makes the file larger and less manageable.

What about digital cameras or camcorders?

Many different digital and digital video imaging systems are currently available. These include expensive digital cameras designed for studio photographers or photojournalists, inexpensive digital cameras, still video cameras, and analog and digital camcorders.

Camcorders

To capture still images using a camcorder, you need a special adapter card in your computer called a frame grabber or you need one of the new digital camcorders and a firewire adapter card. The adapter card lets you play your video camera through your computer monitor and click a button to capture one or more individual frames.

There are two problems with grabbing single video frames:

Normally, video frames are interlaced (some of the new digital camcorders offer "progressive" frame capture which avoids interlacing). This means that every other line of the full image is scanned in one pass and the intervening lines are scanned in the next cycle. This introduces a 1/60 sec. time skew between adjacent scan lines. If your image has any sharp vertical edges, and if the camera or subject moves even a little, the edges will be jagged.
Video tends to have very poor color resolution. The video signal is made up of separate luminance and chrominance signals. The luminance component (the black and white part of the image) has fairly good resolution. The chrominance component (the color part) has very low resolution. A color television image is a little like a fairly sharp black and white image with loosely defined clouds of color superposed over it.

Neither of these two problems is particularly noticeable in a normal video signal when viewed as an animated sequence of frames. However when you capture a single video frame, they contribute to an overall loss of image quality that is considerably greater than you would expect from watching a good television image.

If you can live with the quality limitations, there are two major advantages to capturing images with a camcorder:

You have thousands of moments to choose from since video cameras record so many more pictures than a digital still camera. This is especially useful for capturing fleeting expressions and unexpected events.
Videotape is inexpensive and holds vast amounts of information.

Some of the newer digital video cameras are now incorporating features such as progressive scanning and still video modes to address the interlacing and color resolution issues. Results from these newer cameras is usually comparable to that of a midrange digital still camera.

Digital cameras

Images from true digital cameras are better than grabbing video frames for several reasons:

The image is captured digitally and transmitted digitally to the computer, bypassing the analog to digital and digital to analog steps.
The frames are not interlaced.
There is more chrominance (color) information than in a television signal. The best cameras have 3 CCDs, one for each color. Some have 2 CCDs, one for luminance and one for chrominance. While multiple CCDs yield better color resolution, there is a cost in sensitivity as each CCD only sees a fraction of the light. The inexpensive cameras have a single CCD and arrange the color pixels in 2x2 groups (2 green, 1 red, 1 blue). Even the inexpensive cameras however capture much more color information than the best TV camera. As overall resolutions increase, the problems associated with using a single CCD are becoming less important.

Digital cameras have improved enormously in the last year or so. Models with 4-5 million pixels or more are now fairly common and, at this resolution, many images are good enough to make good 8x10 inkjet prints.

The better digital cameras and digital backs fall into two categories:

Medium resolution (2-4 megapixel), portable CCD cameras with fixed focus or zoom lenses designed for consumers. These cameras are now in the $300 to $500 range.
Medium resolution (4-6 megapixel), portable CCD cameras with interchangeable lenses designed for photojournalists and others who need to capture and transmit images on very tight deadlines. These cameras usually cost $2000 to $5,000.
High resolution line scanning cameras and camera backs designed for studio work. These cameras can capture very high quality images but often require relatively long exposure times. Prices for scanning backs vary widely.

While the spontaneity and instant feedback of digital cameras are very appealing, there are several drawbacks you need to keep in mind:

Consumer digital cameras usually have a limited storage capacity and can only hold a small number of images at their highest quality settings. Extra memory cards are available but can be expensive.
Battery life is limited so you need to carry extra batteries and recharge them between sessions.
Most consumer digital cameras have limited exposure latitude (a little like using slide film), so careful attention to lighting and exposure settings are important to avoid loss of shadow or highlight detail. Unlike film cameras, you can't change films to adapt to different shooting conditions.

Even at 5 megapixels, digital cameras still have a way to go to catch up to film when it comes to image resolution. A good scanner can easily extract 20-30MB of image data from a well-exposed 35mm frame. This additional information can be important with certain high-contrast subjects with a lot of detail or when making enlargements.
Don't forget you need to store your digital images somewhere. This generally means purchasing a CD-R/CD-RW drive and media on which to store your images.

Summary

The bottom line is that for general photography, the most versatile and cost effective solution for capturing images remains a conventional camera and conventional film. However, digital cameras have improved rapidly and are now poised to overtake film cameras for most uses.

How does Picture Window compare to Adobe Photoshop?

Photoshop's primary target audience is graphic artists and illustrators who create commercial print advertising. Picture window is designed for the photographer who wants high quality prints. This difference in target audience is reflected in the terminology, features, and strengths of the two products. Photoshop has many powerful prepress features like CMYK editing, PANTONE color matching, duotones, and color separations. Picture Window has none of these, but has three overall strengths:

More powerful and more precise techniques for making the kind of adjustments to images that are likely to be of interest to photographers such as color balancing, perspective correction, saturation adjustment, tiled printing, page layouts, previewing, converting color images to black and white, etc.
Electronic slide shows

Ease of use

If you're already a Photoshop user, you don't have to stop using Photoshop to take advantage of Picture Window's powerful image editing features or print ordering. You can exchange files between Photoshop and Picture Window using the Window's clipboard or any of a number of different standard image file formats that are supported by both products.

Price

Picture Window costs only $49.95 vs. $895 list ($500 street price) for Photoshop.

Electronic Slide Shows

Picture Window's electronic slide show feature lets you store a set of your photographs in a highly compressed form -- you can fit thirty or more high quality images on a single 3.5" disk. And Picture Window slide shows can be viewed using any web browser on any type of computer, or you can upload them to a web site for public viewing. To see a sample Picture Window slide show, just click below:

ss1.html or atchafalaya.html or Lake Powell.html

Undo vs. Two Windows

Photoshop works by applying "filters" to an image and replacing the original image with the modified version. To revert to the original image, you use the Undo command. By contrast, Picture window applies "transformations" to an image and places the result in a new window. To undo, you simply close the new window. The difference is that with Picture Window you can see and compare the original and the modified version of the image side by side. And you can close the original window to recover the memory that Photoshop keeps locked up in its undo buffer.

Zoomable, Scrollable, Resizable Preview Windows

Previewing a transformation in Picture Window is much more powerful than in Photoshop. Picture Window displays preview images in separate windows that you can resize, zoom, and scroll independently. This lets you quickly preview the results of an operation before applying it at full resolution. You can zoom in on the preview window to see detail at the pixel level or zoom out and see a low resolution version of the entire image. You can enlarge or shrink the preview window to trade off preview response time against preview image size. And when you scroll a preview window, Picture Window automatically computes and repaints just new data that comes into view. And you can set preview to auto or manual so the preview window is recomputed and updated each time you change a setting or only when you click the Preview button.

Cropping

Using Photoshop it is very difficult to crop an image to fit a precut mat or standard frame. Picture Window lets you lock your proportions to any ratio you want (such as 8 : 10) and then move and/or resize a cropping rectangle displayed over the image. When you order prints of your image, Picture Window can then automatically scale them to the exact size you need.

Color Balancing

Photoshop's idea of color balancing is to give you three sliders and let you adjust shadows, midtones, and highlights by trial and error. Picture Window works by letting you remove or add color casts, similar to using a color head on an enlarger. And Picture Window's probe feature lets you point to an area of the image you want to be neutral (such as the top of a cloud or the white of an eye) and remove the color cast from that object precisely and without guesswork. Just as easily, you can add a warming color cast to your images. Picture Window also lets you color balance one image so its colors match those of another image -- very useful in preparing images for compositing.

Picture Window also supports color balancing using familiar CC filters in any combination.

Picture Window Pro's new Color Correction transformation offers a new and unique method for making surgical color corrections to only certain colors in the image while leaving others unchanged. This feature is not found in any other program.

Perspective Correction

To perspective correct a photograph with Photoshop you have to pull the corners of the image out. Unfortunately, Photoshop provides you with no visual cues as to how far to move the corners -- if you guess wrong, you have to wait for the entire operation to complete at full resolution, undo, and then try again until it comes out right.

Picture Window's unique grid warp lets you rotate, stretch, crop, and perspective correct and image all in one operation. And there's no guesswork since the grid overlay lets you get your horizontals and verticals square the first time.

Converting Color Images to Black and White

Picture Window lets you convert color images to black and white the same way you do it in the camera -- by using colored filters to adjust the tonalities of the different colors. You can select a solid color filter over the entire image or you can vary the filter color any way you want.

Better Gradients

Picture Window's color line control lets you create, save, or load custom gradients that transition among any set of colors you choose. You control the location and color of each transition point and the type of transition between any two points. You can use Picture Window's gradients to make gradient masks, colored backgrounds or filters, or you can use it with the tint transformation to colorize black and white images.

One-to-One Cloning (Photoshop's Rubber Stamp Tool)

Picture Window's unique one-to-one cloning mode lets you turn any transformation (filter) into a brush. It lets you clone from one version of an image to another without having to worry about misalignment. For example, you can use the blur (or any other) transformation to create a new version of an image and then use one-to-one cloning to paint parts of the original image back over the new image or vice versa.

Sophisticated Photo CD Support Built In

Picture Window has advanced support for Photo CD built in so you can get the most out of Kodak's breakthrough film scanning technology. You can select images from a "contact sheet" of all the images on the disk. You can also adjust the midtone, shadow, and highlight levels and saturation of the image based on the native YCC format of the image data on the CD. Many other programs let you read Photo CDs, but without Picture Window's ability to set the highlight and shadow levels, the default settings these programs use often lead to truncated highlight detail or dull images with limited contrast, and once this information has been lost, it can not be reconstructed by subsequent processing. Picture Window ships with version 2.0 of Kodak's Photo CD access library which supports the new Pro Photo CD image resolution of 4096 x 6144.

Brightness and Contrast Adjustment

Picture Window gives you many different tools to adjust the brightness and contrast of an image, from the simple to the powerful.

The brightness transformation lets you brighten or darken an image by adjusting a single slider. Or you can use a grayscale mask image and a double slider to selectively and precisely lighten or darken different parts of the image.
The levels and color transformation lets you adjust the midtone brightness and shadow and highlight levels of an image in a simple and intuitive manner that is easier to use and understand than Photoshop's Adjust Levels command. And you can simultaneously adjust color saturation and color balance which are often coupled to brightness and contrast.
The brightness curve transformation is for more advanced users. It lets you adjust the brightness of an image by adjusting a curve with the image histogram in the background or you can adjust the histogram with the curve in the background. This is much more powerful than Photoshop's curve-only display.
Finally, you can use Picture Window's dodge and burn tool to lighten or darken parts of an image freehand -- or you can use one-to-one cloning (see above) to paint in parts of a lightened or darkened version of the image.

Picture Window lets you adjust the brightness of an image in RGB, HSV, or HSL color spaces. Using HSV or HSL lets you adjust the brightness of the image without changing its hue or saturation. Photoshop always applies the same curve to the R, G, and B components of an image which make bright images become washed out.

Compositing with Precision Alignment (like Photoshop's Cut and Paste)

Picture Window lets you overlay one image over another with variable transparency. You can do the equivalent of Photoshop's Paste Behind as well to place one image behind the other. Finally, you can use Picture Window's one, two, three or four-point alignment feature to precisely register the two images by moving, rotating, scaling, or stretching the overlay image. This lets you overlay one image over another and guarantee that one set of features in the overlay image is precisely aligned with a corresponding set of features in the base image.

Picture Window Pro incorporates an addition feature: multi-point alignment. This new alignment method lets you perform precision compositing of images, even when they do not match precisely. And it can also be used to make freeform distortions of images like stretching them on a rubber sheet.

More Comprehensive Saturation Controls

Picture Window lets you adjust the saturation of an image by adjusting a slider, by creating a mask image that indicates where the image is to be made more or less saturated, of by adjusting its saturation curve while viewing the saturation histogram.

Built-in Support for CC and Wratten Filters

Picture Window has been preprogrammed with the colors of a complete set of Kodak's standard CC (color correction) and Wratten filters. You can dial up any combination of filters using their standard designations and use them to color correct or tint your photographs.

Page Layouts

Picture Window's unique Layout transformation lets you define and save page layouts for later use. You can use the layout transformation to create album pages combining multiple images and block of text against a background, or use it to create photo business cards, greeting cards, etc. Unlike PhotoShop's layers, you can save a layout and reload it for later reuse. This makes it easy to create a series of pages that share a common layout but contain different images or text.

Speck Removal

Picture Window's speck removal tool lets you quickly remove minor imperfections like dust specks from your images quickly and easily. Just position the speck removal tool over the flaw and click -- Picture Window then interpolates the surrounding background over the speck to erase it instantly.

Posterization

The Posterize transformation in Picture Window lets you render an image using any limited set of colors you choose and it can antialias the results to avoid the usual pixellization artifacts you often see in posterizations. Finally, it can use one set of colors to match against the image and another set to replace them with.

Poster-Size Printing

Picture Window lets you print images larger than the paper size on your printer by automatically splitting the image into tiles and printing each one on a separate page. You can then reassemble the final image to create huge color prints from your inkjet printer.

Stereo Imaging

Picture Window's Stereo transformation lets you take stereo image pairs, fine tune the offsets between the two images for the best stereo effect, and then create anaglyphs (for viewing with red/cyan glasses) or side-by-side images for use with a stereo viewer.

Is Picture Window really that easy to use?

You may be excited about what Picture Window can do for your photographs, but concerned that it's too hard to use or that it requires special skills and knowledge. Well, the truth is it's easy to get great results, and anyone can do it! And keep in mind that Picture Window gives you a place to experiment, be creative, and have fun -- none of the changes you make are permanent until you decide to save them. Now, let's get technical with some examples:

Reading Images from Photo CD: To get a photograph into your computer, simply insert your disk in the CD-ROM drive and click on Contact Sheet. A window containing miniatures of your photographs then appears; click on the one you want to read, select the resolution you want to work at, and click OK. Picture Window quickly creates a new window containing your image.
Cropping: Just outline the area of the image you want to crop and click Preview to see how it will look or click OK to go ahead crop. Picture Window always preserves the original image so you can compare it side by side with the modified one.
Color Balancing: To remove an unwanted color cast, just click on a part of the image that has unwanted color and click Preview -- Picture Window automatically removes the color cast. Almost as easily, you can add an orange color cast to simulate early morning or early evening light, just like shooting with a warming filter. You don't have to color balance the entire image; with a little more work, you can create a mask and selectively operate on just the masked or unmasked parts of the image with pinpoint control.
Perspective Correction: To straighten out the converging vertical lines of a building (a common problem in architectural photography), simply drag the four corners of a grid Picture Window displays over the image until the horizontals and verticals of the building line up with the grid lines, and click OK -- in a few seconds the building's sides are squared up perfectly. You can even crop, rotate, and stretch the image in the same operation.
Retouching: Removing dirt specks, scratches, hairs, freckles, power lines, and other distracting image elements is a snap with Picture Window's freehand retouching tools. Here's how you do it: First, zoom in on the image to magnify the region you want to retouch -- this makes it much easier to see what you're doing and lets you be less precise with the mouse and still get controlled results. Next, select Picture Window's clone tool. Cloning simply means painting one part of an image over another part of the same or a different image. Unlike conventional retouching where you have to match colors and texture yourself, cloning lets you pick the color and texture you want to use right off the image. This guarantees a near-perfect match, even if you don't know a thing about mixing paints. Picture Window's cloning tool has selectable brush size, transparency, and softness, so you can cover large areas as quickly as you can touch up minute details, work in semi-transparent layers, or create hard- or soft-edged results. And don't worry about making a mistake. If your hand slips or if you don't like the effect you're getting, Picture Window's unlimited undo feature lets you erase your changes one stroke at a time all the way back to the beginning.

On-Line Help: Picture Window's comprehensive, context sensitive on-line help is always just a click away. Not only does it fully describe every feature and option of the program, but it's packed with useful hints and tips, definitions of image editing terms, troubleshooting techniques, hardware information, and other useful data.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Whole new worlds of photographic possibilities will start to open up as you explore Picture Window's advanced options and other powerful features. You'll not only have a degree of control over your images you never before imagined, but you'll also be free to experiment with your images as much as you like without having to worry about wasting materials or damaging your originals.

Is there a version of Picture Window for the Macintosh?

Sorry, no Macintosh version of Picture Window is available or planned for future release. However, Picture Window can be used on a Mac under a Windows emulator such as Vitrual PC from Connectix.

What is JPEG image compression?

JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, an association that has defined a standard image compression technique and file format that is supported by many different image editing programs. JPEG allows for adjustable levels of compression -- image quality goes down as you increase compression. Amazingly, the JPEG compression technique can reduce the size of an image by a factor or 5 to 10 with little or no visible image quality degradation.

JPEG compression works by breaking up your image into 8x8 pixel squares, analyzing each one using a mathematical technique called a Discrete Cosine Transform, and discarding frequency components that fall below a certain threshold based on the compression level you select. The remaining data are compressed using Huffman coding and stored in the output file. JPEG files are decompressed using a similar technique.

By using JPEG image compression, Picture Window is able to reduce your images to a size that fits easily on floppy disks. This provides an inexpensive and convenient way for you to mail high quality images to our color print service.

How much does JPEG compression degrade images?

Picture Window uses JPEG file compression to reduce the size of images so they fit on floppy disks for easy print ordering. Thus it's important to know how much loss of image quality this compression causes.

It seems it would be impossible to reduce the size of an image by a factor of 5 to 10 without adversely affecting its quality, but this is exactly what JPEG does. We have made many test prints of compressed images -- using the level of compression we recommend, it is extremely difficult to tell the compressed image from the original. You can prove this to yourself using Picture Window by saving an image in JPEG format and reopening it in another window side by side with the original. Even zoomed in, it's very hard to see any difference between the original and the compressed image.

While JPEG compression is ideally suited to submitting images to our print service, we do not recommend that you routinely save images in JPEG format for two reasons:

1) Repeated cycles of compression and decompression can amplify JPEG artifacts, making them more visible.

2) Sharpening an image that has been through a compression/decompression cycle can amplify JPEG artifacts dramatically.

At higher compression levels, JPEG artifacts are noticable, although these more tightly compressed images are still useful for various non-photographic purposes such as filing rough versions of images in a database or sending them by modem.

How can I get answers to my other technical questions?

If have any remaining questions about Picture Window's capabilities, hardware requirements, print service, or anything else, please post a message on our message board, contact us via the Internet at support@dl-c.com, or call our support number (617) 489-8858, and we'll do our best to answer them.

Picture Window Frequently Asked Questions