In the bad old days, a color printer used a four-color ribbon, but the results weren't impressive. Then $25,000 color laser printers and $10,000 dye transfer printers produced vibrant color output that startled us. If you didn't live through those days, you may be missing the excitement of owning a sub-$300 inkjet printer that lays down an impressive 1440 dpi color image. Some of the printers produce images that rival products from professional darkroom color printing. Even inkjets not designed for photographs do a great job on photos as large as 8-by-10 inches.
    As semi-professional photographers, we have been amazed and frightened to see our compatriots switching from the darkroom to the PC for their work. At first we laughed because inkjet printers lack archival (100+ year) permanence, but now Alps has a dye transfer printer that boasts just such permanence.
    As new and old users move to high-quality color printers, the importance of owning collections of high quality color graphics becomes clearer. The latest collections are huge and cheap, despite adding the artwork of the masters to the designs of modern experts. We examine two collections this month, along with a utility that makes working with graphics a snap.

Raster Graphics Versus Drawings
Unless you own a plotting machine, the image on your printer is made up of a series of closely spaced dots just as on the PC screen. Both are rated by the dots per inch (dpi) they are capable of. If the dots are small enough (large dpi), then graphics look smooth. When the dpi is low, lines on an image have the "jaggies," an ugly stepladder effect. However, jaggies on the PC screen (the screen is a sub-100 dpi viewer) the printout may not result in a jagged print. If we assume that your screen has 640-by-480 VGA resolution, then 640 dots spread over 14 inches is only 45 dpi. If the graphic file is in the typical 1999 super-VGA resolution range, it may well be in the 800+ dpi range.
    Such an image made from dots is called a raster or bitmap image. Bitmap images are characteristic of photographs, movies, and any drawing that has been scanned into a PC. The common Windows bitmaps are files that have a BMP, PCX, or TIF file extension. Corel Photo-PAINT 8 (from Corel) and Photoshop 5.0 (from Adobe) have their own proprietary bitmap formats. The JPEG and MPEG formats are attempts to compress bitmaps so that the files are smaller. After all, a typical bitmap file is a linear listing of every dot in the picture, along with its color and intensity.
    The weakness of images created from dots suffers when they are enlarged or compressed because the bitmap dots can only be stretched or compressed so far before they no longer properly represent the picture. Thus, architects and draftsmen use a different kind of graphic file to store their work. This "drawing" file does not store an image as a bitmap. Instead, a drawing file is a mathematical description of every element in the picture. Such a file might be much smaller that a bitmap file since it only contains the details of how and where to draw lines, boxes, circles, etc. The expansion or compression of this file doesn't lose details because the file contains nothing but instructions on how to "draw" the image, possibly destined for a plotter. For printing onto a modern inkjet printer, it can be scaled to size, converted to a bitmap image, and printed as dots. However, a draw file is not suitable for continuous-tone images like a photograph since the file would have to define the placement of every dot. Good examples of this kind of drawing software are Corel DRAW (from Corel), TurboCAD (from IMSI), and Autocad (from Autodesk). In Windows 95 and 98, the common drawing file is a WMF file.
    Now we have to deal with the conversion from a "drawing" file to a "raster" file. This requires a bitmap utility to trace objects on a bitmap. Usually, it is only practical to trace a few clearly delineated elements in a bitmap (raster) file. Another utility then converts that trace to a drawing that describes the trace mathematically. Of course, the utility that traces a bitmap can also be used to separate (crop) the traced section from the rest of the picture, even if it doesn't convert into draw format.

HiJaak Pro 4.5
To use graphics at the simplest level, one searches the collection by file name or from pages of thumbnail pictures seen in Windows Explorer. Once found, the file is added to a word processor, publishing package, paint software, or a drawing program. Copying to the clipboard may facilitate this.
    However, sometimes you need tools beyond Explorer. Such a collection of tools is contained in HiJaak Pro 4.5 from IMSI. Here you find tools that locate, save, manipulate, capture, transform, and convert. As stated repeatedly, we have been in love with HiJaak since it was available from Inset, then Quarterdeck, and now IMSI. It should be right at home with IMSI because it is a logical part of their product line that includes every size of graphic collection, utility package, drawing software, and utilities for other special purposes.
    HiJaak Pro 4.5 appears to be the complete graphics conversion and capture utility for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. This IMSI version of HiJaak Pro offers file format conversions, traces, and instant screen capture with all the editing options you'll likely need. In addition, HiJaak Pro 4.5 offers graphics view, find, print enhance, browse, thumbnails, and scan capabilities to fill your essential graphics requirements. With support for more than 85 raster, vector (draw), and metafile (compressed draw) formats, including five 3D draw formats, there's virtually no graphics task that HiJaak Pro can't handle, and it allows you to display thumbnails up to 120-by-120 pixels when you are browsing.
    HiJaak Pro now has tracing options to help you get the best results for your image. You can set trace options and view the results interactively using the Edit/Trace command, or trace a raster image and convert it to a vector format using the Open then Save As or Convert conversion methods. When you trace an image interactively, it does not convert from raster to vector until you select Save As and specify a vector format. The changes you see represent how the resulting vector image will appear.
    Our most used HiJaak feature is capturing and editing raster (screen) graphics. In Version 4.5, you can capture an entire screen, an area, or one or more windows and objects. You can also set many Windows capture options including sending the captured screens directly to a file, Clipboard, or printer. When you capture screens directly to a file, you can apply any of over 20 processing options such as grayscale and sizing to the file. You can place a border around a capture, include the cursor in the capture, and prompt for file options every time you capture a screen to a file. You can also set a timer for HiJaak Capture to wait before it captures the screen. This is essential for many multimedia programs that take complete control of your PC. For other multimedia software, direct copying to the clipboard is the only option that seems to work.
    For reasonably small graphics collections, or to catalog just those on your PC, we recommend the HiJaak Catalog, which is a database of information about your graphics files. You can create as many catalogs as you like and add graphics files to each one by the process of updating. Only those files that are added will be referenced and thumb-nailed in your catalog. Updating is the process of storing file information such as size, number of colors and image class, and creating thumbnails of graphics files, and replacing the generic Windows large icons with these thumbnails. The advantage to creating and viewing thumbnails is that you can identify your graphics files without having to open and display them in an application.
    Our only warning about using graphics utilities is that you keep it up-to-date. For example, the current Windows 95/98 version also supports Windows NT 4.0, but may not work with Windows 2000. Even today we received an announcement of a service pack for the NT 4.0 version that is ready for download.

Figure 1. The HiJaak Pro 4.5 graphics editing screen with an image of the Blue Oak Consort from our CD.

HiJaak Pro 4.5
[$99.95 list]
IMSI
75 Rowland Way 
Novato, CA 94945
415-878-4000
www.imsisoft.com

Graphics Collections Come of Age
If you want to have huge collections at your fingertips, then 1999 is a great year. In addition to photographs and drawings available from Corel Corporation (not reviewed), we can rave about huge collections from IMSI and Brøderbund. The good news is that you don't have to take up very much hard disk space because both packages have excellent (heavy) books that contain large thumbnails of all the graphics. Yes, books! You remember those, don't you? It is still the best way of finding what you want because the top products from both of these companies contain from 20 to 30 CDs, and that is a lot of thumbnails to store on your PC.
   From IMSI, you are going to love MasterClips 1,000,001, which includes:

• 500,000+ graphics on 30 CDs along with appropriate software.
• 500,000+ graphics online.
• 165,000 images in vector (WMF) format.
• 14,100 Master Photos (in JPG format)
• 69,500 Dover Art collection drawings (in TIF format)
• 43,000 lower Resolution (JPG) images that are perfect for Web pages.
• 213,000 Web Art Graphics in GIF format.
• An animated training tour.
• A program to edit or create vector files.
• A SpeedBar Locator to find what you want using keywords.
• Support for editing raster (bitmapped) graphics
• Support for PCX, BMP, GIF, TIF, DCX, WPG and more graphic file formats
• Batch import of files.
• Drag-n-drop support to other Windows applications
• Import "preview" of graphic files
• Thumbnail catalog printing
• Enhanced JPEG Support (8 and 24-bit color)
• Support for Microsoft Video for Windows (.AVI) files
• Allows sound (.WAV) files to be attached to each image
• Support for Object Linking and Embedding (OLE as a client)
• Windows Explorer extensions support large thumbnails.
• Lets you use images as icons.
• Animated GIF files viewable using an Internet browser.
• Save files for Internet pages.
• Request a specific fine art image from IMSI, a very friendly company that is anxious to please.

In Figure 2, we can see the opening page that gives you access to all the IMSI included software.

Figure 2. The opening menu page of MasterClips 1,000,001.

In Figure 3, we can see the large number of tools available in ClickArt's Metafile Editor that allows you to create or edit any of the draw files included in the reviewed version: ClickArt 300,000 Premiere Image Pak

Figure 3. ClickArt 300,000 includes a powerful editor for drawing files.

ClickArt is a Brøderbund product, and they have additional modules for sale if you need more fine arts, religious artwork, holiday pictures, or special fonts. The reviewed package is different from the IMSI product as follows:

• Print Shop Premiere Edition 5.0 is included for those who have come to love the simplicity of using the Print Shop for banners, cards, signs and so much more.

• The Print Shop Photo Organizer is included for the creation of your own on-screen or printed albums. This also has the simplicity we have come to expect from The Print Shop.

• Create a slide show.

• Images in WMF, TIF and JPG format with a converter for BMP format.

There are 7,000 sounds and a Sound Browser to help locate them. The sounds seem to all be synthesized, but are fine for many uses. The Browser won't let you hear them, so use Windows Explorer to find what you want and then double-click to listen. Next month, we hope to tell you about sampled sounds collections good enough for professional productions. There are also:

• 160,000 premium-quality images and graphics.
• 50,000 high-quality photos.
• 20,000 fine art drawings, including borders.
• 60,000 Web graphics.
• 2,500 fonts.

Both of these products will please you, especially if you expected to see nothing but the Wingdings font. Here, you will find superb photos and wonderful renderings of the fine art from Medieval to Modern Ages. We are already drooling over the artwork that we can use for our CD covers since we play Renaissance Music. Even now, we have put several images on tee shirt transfer paper for use on our costumes for the next Shakespeare Festival in Grass Valley. We only wish that we could add the applications to the Tools menu of word processor and graphics software. 
    In any case, we expect to use the software by browsing the books that are conveniently laid out by subject and then using the import functions. For additional convenience, we have purchased inexpensive CD wallets to hold the 50 CDs (20+30) safely. Please note that these collections are offered at a price of less that $3.00 per CD!

MasterClips 1,000,001
[$79 street]
IMSI
75 Rowland Way 
Novato, CA 94945-5001
800-833-8082
www.imsisoft.com

ClickArt 300,000 Premiere Image Pak
[$59 street]
Parsons Technology, Inc.
A Brøderbund Company 
P.O. Box 100
Hiawatha, IA 52233-0100
800-779-6000
www.parsonstech.com