Rhapsoft Debuts LiveQuartz Image Editor
By
Mike Pasini, The Imaging Resource
(Thursday, June 16, 2005 - 13:20 EDT)
The free beta taps into Mac OS X Tiger's CoreImage filters -- and it's a Universal Binary application to boot!
Rhapsoft has released a free beta version of its LiveQuartz image editor based on layers and Mac OS X 10.4's CoreImage filters. The software, which expires Aug. 26, requires Mac OS X, but will run on a G3 or an Intel-based Macintosh as a Universal Binary application.
Authored by Romain Piveteau, the LiveQuartz main window displays layers on the left of the image pane and filters on the right. In the following screen shot, the EV has been set to 0.5 and the image rotated 270 degrees.
Among the CoreImage effects are adjustments to exposure and white point, lens distortion, color correction, luminance sharpening, unsharp masking, Guassian blurs, noise reduction and special effects.
Formats supported by the beta version include:
- RHIF (alpha) -- the native LiveQuartz format that saves layers and filters (Spotlight compatible).
- PDF (alpha) -- Adobe Portable Document Format (and the native format of Quartz, the MacOSX drawing layer).
- JPEG (no alpha)
- JPEG2000 (alpha)
- TIFF (alpha)
- PNG (alpha)
- GIF (1bit alpha) read-only
- BMP (no alpha) read-only
- PICT (no alpha) read-only
The tool palette at the top of the application window includes:
- The Brush paints with the foreground color at the selected size.
- The Clone Tool paints a clone of the referenced part of an image.
- The Eraser erases an image by replacing it by a transparent color.
- The Layer Moving Tool.
- The Text Tool adds text. Text may be modified by changing the layer name in layers list. You can also change the font of the new text with the Font button.
- The Grabber pans large images.
- The Spiral Tool sets locations for filters.
- The Selection Tool crops the image and restricts the painting and erasing areas.
- The Magnifying Glass zooms and unzooms.
To download a copy of the beta, visit the Rhapsoft Web site.
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