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Even with the new functions, iPhoto is handy, helpful, superbly designed for basic operations and, unfortunately, too limited for serious work.
  technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

7 image editors for Mac OS X, from 'free' to $750


Aug. 25, 2002


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, The Post-Standard

   To many computer users, image editing is what Macs are all about. But that does Windows a disservice and ignores the problem Apple faces with its newest Macintosh computers.
   Despite its obvious flaws, Windows is still a powerful platform for digital imaging editing. There are hundreds of image-processing programs for Windows, including many that are free. But users of Apple's Mac OS X have comparatively few image editors to choose from. OS X is still new, and the downturn in technology stocks has hurt the development of all new software, not just OS X programs.
   That's not helpful news if you need a good OS X image editor right now. This week I'll offer capsule reports on seven programs that are already available for casual or intensive image editing for Mac OS.
   In order of price, they are:
      iPhoto, free, www.apple.com.
      PixelNhance, free, www.caffeinesoft.com.
      GraphicConverter, $30, www.lemkesoft.com.
      Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, $99, www.adobe.com.
      Adobe Photoshop 7, $609, www.adobe.com.
      DeBabelizer Pro, $700, www.equilibrium.com.
      Photo Retouch Pro, $750, www.binuscan.com.
   Most of the software listed here can be purchased at stores or on the Web. You can download free trial versions in most cases, also.
   iPhoto, the image manager that Apple supplies free for all Mac users, has a borderline image editor, providing only the basics -- cropping, scaling, rotating, brightness, red-eye fixing, importing, exporting and, of course, photo management in general. (That's iPhoto's big strength.) Apple improved iPhoto a few months ago, adding much-needed functions, so if you already have iPhoto but don't have the latest version, go get it. But even with the new functions, iPhoto is handy, helpful, superbly designed for basic operations and, unfortunately, too limited for serious work.
   PixelNhance is a charmer. It can be easily set up to work directly with iPhoto. The integration is great, and no one would blame you for sticking with the iPhoto-PixelNhance combo if you don't want to spend any money on an mage editor. PixelNhance adds fancier functions to the limited ones in iPhoto, and you might find them ideal. You can adjust brightness and contrast, levels (through a histogram, which shows levels of brightness and color in a graph), color intensity, noise and sharpness. The last two are done in an unusual way. Even if you're a graphics guru, try the sharpness and noise-reduction functions in PixelNhance just to see an alternate method.
   GraphicConverter does a lot of important things, but I must admit that I can barely stand using it. I find the user interface abysmal. But please give it a try if you need an image editor that can open any kind of picture or if you need to do any kind of mass image conversion from one oddball format to another.
   Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 wasn't officially available when I wrote this, so I won't comment on it. The previous version, which works only under Windows and the older Mac operating system, is one of the best image editors for amateur and semi-pro work. I'll report on version 2.0 as soon as I get a copy.
   Adobe Photoshop 7 is the king of image editors for OS X. I'm used to previous versions of Photoshop for Windows and older Macs, and the OS X version is more of the same -- stable, powerful and full of wonderfully thought-out touches. Wealthy OS X users who could have only one image editor would have to choose Photoshop 7.
   DeBabelizer Pro is for graphics specialists. It doesn't do much more than GraphicConverter, but at more than 20 times the price you get automation, automation and, you guessed it, more automation. You can create scripts that do all sorts of image-processing functions automatically on any number of images. If I were chief graphics designer for a graphics-intensive Web-development company, I'd buy and master DeBabelizer Pro immediately.
   Photo Retouch Pro, developed by a company in Monaco, is a surprisingly good program, and could be considered the prince of OS X image editors. But it needs more development before it can dethrone the king. It performs a dozen critical functions better than any other program does -- the way it handles image sharpening is refreshingly new, the method it uses to "vacuum up" flaws in images is spectacular and the program's one-button image fixer, called Auto Process RECO, is a delight -- but Photo Retouch Pro needs better support of Photoshop plug-ins and a better-translated English-language manual first.