Ability Photopaint is a photo and image editor that will instantly feel familiar, both in its interface and functionality, to users of Adobe Photoshop. Its fundamental components are paint tools, color palettes, brushes, selections, special effects filters and layers. Using these features together, you can apply the right colour, or range of colours, in the right place to get the effect you want.
Filters apply special effects to your image (or selection within an image). There are nearly 100 different effects – classified into groups:
- artistic
- blur and sharpen
- stylize
- edge detect
- tiles
- distort and noise
- light effects and effects
Brushes and Paint tools are used to apply color and other effects:
- a variety of sizes and shapes
- can be used with any colour or opacity
- modes determine how the applied colour interacts with an image’s existing colour
- a Brush Editor enables users to design their own brushes
- Paint tools include Pencil, Paintbrush, Airbrush, Eraser, Duplicate, Pattern Brush, Blur, Sharpen, Emboss, Dodge, Burn, Smudge, Historic Brush
Selections are used to isolate the parts of an image the user wants to work on:
- a wide range of selection tools, including Lasso, PolyLine, B-Spline, Lasso, Ellipse, Rectangle, Single Line, and Magic Wand
- selection editing tools to help fine-tune selections already applied: Border, Similar, Expand/Contract, Transform
Layers are used to divide an image into several separate superimposed sections, thereby ensuring that work on one layer will not affect the image on another layer:
- Layers can be reordered, added and deleted
- added images can be inserted as new Layers
- blending modes, which are reversible, determine how the layers interact
- opacity sets the degree of transparency, hence allowing the user to see through higher layers to those below
- one layer can be used as a mask for another
- merge any two or all of the layers (perhaps to send as a printable file to a printing shop, a friend or another company)
In addition to these fundamental features, Ability Photopaint also provides the following:
- compatibility with major file formats
- Red Eye Reduction
- extensive library of Gradients, including Linear, Bilinear, Radial, Square, Conical Symmetric, Conical Asymmetric, Spiral Clockwise, and Spiral Anticlockwise, and the ability to design your own gradients
- creation of PDF files
- Recent Folders and Recent Files sidecar menus to ensure easy locating and opening of files
- connect to TWAIN-compatible scanner
- compatible with all Digital Cameras
- Image Enhancement tools, such as Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation, Colour levels, and Histograms
- Vector Drawing tools use vector paths to create objects that can be treated independently of the rest of an image. Using drawing tools such as lines, rectangles, ovals, polygons, stars, curves and freehand, it is easy to create precise, autonomous objects, while Text tools enable you to insert text objects. Although Vector objects are part of the image, in that they are "superimposed" on it, they are placed on a special layer of their own and are freely editable in a variety of ways (for colour, shape, and other qualities), as well as being easy to scale, move, rotate, and stretch as whole objects. Furthermore, vector objects can be rearranged within the image by using a range of alignment and grouping tools. None of this is possible with standard pixel-based image editors.
- Plug-ins usually behave in the same way as built-in filter and therefore enable you to apply as many colour, or other, effects as there are plug-in designs out there. Since many design studios and freelance designers make their plug-ins available on the web, you should have no problem finding the ones that are right for the job you're working on. To be usable with Photopaint Studio the plug-in must be Adobe Photoshop-compatible, which is nearly always the case anyway.
These are some of the features of Ability Photopaint that help you get the effects you want. There are many more for you to explore and play with.
As part of the general improvements shared with all applications, Ability Photopaint Studio, gains standard toolbars for all bitmap and vector drawing tools.
Ability Photopaint Studio v4 with new "Office 2003" style toolbars and menus.
Ability's already powerful photo editor has been further improved with the facility to save to Adobe's Photoshop file format (PSD), making this the ideal format to choose as the default image type, and through the introduction of compression algorithms in Photopaint's own file format (APX).
Ability Photopaint Studio's own file format now supports RLE and ZIP compression.
Photopaint features updated TWAIN technology and more direct support for digital cameras and scanners installed through the Windows Control Panel.
The internal colour systems have been updated to support 48-bit colour depth, CMYK support for jpeg and PSD images, and functions to invert images by colour channel and swap colour channels.
New tools include a 'Magic Eraser', which removes a selection made by the Magic Wand tool, and Desaturate and Saturate tools, which decrease or increase colour saturation.
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