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Words by Ric Getter
May 2005
This has been a big year for bundles. Following the lead
of Macromedia®'s popular Studio MX, Adobe®
released Creative Suite. Shortly after Adobe's
Video Collection appeared, Apple® announced
its Production Suite. With one of the most
comprehensive set of tools for the digital imaging, it's no
surprise that Extensis™ collected all five of its tools
in one box and dubbed them the Photo Imaging Suite.
Even though the collection includes only one new application,
Portfolio 7, it does offer one of the best
price breaks you'll find on the market: approximately half
the price of the separately purchased programs.
 As
the newest member of the team, Portfolio 7 offers some significant
enhancements over its predecessor. The most immediately noticeable
is an interface facelift that takes greater advantage of Aqua's
capabilities. A slide-out panel on the right simplifies managing
folders and different collections (galleries) of files. This
also makes Portfolio's unique FolderSync feature easier to
use. You can use this panel to manipulate files and folders
without returning to the Finder. This is now where you tell
Portfolio to “Watch” and synchronize changes to
the files within a folder. Intuitively, we would expect to
be able to drag a folder from the Desktop into the Folders
panel, but that is not the case.
Portfolio 7 has also become more talented at creating HTML-based
galleries to distribute and display previews of your galleries.
A wizard function lets you customize how your page looks,
adding headers, footers, and graphic banners. If you're up
to the challenge, you can use an HTML or text editor to create
or modify the templates manually. In either case, they can
be saved for later use or sharing with others in your group.
The available web catalogs are unquestionably designed for
the pro market and are not quite as useful as those generated
by Graphic Converter or Photoshop® if you simply want
to distribute and display an informal collection of images.
New to this version is the ability to burn collections directly
to a CD or DVD packaged with a licensed copy of the Portfolio
7 browser. The new feature also includes an auto-launch option
for PCs, so the browser will open when the disc is inserted.
One significant caveat is that the PC version of the Portfolio
7 browser will only run on Windows 2000 and XP systems. Inserting
the disk into a machine running the various flavors of Windows
98 will only produce a series of cryptic errors.
Even though Portfolio 7 represents an improvement in both
features and usability over earlier versions, we still rate
it as a professional-market application. Its searching and
cataloging is far more powerful than Photoshop or iPhoto™,
but there is a notable learning curve involved in mastering
its capabilities. It will be worth it for workgroups or anyone
with a large and active client base.
The four other programs in the Imaging Suite are the current
versions of the popular Photoshop plug-ins, pxl SmartScale,
Mask Pro, PhotoFrame, and Intellihance Pro.
pxl SmartScale 1.0 is one of the first technological advances
to come from Extensis' new owner, Celartem™. As its
name implies, it is designed to offer superior controllability
and results when you need to do what you've always been told
not to do: scale an image up. It's primarily designed to
make larger prints from smaller, high-resolution images. So,
if you can give it a high enough pixel-count initially, it
will let you make enlargements up to 1,600%. The results with
smaller images aren't as noticeable.
Intellihance 4.1 offers an alternative to Photoshop's image
enhancement tools. If you need to deal with a set of images
with a similar set of defects, the ability to save a single
preset with a variety of corrections can be invaluable. However,
in the case of color and gamma, Photoshop's auto corrections
are a tempting alternative; and once you've mastered the techniques,
manual adjustments are hard to beat, particularly if you've
learned the benefits of using Adjustment Layers.
PhotoFrame 2.5 remains a unique tool to
enhance a photo's presentation. It hasn't really changed a
great deal (or needed to) over its long history other than
making a comfortable transition to OS X. Browsing through
the huge selection of ready-made frames and textures, we realized
that PhotoFrame has the potential to become a very useful
tool for the DVD designer as well as commercial photographers.
Mask Pro 3 is a set of masking and compositing
tools. There are less expensive competitors, but none that
can equal Mask Pro's versatility or performance. The installation
includes a Flash™-based tutorial to help you get started,
but you'll probably need to spend some time experimenting
on your own to gain proficiency. There's quite a bit to learn.
In terms of value, the Suite can be a great buy if you're
in need of at least three of the five programs. A 50% bundle
discount is one of the better deals out there. Extensis, however,
may have missed an opportunity to tempt existing customers
by not offering some sort of upgrade pricing, most of who
would have already migrated to the OS X versions of the plug-ins.
It's still a “suite” deal if you're just starting
out with these solid Extensis tools.
Extensis Photo Imaging Suite, Extensis (www.Extensis.com),
$499.
Pros: Portfolio 7 is a substantial update;
50% bundle discount
Cons: No upgrade path; steep learning
Buy it now!
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