Version 2.0.3 makes many minor changes to the Appearance Manager interface to improve reliability and error handling. No specific bugs were known or fixed. The suspect bug that started the hunt, was in the end confirmed to be a conflict with Kaleidoscope, instead.
The situations of the known, and still present conflict are, Photoshop 5.0.2, Kaleidoscope 2.1.2, OS 8.5.1, and ImageVice 2.x. This is the combination of software present when this problem was confirmed, but it very likely extends to much broader circumstances. These haven't been confirmed, though.
We are currently investigating the conflict, and hope to find a solution soon, but for now, Kaleidoscope must be disabled to use ImageVice.
If it is not, and the conflict is present, crashing will result when the Appearance Manager version of the ImageVice options dialog is called.
Also, very new, very improved, and very changed with ImageVice 2.0.3 is version 2.0 of the BoxTop Registration Client, which has been completely re-written from the ground up, but that's not really an improvement to ImageVice, just an improvement to make purchasing a whole lot easier.
Q - What was new in 2.0.1?
Version 2.0.1 fixes a problem with linking to the Appearance manager, and any "Could not complete your request because of a problem with the Macintosh Code Fragment Manager." errors you would have seen if the Appearance Manager wasn't present on your system.
ImageVice 2.0 shouldn't have required the Appearance manager to run, but due to the link problem, it actually did. Version 2.0.1 does not require the Appearance Manager to run as intended.
There are some other minor changes as well, but none that were specific fixes or feature enhancements, just some code restructuring in a few places.
Q - Don't you mean "vise" instead of "vice"?
Now this has been the single most frequently asked question, even though, it would seem not to be the important question to ask. The answer, however, is not no, but hell no. One does not make a "typo" when choosing a name, only when writing manuals....
Check your unabridged. "Vice" is an alternative spelling of the more common variation "vise" meaning a mechanical device for clamping or holding something. It's not just all drugs, prostitutes, and sex. We do know what's on some people's minds now, though...
As an aside, ImageVice™, is a perfect tool to help get those porn files down to manageable size, so there is some real vice to it.
However, more meaningful than "vice" or "vise" as in clamp is "vice" as in "Mr. Vice President" meaning "in place of."
ImageVice™ is after all a tool for creating a second image in place of the original image - one that just happens to compress better. It is color reduction, not compression so "Mr. Vice President" is the one vice that makes the most sense, and is the vice in ImageVice™.
The rest is just cute and witty word play. Some not quite politically correct, as usual.
Q - Do you have a ImageVice™ JPEG compressor?
No. Nor do we have an ImageVice™ GIF compressor in any technical sense of the meaning. ImageVice™ is a color reduction tool. That's a different thing than compression even if it improves compression.
Though, the real question here is, is there anything like ImageVice™ for JPEGs or can ImageVice™ be used to make smaller JPEGs.
ImageVice™, when applied at settings for best image quality will do something to make JPEGs compress better. Many people have said they are using it for that, but there are really better things to use.
ImageVice™ produces high enough quality color reduction that it's a primitive low frequency noise removal filter in effect, which most often will make JPEG compression much more efficient.
However, this outcome is completely coincidental, and not the use that ImageVice™ was made to perform. It does it, but not well.
The smoothing controls in ProJPEG™ do the same well. They are the controls for a real low frequency noise removal filter that doesn't suck.
ProJPEG™ is the "ImageVice" for JPEGs. If you need to make JPEGs, there is no better tool than ProJPEG™. You can download a demo for it from our Web site.
Q - Is ImageVice™ compatible with...?
We can only guarantee it to be compatible with Photoshop, but in all likelihood ImageVice™ will work with any application, which supports Photoshop filter plug-ins.
Contrary to apparent popular notion, we are not able to test plug-ins with all possible host applications, and the real answer is "dunno." It will if the other application got its stuff right, because we got ours.
The way to know for sure is to try it out. That's one of the reasons a demo version exists.
Q - Can ImageVice™ be used on an existing JPEG image to make it into a very small GIF?
Yes. Normally, performing color reduction on an image that has been saved as a JPEG previously is a bad thing. You would end up with an overly dithered and bloated file because the artifacts that JPEG adds to images would be compounded and amplified by normal dithering.
It's still best to always start with an original image, but if you have to work with a JPEG, ImageVice™ can do a better job than others. It's smoothing and convergence functions will compensate, and images won't suffer a significant quality loss or file size increase given any reasonable quality JPEG to work with.
You should use moderate to high smoothing and convergence values when working with JPEG originals, and may have to experiment for best results. A very good job can be done, though.
Q - How much memory overhead does ImageVice™ have?
Amazingly little. It needs enough for the interface, but doesn't need any significant amount of available RAM for processing. You should rarely, if ever, encounter memory related problems when using it.
Q - Why isn't the "Exact" option in Photoshop's mode change dialog the default choice after I use ImageVice™, as you said it would be in the manual?
Photoshop forces all palettes to contain black and white. ImageVice™ has no such ridiculous requirement for palettes. It can produce 255 colors without a black or white depending on image and settings.
Photoshop will not make the exact palette option available unless it has room to put a black and white in its palette, though. If you find this happening, run ImageVice™ set to make a 253 color palette, and Photoshop will happily enable the exact option in the mode change dialog again.
Q - ImageVice™ vs. PhotoGIF™. Which one is better?
Although ImageVice™ and PhotoGIF™ do overlap in some functionally, they are hardly interchangeable tools. It isn't an either or question, since you can't make GIF files with ImageVice™ alone. It's only color reduction, and it's only one kind of color reduction, which is only a small, albeit important, part of the process of producing GIF files.
Yes, we would like you to buy both of them, and won't try to make things seem otherwise. We would also like you to buy ProJPEG™ and GIFmation™ and ColorSafe™, too, because they are all valuable tools.
PhotoGIF™ is a high end tool for GIF production. ImageVice™ is higher end for a sub-set of those production needs, and other ones having nothing to do with GIFs for the Web. There is no more powerful or flexible tool for adaptive palette color reduction than ImageVice™.
It is point blank better at that than PhotoGIF™ at what it does, but it doesn't do nearly as many different things as PhotoGIF™ does.
You really do need both of them to be able to do the best job in all cases. PhotoGIF™ is the general purpose tool. ImageVice™ is for when you need better image quality or better compression than general purpose can give. Then you use it with PhotoGIF™.
Q - I still don't understand the difference?
PhotoGIF™ is a file format plug-in that lets you open, edit, and save GIFs and GIF animations with Photoshop. It is GIF specific and the best tool available for making GIF files.
ImageVice™ is a traditional filter plug-in which modifies images to reduce the number of individual colors used by them. It isn't for saving GIF files at all. It can't save a file, GIF or otherwise. It is a color reduction tool, which can substitute for the color reduction performed normally by PhotoGIF™ if desired.
Color reduction is just one part of the process of making a GIF file. ImageVice™ does this part in a different, better way than PhotoGIF™.
PhotoGIF™'s way is, however, much more general purpose, and can handle all cases of color reduction. ImageVice™ only performs color reduction to adaptive palettes.
There is overlapping function, but they are not interchangeable in use. One look at the actual plug-ins and the differences become so apparent, you will wonder why you ever asked this question.
Q - Can ImageVice™ be used for animated GIFs?
Yes. It's fairly easy, though entirely manual, to use ImageVice™ for optimizing GIF animations when used together with PhotoGIF™ and GIFmation™. The GIF animations on our own Web site were worked over with ImageVice™.
How we did it is explained in detail in the ImageVice™ manual. The step-by-step technique is too long for the FAQ. The full manual is included when you download ImageVice™.
Q - Can I use ImageVice™ to color reduce to existing palettes such as the Web safe palette?
No. The ImageVice™ plug-in and ImageVice™ technology in general will only perform color reduction to adaptive palettes.
Q - Can ImageVice™ be used on images with Web safe colors?
Yes, but you need to use it together with WebClipper™ if you want to make sure you Web safe colors stay Web safe. WebClipper™ is a free plug-in we make that forces close colors back to their exact matches from the Web Safe palette.
ImageVice™ like all good color reduction algorithms will cause subtle shifts in colors. A Web safe color will most likely not be after color reduction with ImageVice™. It will be visually indistinguishable, but mathematically different.
Running WebClipper™ on images color reduced with ImageVice™ will correct this, so you can safely use ImageVice™ on images containing Web safe colors.
WebClipper™ is very easy to use, but is only available for Macintosh, while ImageVice™ is available for Macintosh and Windows.
Q - When I use ImageVice™ nothing seems to happen, where is the file saved?
ImageVice™ doesn't save files. It is a traditional filter. It changes the colors in your open document, and can do such a good job of that it isn't far fetched for you not to be able to see the difference at all.
It is that good given the proper settings, but it is doing just what it should be.
Q - I have been using ImageVice™ to shrink files and have noticed that sometimes it will produce a noticeable streaking effect, similar to the wind filter in Photoshop. What am I doing wrong?
The effect is a result of your combination of smoothing, convergence, and velocity settings in ImageVice™. They are too high for the image.
Reducing the settings will reduce the effect, and turning the controls off with settings of zero will eliminate it completely on any image.
In most cases you don't want to eliminate it completely, because that is the effect that will make your images compress better. You need to find the settings that work best for your individual image to find the right combination of compression enhancement and visual quality.
This is simple to do given a little understanding of what each control in ImageVice™ does, and that is explained in detail in the manual.
Q - How flexible is ImageVice™?
There are 131,072,000,000 possible settings for ImageVice™. Compare this to the 521 for most color reduction tools and to the 2560, which are possible with PhotoGIF™, and you get the idea.
ImageVice™ provides a level of control over color reduction that has never been provided before, and it provides specific control of the aspects of color reduction determining compressibility and quality.
Most tools give you a choice of how many colors to use and whether to dither. That's it, and that's wimpy.
Don't let 31,072,000,000 possible settings intimidate you. There are only six different controls so ImageVice™ is no more complex than the average effects filter in Photoshop. It's pretty intuitive and has one of the largest previews ever given a plug-in, so you can see what it's doing as you twiddle controls.
Q - When attempting to manipulate a GIF file I opened and selecting ImageVice™ I get the following consistent error message "SELECTED PLUG-IN FILTER DOES NOT SUPPORT THE CURRENT IMAGE FORMAT"?
First, you aren't using ImageVice™ with Photoshop, because that's not a message it would ever report, second, you just need to change the image mode to RGB to use ImageVice™ on it. How you do that in any other program besides Photoshop, you'll have to look in your image editor's manual to find, though.
When you open a GIF file it is normally in "indexed mode", which is what Photoshop calls it. This just means that the image's pixels are represented by a single byte index into a palette instead of by RGB values directly.
Photoshop will not allow any filters to be run on images in indexed mode, and disables the Filters menu when the current document is indexed.
This means if you open a GIF file, you will have to change the mode in Photoshop or any other image editor from indexed to RGB before using ImageVice™ or other filters on it.
Q - Is ImageVice™ technology included in....?
No. ImageVice™ technology isn't included in PhotoGIF™, GIFmation™, or any other tools we make at this time.
Q - Will it ever be included in... ?
Possibly, but wouldn't recommend holding your breath.
It definitely will not ever be included with PhotoGIF™ because it can't substitute for the general purpose color reduction needs of PhotoGIF™.
It definitely will not ever be included with ProJPEG™ because it isn't something valuable for JPEG.
It might make it into GIFmation™ in some form in the future as part of the automatic animation optimization, but no promises. Theoretically, that could work, but theory and practice often are different.
It likely will find uses in tools we haven't thought of, or admitted to thinking of yet. It's good stuff.
Q - What's the point of ImageVice™ if I can still get better compression results from JPEG?
What's the point of GIF then if JPEG handles all image needs? We are talking about apples and oranges.
JPEG should still be used for what JPEG was used for before. This isn't any substitute for JPEG, just much better color reduction for GIF and other indexed formats.
Q - Is there any advantage to using ImageVice™ for very simple GIFs like buttons and icons and other things with mostly flat areas of color?
Yes, even the simplest of images usually have areas of anti-aliasing, and if there is even that tiny amount of deviation from flat colors, then ImageVice™ has a clear advantage.
The greatest advantage is on more complex images, though. Images that pose the most challenge to traditional color reduction are ones on which ImageVice™ excels the most.
The best use of ImageVice™ for simpler images is to take an existing GIF and further reduce the number of colors used in it. The can be done effectively and visually losslessly every single time be setting ImageVice™ at max quality settings and giving it a number of colors one less than the number of colors already used in the image.
ImageVice™ will eliminate as many colors as can be without making any change in the image's appearance then.
Q - I thought you said 70%, I'm only seeing maybe 20% - 40%. What's the deal?
Deal is that's up to 70%, not always 70%. Why are you complaining about saving 20% to 40% more than you could without ImageVice™, anyway?
What ImageVice™ does is greatly dependent on the settings used and the individual image in question. Mileage varies as with most things.
70% is realistically attainable and even frequently attainable, but not the average amount saved. That's probably more in the range of 40% for GIF LZW compression, a little lower for PNG, and much higher for PICT and BMP, due to the different compression methods.
Don't forget, ImageVice™ isn't just for GIFs.
Q - I'm on a Mac and I'm not seeing any difference in file size at all, or the ones made with ImageVice™ are bigger. Are they really the same size or bigger?
They would not possible be the same size or bigger with the default settings in ImageVice™ when compared to other GIFs color reduced in Photoshop at the same bit depth and its defaults. The problem is you are not seeing an accurate file size in the Finder's Get Info box.
The problem is that the Macintosh uses a file system that references two separate files, one called a "resource fork" and one called a "data fork", as a single file visible on your desktop.
In the "data fork" file is your GIF (or JPEG) file. However, when files are saved from file format plug-ins in Photoshop, Photoshop will add Photoshop specific information such as custom icons, image previews, printer settings, and the last position of the open document window to the "resource fork" file. None of those have a thing to do with your GIF (or JPEG) file.
However, since the Macintosh finder only shows the allocation size, which is the amount of space allocated on you hard drive to hold the file - not the size of the file itself, and then the combined sizes of the "resource fork" and "data fork" of the file in the "Bytes used" field of the Finder's Get Info dialog, GIFs (and JPEGs) saved from Photoshop and even other popular applications very often appear much larger than they really are. (The GIF89a Export from Adobe does not have the problem of junk in the "resource fork", Photoshop allows export plug-ins to control that directly, but file format plug-in like PhotoGIF™, ProJPEG™, and the Compuserve GIF plug-in do not have that control directly.)
You can download a free utility called GIF Prep™ from our Web site to fix the problem. It's a simple drag and drop application that will strip
the resource fork, if one does exist, from GIF and JPEG files so you can be sure that the Finder is showing an accurate file size in the Get Info dialog.
Never trust what the Finder tells you on GIF and JPEG file sizes if you haven't dropped the file on GIF Prep™. It won't be right the majority of the time, otherwise.
Q - Are there any cons to using ImageVice™?
Just one. It's slower than a lot of color reduction tools, though is no where near the slowest of them all.
Q - What is the ImageVice™ technology?
In big words...
ImageVice™ color reduction technology uses a procedural method for removing space-variant system imperfection, neural modeling of the logarithmic response of the human visual system, and employs a new color mapping technique based on perceptual criteria for shape-form shading to produce both superior visual results and data that is much more compressible.
In little words...
It's what happens when you put finger painting and graduate level math together.
BoxTop Software, Inc.
PO Box 2347
Starkville, MS, 39760
voice 601-263-5410
fax 601-263-5412
http://www.boxtopsoft.com
info@boxtopsoft.com
ImageVice™ is Copyright 1997-99 BoxTop Software, Inc. All rights reserved. ImageVice™ is a trademark of BoxTop Software, Inc., which may be registered in certain jutisdictions. All other trademarks are recognized as the properties of their respective holders.
Document published: 4/20/99
Copyright 1999 BoxTop Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
