Review of Conduits Technology Pocket Artist 3.1 on Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com!

Conduits Pocket Artist 3.1

In the brief history of Pocket PCs and Windows Mobile devices, the list of applications that have been around for the majority of that time is small. Many simply do not exist any longer while others have not matured much beyond their original release. For Pocket Artist by Conduits Technologies, it is clear why this application has remained in the Conduits line up since 2000. Not only has Conduits continued to produce the award winning application, they have continued to grow and mature the product. The latest version, 3.1, is a testimony to their continuing efforts to produce a superior imaging management and edition application for the platform. With the popularity of digital cameras continuing to grow at an exponential rate, the ability to professionally edit those images while on-the-road only increases productivity while away from a home or office PC.

Beyond a image viewer, Pocket Artist is a full-scale, highly flexible and tool laden image editor, creator, capturer and viewer. Simply put, it is one of the most sophisticated applications available for the Windows Mobile platform and performs at such a high level, users will quickly find it to be a must-have application.

Pocket Artist occupies approximately 4MB of space on a Windows Mobile device. It can be installed in the devices Main Memory, a Storage Card or in Built-in Memory (Dell) or iPAQ File Store (iPAQ). The installation of Pocket Artist is done via ActiveSync and a cab installation is not an option. Currently Pocket Artist 3.1 is supported on the Pocket PC 2000, 2002, 2003, 2003SE and Handheld PC 2.11 and 2000 platforms. Conduits have also announced they will support Windows Mobile 5.

When the application is first started, users are prompted on file associations for the most common graphic formats and can choose to have them associated with Pocket Artist or have them continue to be associated by an existing imaging application (Figure 1). During the starting of Pocket Artist, a splash screen is shown (Figure 2). The detail and beauty of the splash screen alone is an indicator to the attention to detail that Conduits Technologies has put into Pocket Artist.


Figure 1: Users Can Associate Common Image Types with Pocket Artist	Figure 2: The Pocket Artist Splash Screen

The interface of Pocket Artist has kept its clean and simple appearance as it has in previous versions (Figure 3). However the power of the application is quickly discovered by a quick glance of the taskbar at the bottom of the display as well as the variety of editing options that will be discussed later in this review. To open an existing image on the Windows Mobile device, users tap the Menu>Open menu. From here, an explorer-like window is opened with the directory tree at the top of the display while thumbnails of the images in that folder are displayed (Figure 4). To open a file, simply tap the thumbnail.


Figure 3: The Pocket Artist User Interface	Figure 4: Pocket Artist’s File Explorer with Thumbnails

What sets Pocket Artist apart from so many other graphics editors in the Windows Mobile arena is the vast array of tools built in the application. Beyond simple cropping, contrast and brightness adjustments, Pocket Artist has a tool kit that rivals desktop applications.

On the menu bar itself, users can select and adjust the foreground and background colors using the color selector tool (Figure 5). When this is tapped, a small color gradient bar is displayed allowing users to select which color to use for these areas of the image or for the color of a tool selected. Next to the color selector is the tool size menu. When tapped, this displays the size and shape of the area which a tool will cover (Figure 6). This can be refined to being only one pixel in size to 100 pixels.


Figure 5: The Foreground & Background Color Selector	Figure 6: The Tool Size and Shape Selector

The Tool selector offers users of Pocket Artist a wide range of tools to edit their images (Figure 7). These Tools include a paintbrush (Figure 8), Pencil (Figure 9), Paint Bucket and Airbrush (Figure 10). All of these tools can be adjusted in size and color and give users a fine level of control of image editing or creation. Within some of these tools, further adjustments can be made to give further levels of control to the user. For example, while using the Airbrush tool, users can adjust the amount of pressure (i.e. air pressure if using the real tool in the real world) to give lighter or heavier coverage of the airbrush paint (Figure 11).


Figure 7: The Tool Menu	Figure 8: A Paintbrush Example

Figure 9: A Pencil Example	Figure 10: An Airbrush Example

Figure 11: Airbrush Tool Pressure Adjustments (100% at bottom left, 10% at top left)

On the Tool menu, users will also find three of the more powerful tools in Pocket Artist; the Clone Stamp, the Pattern Stamp and the Gradient Tool. The Clone Stamp allows users to select an area of the image then by tapping in other locations on the image will paste that selected area of the image to the location (Figure 12). The Pattern Stamp allows users to select a texture (Figure 13) then to stamp that on the image (Figure 14). Both of these stamps, while producing great impact to existing images, are terrific when creating new images.


Figure 12: The Clone Stamp	Figure 13: The Texture Selector for the Pattern Stamp

Figure 14: The Pattern Stamp

Finally, the Gradient tool allows users to graduate a color onto an image. When the tool is selected, users tap and draw a line on the displayed image. When they release the line, Pocket Artist automatically fills the image with the gradient of colors of the foreground and background (Figure 15). In addition to foreground gradients, users can also select from a wide range of built-in gradients such as Red to Green, Chrome and Rainbows.

Figure 15: The Gradient Tool

The next sets of tools are the Photo tools (Figure 16). These tools allow users to perform advanced photo editing such as dodging and burning, red eye elimination, smearing and cleaning of a photo.

Figure 16: The Photo Tool Menu

Dodging and Burning refers to a process that is often used in photographic labs to lighten or darken an area of an image by directing more or less light onto the area. It is a practice that has most commonly been used in black and white photography to increase or decrease contrast. To that end, Pocket Artist offers the digital equivalent of this process to allow users to do the same thing to their digital images (Figure 17).

Figure 17: Dodge and Burn Tool - Note the headlights and grill

Smearing is somewhat self explanatory as it relates to its use in Pocket Artist. Users can digitally smear part of an image to allow for blending or other effects (Figure 18).

Figure 18: The Smear Tool

With all of the tools on the Paint and Photo menus, it is important for users to remember the vast amount of control they have with them. By selecting the color and the size of the editing tool itself, along with the zooming abilities of Pocket Artist, users can finely tune an image or a part of an image.

With the Edit Tools users can cut, paste and select parts of an image. This can be done with various geometric shapes such as circles and squares (Figure 19) or with the Magic Wand which allows users to automatically outline an area that is selected (Figure 20).


Figure 19: Square Cut Tool	Figure 20: The Magic Wand

New in Pocket Artist 3.1 are several important and useful features. Some of these features include

Batch JPEG Conversion
JPEG Information Editing
Layer Masking
Alpha Channel Operations
Multilevel undo abilities
Virtual Memory Swap File Area
Clipboard Integration
Animated GIF Wizard

For a complete list of all of the new features and functions of Pocket Artist 3.1, visit the Pocket Artist 3.1 website at http://www.conduits.com/products/artist/.

Batch JPEG Conversion, as the name implies, allows users to select a group of images and convert them as a group or individual to JPEG formatted images, thus saving precious storage space on the Windows Mobile device yet maintaining image quality. To convert files, tap the Menu>Image>Tools>Batch Processing... and a file explorer window is displayed with images in the directory chosen. Once the images are selected, users are prompted to either convert all the selected files at once or one at a time (Figure 21). By selecting to have each file individually converted, users can enter JPEG information for the file which is described below. During the process of converting the files, users can transform, crop and edit the image on-the-fly (Figure 22) saving them time at the end of the conversion process.


Figure 21: Individual File Conversion Using The JPEG Batch Conversion Tool	Figure 22: Transformation and Editing Can be done during the JPEG Batch Conversion Process

As mentioned above, in Pocket Artist 3.1, users can now edit the information related to JPEG files. This allows users to associate keywords, copyright and other important information with the file, especially those they plan to share in a public location such as an Internet website. To edit this information, users tap the Menu>Image>Tools>Edit Captions/Info... menu while a file is open on their device. This opens a multi-tab screen which users can then enter the information regarding the file (Figure 23). This information can include keywords, the date of creation, geographical information, instructional information, reference information, and copyright information.

Figure 23: The JPEG File Information Editing Screen

These are just a few of the many tools that are available in Pocket Artist 3.1. While this review is designed to give a detailed overview of Pocket Artist it is in no way comprehensive in nature. The amount of tools and editing features available in Pocket Artist is simply too vast. For example, this review does not cover Pocket Artists ability to screen capture, ability to layer images or any of the customizations that users can do to the application itself. Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com! Highly recommends readers to download the trial version of Pocket Artist 3.1 as well as review the online documentation available from Conduits. The trial version can be found at http://www.conduits.com/products/artist/download.asp while the documentation can be found at http://www.conduits.com/products/artist/documentation3.asp.

It is hard to find anything not to like about Pocket Artist 3.1. The levels of tools that are available in the application are second-to-none and all are easy to use although some do require a bit of practice. The application runs well in both portrait and landscape mode (Figure 24) and the performance of Pocket Artist has been significantly improved in this version. It would be nice to see some of the file features (Save, Open, Print, etc) on a toolbar in future versions so as not to have to constantly tap the Menu.

Figure 24: Pocket Artist 3.1 in Landscape Mode

As with other Conduits Technologies applications, the support provided for Pocket Artist is outstanding. Their support structure is both email based as well as online forum based with response times being easily within 24 hours on test emails sent to the support team. The information provided by the support team was both helpful and accurate.

Whether a photo editor or creative artist, Conduits Pocket Artist 3.1 should be a must have for any Windows Mobile user who needs to be able to quickly - but professionally - edit and create.

You can try Pocket Artist at the Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com! store by clicking here!

Clinton Fitch
Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com!