That’ll be the huge PDF manual!
A new version of PhotoDesk will be available on CD at the Southwest Show on Saturday. If you want to get your hands on version 3.21 XAT, along with a new 200 page PDF manual, accompanied by an image pack to allow you to try out the techniques described in it, you’ll need to head for the R-Comp stand.
The comprehensive photo-editing application dates back to the 1990s, originally coming from Spacetech, and subsequently Photodesk Ltd which took over the Spacetech range. The software later found a home with CJE Micro’s, and eventually the rights were purchased by X-Ample Technology (XAT) in the Netherlands, and last year a new version was released with R-Comp’s help.
With the software is supplied by R-Comp courtesy of XAT, with the update work beginning life at the fingertips of Detlef Thielsch (and possibly Willi Theiss) – R-Comp acknowledges and thanks both for their work – with additional work and maintenance done at the UK end of the chain.
Version 3.21 – which was originally going to be 3.20, but a few last minute fixes has meant an additional version bump – addresses a range of bugs and crashes, and includes a little cosmetic work. It also includes some changes to make it that much easier to use PhotoDesk on all your machines – it should work ‘out of the box’ on all RISC OS 3.5 and later systems.
As noted above, the new release includes a brand new manual, stretching to 200 pages. Written and produced by Chris Terran, the manual is full of techniques and tutorials for a wide range of effects, showing how they can be achieved effectively with the software. To support this, there is an image pack that allows users to apply the same techniques to the same images to achieve the same results – the best way to understand how they work.
The pack also includes a collection of images that can be fully tiled for use in fills and textures.
The manual is quite hefty, weighing in at over 20MB in size – unsurprisingly, given that by its nature its going to contain a lot of photographic images – and the image pack itself is therefore a similarly large zip, and these will be available on Saturday neatly packaged up with the application on a CD.
If you’ve purchased the program from !Store recently, the CD will be available to you for a mere fiver, which will cover the cost of its production. Otherwise, previous PhotoDesk users can upgrade to version 3.21 XAT by buying the CD for £30.00, and if you are a new user it will be £45.00.
