| | Fr. Jacob Myers July, 2002 | 
| This is not a review of the Wacom Pressure Tablet like the one below, but in order to use the software that I am reviewing, you will need to have one of these tablets. The investment is between $100 to $200 for the tablet, and the software bundled with the tablet and written specifically for the tablet is free. 
I have been reviewing the software produced by nikMultimedia including nik Color Efex Pro! and nik Sharpener Pro!, which is where I heard about penPalette. The concept which I will tell about in a minute so excited me that even though I had to go out and buy a Wacom Tablet so that I could use this software, I did so almost immediately. Here is the principle I found so profound: with a Wacom tablet and penPalette, you can "selectively apply digital image enhancements" with the pen to a local area of a photo...no masking or doing anything other than using the software. In addition, you can erase with another stroke part or all of what you have just applied...or, because you are using a pressure pen, you can apply the enhancement with up to 1024 levels of pressure. It launches from inside of Photoshop and can remain ready to be used whenever photo-retouching is needed. Before showing you how this actually works...just hearing the concept of locally applied filters to only parts of a photo that you choose was all it took for me to buy the Tablet, and I suppose that might be all it takes for some of you reading this. I have not been disappointed and am learning how to use the Wacom pen instead of a mouse in the process. OK, so lets take a look at this piece of work. Let me take a rather grain'ie' icon that was sent to me recently. Some parts of the icon are ok and some are not... the face and hands and background have way to much grain in them: 
Lets launch the tool box from inside of Photoshop. PenPallette comes with eight filters which I will describe a little later. You will notice that there is also room for additional 
Clicking on the settings in the tool book above brings up the settings menu. If you have any other of the nik products, which by the way are an excellent set of filters for photos you can check them and they will also appear in the penPalette tool box and can be used in the same fashion as the 8 pen palette filters: 
Now I am going to choose the despeckle filter. My choices for improving the texture of this icon are also the Warm Tone, Cool Tone, Contrast, Colorize, Add Noise, Despeckle, Soften, and Contrast Only filters. To give a brief explanation of each filter, the one I chose, the despeckle filter provides a smoothing effect that also gets rid of unwanted grain in a photo of which the one I have used has a good deal; the warm tone filter adds a balance of warmth to the photo; the cool tone make the photo less bright; the contrast filter adds light or darkens an portion of the image with a good deal of control, allowing for an emphasis on objects either in the foreground or the background; the softening filter speaks for itself, the contrast only filter applies contrast without effecting color 
All of the filters have a sliding scale that allows for more or less of the filter to be used. In the tool box you can add the despeckle effect by clicking on the "paint" button, and to take some of it off, you can click on the "erase" button. If you want the filter to apply to the whole picture, just click on the "fill" button, and if you do not like any of the effect or you want to start over click on the "clear" button. If you like what you have done, hit the apply button and you have the result below. I selectively despeckled the gold back ground and the face and hands: 
And the below result is using some of the filters on various parts of the icon. 
The possiblities for image enhancement are endless with a Wacom Table and penPalette software. Compatibility penPalette is an Adobe Photoshop plug-in for:
Adobe Photoshop Elements on Windows (98/SE/ME/2000/XP)
Adobe Photoshop 5.5 & later (incl. 7.0) on Windows (98/SE/ME/2000/XP)
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 on OS X.
(Wacom does have an Adobe Photoshop plug-in called PenTools available for use on Macs that boot in OS 8 & 9 and are running Adobe Photoshop 5, 5.5, and 6. PenTools can be installed from the software bundle CD that came with your tablet or can be downloaded from the Wacom site.)
penPalette has the same hardware requirements as its host application
penPalette requires a Wacom tablet for graphics tablet functionality (pressure-sensitivity, eraser support, tilt, and airbrush control). penPalette is not compatible with tablets from other manufacturers. penPalette works with a mouse but will not have any pen related control or functionality.
www.wacom.com/penpalettebynik/products.cfm Copyright 2002, Fr. Jacob Myers, All Rights Reserved | |
