Picturesque: Adding the Esque to Images Without the Umph

Nowadays, with all these new features in Leopard, you would expect that Apple would give us an app that would make images look, well, good. I don’t mean changing color, hue, saturation, brightness, etc. I mean adding simple effects like a reflection or a shadow. you could go out and buy Photoshop or Pixelmator, but there is a much easier option. There is Picturesque.

Picturesque, by Acqualia, has just been updated to version 2.0 (for the Apple Design Awards). Version 2.0 has improved the interface, the ease of use, and the utilization of new Leopard features. It makes adding some of these simple effects very simple. You really just have to click a few buttons and you’re off.

When you first open Picturesque you will get one of those drag-and-drop screens. You simply drag a photo there! (Or two, or three or as many as you want.) Picturesque 2 adds a thumbnail bar at the top that shows you all the images you have opened. This makes it simple to edit one image, and with a click of the mouse, start on another. In the bottom of the window you will see the options for editing your image.

All of the options work pretty much the same way. You click on the text for the option (the name) and it will turn it either on or off. You then click on the picture above the text to specify the options for that effect. The options vary for each effect, but almost all of them make perfect sense. The only option that works differently is the background option. You will always have a background when you are editing your images, but not always when you save them. If you save to PNG of TIFF, it will not automatically add a background color. In order for it to save a background you have to deselect the Transparent Background checkbox in the save panel. When you’re finished working with it you can save your images at anywhere from 0-100% of the image’s original size. Picturesque will calculate the proportions of length to width based on the effects you add, so you don’t need to worry about that! You just need to give it a percent or a number of pixels for the length or width.

One of the biggest features added in version 2.0 is presets. You can make a preset of the effects that you did to a certain image, and it can apply those on other images! Once you have added the effects that you want to use as a preset, just click the Presets button and then the [+] button in the panel that appears. Now you just name it, and you are off. Whenever you want to use that preset, you just click on its name.

Presets are extremely helpful for batch editing of images. Once you have edited a batch of images, you just have to click Save All… from the bottom of the screen. It will present you with a save dialog that asks you for a folder to save all of your images to. It gives you the normal options that were in the regular save dialog, but it also has a few more. You can add a suffix and number them (which will add a suffix to the suffix). These are extremely helpful for batch, because sometimes you need them numbered. You can also check the Fit Into checkbox to fit all of the images into a certain size. This does no cropping, or changing of proportion. It just makes sure that all the images are smaller or equal to the size specified.

One new feature that is really just for show is the ability to see the image that you are editing in the dock. In the general preferences, just select Show current image in dock icon. This actually puts your image into the dock icon where the picture of the lady used to be.

Picturesque, by Acqualia is a free update for people who bought Picturesque 1 after April 4th, and retails for $34.95 for the rest of us. Just compare that price to the alternative apps that may have more features, but end up not doing simple tasks like reflections. Picturesque really adds that ‘extra mile’ to your images, so you can have professional looking images at a non-professional price.

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