�So you want to start using gray-scale scans for desktop publishing.
You want to place black-and-white images directly in electronic page
layouts and then print negatives on your imagesetter or laser printer.
[?]
For years now buying a gray-scale program has been [?] a binary
decision: Digital Darkroom, from Silicon Beach, or Letraset's
ImageStudio. Recently two new programs have entered the picture [?
MicroFrontier Enhance for technical image analysis and Blue Solutions
PhotoPress for no-nonsense production].
[?] I agree wholehearedly with Blue Soutions' gray-scale strategy. The
idea was to produce an easy-to-use program at a reasonable price for
the vast majority [?.].
Unfortunately, the path to Blue Solutions' door is liable to remain
relatively untrodden [?] and this program embodies too many poor
choices for me to recommend it, despite its price advantage.
PhotoPress does have a few things going for it. Like Enhance but
unlike Digital Darkroom and ImageStudio, PhotoPress displays a full
256 gray values on screen. [?] PhotoPress's most sophisticated feature
is an option that save selection marquees for later use. [?]
Another nice PhotoPress feature is its Dynamic Masking, which works a
bit like Enhance's Threshold filter, providing visual feedback so you
can isolate a value or range of values precisely. [?]
PhotoPress lacks some of the other programs' most useful tools.
Missing are smudge, lighten, and darken (charcoal), as well as blur,
which is key since it makes manual antialiasing possible. [?]
[PhotoPress treats] all scans as if they were 72-dpi. [?] That
wouldn't be too bad, except PhotoPress /can't zoom out/ [?]
Overall, PhotoPress just feels half-baked and I can't quite picture
the user it would serve well.�
? Macworld, 1990 April, pp.125-130
