Chasys Draw IES
Encyclopedia
Chasys Draw IES is a suite of applications including a layer
-based raster graphics editor
with animation
, vista
-style icon
support and super-resolution
via image stacking (Chasys Draw IES Artist), a multi-threaded
image file converter (Chasys Draw IES Converter) and a fast image viewer (Chasys Draw IES Viewer). The whole suite is Vista UAC
aware and is designed to take advantage of multi-core processors.
The software is developed by John Paul Chacha in Nairobi
, Kenya
.
Chasys Draw IES is currently released as freeware
, and is available for computers running Microsoft Windows
operating system
s.
The suite is coded in a blend of C
, C++
and assembly language
. It runs on x86 processors and supports the MMX
, SSE
, SSE2
and S-SSE3
instruction set
s.
Chasys Draw classic : The original Chasys Draw dates back to November, 2001. It was a rather simple bitmap editor, a lot like MS Paint save for its ability to do gradients. A humble application done in visual basic
, it wasn't much to write home about. This application underwent many changes, eventually leading up to Chasys Draw 5. This was the first version to have its own native format, referred to simply as CD5.
Chasys Draw DTFx : Major updates to the graphics code in May 2002 resulted in Chasys Draw DTFx (Direct Tool eFfects). The new graphics code being referred to here was actually a miniature bitmap abstraction engine that allowed for fast per-pixel operations and direct image buffer access (much as the DIB engine does for GDI). The engine was named JpDRAW. This version was also done in VB, but was much faster than all the previous versions. The new graphics code allowed for more tools to be implemented than was ever possible before.
Chasys Draw Artist 1.0~1.2 : 2002 was a year of many changes. For one, the developer decided to completely abandon VB as a programming platform and moved all the code to C
/C++
. The power of C allowed a lot of things to be done with pixels, but this power needed control, so the developer started out on an ambitious project to turn JpDRAW into a full-fledged graphics engine witch was named JpDRAW2. Chasys Draw was then re-baptized as Chasys Draw Artist. The CD5 image format was also updated to reflect the new features. By coincidence, the module that implemented the file format was the fifth module to be added, so the format was called Chasys Draw module 5, retaining the .cd5 file extension. Internally, the format was referred to as "trendy" (hence the term "cd5 trendies") due to its ability to encode image data as mathematical trends (simple "equation-lets").
Chasys Draw Artist 1.22~1.27 : April 2004 saw the release of Chasys Draw Artist 1.22, which was loaded with new features, but was rather difficult to use. Subsequent updates led up to version 1.27, which was the first version to be posted on the internet (notably on betanews). User reviews posted on various websites provided useful input that ultimately guided the development of future versions.
Chasys Draw Artist 1.54~1.90 : In 2005, Chasys Draw underwent major user interface changes as well as internal changes. By December of that year, the project had reached version 1.63. This was the first version to introduce advanced features such as anti-aliasing
. It was also the first version with full support for alpha channels. The version had been intentionally pumped full of features to counter a code leak that had resulted in the cracking of version 1.60's security code. The CD5 image format was also upgraded to version 2, adding advanced compression
, full alpha channels, encryption
and metadata
. Version 1.80 introduced the "chazy-glass" interface, from which the all later versions' user interfaces borrowed.
Version 1.63 was the first version to win an IEEE (Kenya
chapter) award in ICT.
Chasys Draw Artist 2.01~2.42 : Chasys Draw Artist adopted photo editing
features and many other functions that are generally considered essential for any proper image editing application in version 2.01. This version gained a lot of popularity from the fact that it performed typical tasks much faster than the industry giants. Subsequent revisions squeezed in more features and functionality, including automations that made workflow smoother for the user. Comprehensive tutorials were added and many features were re-designed to make them easier to use. Multi-threading
was introduced to accelerate some tasks, such as the improved auto-save engine. Utilities such as a converter and browser were added.
Chasys Draw Artist 2.43 : The version 2.43 of Chasys Draw Artist was quietly released to the public in late 2007 without any announcements. It featured many fixes to the formal version 2.42, as well as many new features. The quiet release was due to a decision to re-build Chasys Draw Artist from scratch, while still continuing support for the old architecture.
Chasys Draw Artist 2.45 "Clara on Fire" : Version 2.45 was an experimental edition that was released only to beta-testers for the purpose of testing new technologies that would be included in the new architecture. This version revealed weaknesses in the original structure that would make the adoption of intended improvements such as layer
support difficult to introduce without compromising the stability of the code. Chasys Draw Artist 2.45 was officially withdrawn in May 2008.
Chasys Draw IES 2.50 "Latifah" : During the time when the versions 2.43~2.45 were being released, work was underway to create a Chasys Draw that, acoording to the developer "would change the face of the project forever". This edition took a radically different internal structure that completely transformed the way the application operated. The intention was to bring the project to a level that would make it "so good and so full-featured that it would shake the very foundations of the market giants and rip a huge chunk of the market share from them". It was not only to provide all the features they have, but to do so in a better way. The new application would be a suite designed to be fast, reliable, scalable, and fully Vista UAC compliant to attract new users. It is on this platform that the IES suite was born, and with it many supporting technologies, such as CD5 v3, the new multi-stream, stream-able, extendable, tag-based container-style image format.
Chasys Draw IES 2.51 ~ 2.52 : IES 2.51 introduced animation and multi-resolution support as editing modes. IES 2.52 brought in an unlimited undo engine, new plug-ins and several internal fixes. The application acquired a new look and several speed-boosting modifications.
Chasys Draw IES 2.53 ~ 2.55 : These introduced super-resolution
and image stacking, support for video and video capture
, and other high-end features. Anti-aliasing
was later introduced in the line and shape tools. New super-resolution modes were added.
Chasys Draw IES 2.56 "Sniper-Kit" : IES 2.56 introduced support for metadata save and restore; and to keep Photoshop die-hards happy, the all-famous pen tool in the form of a "Pen and Path" tool. Physical measurement specification was added for the old-school class, and a video
sequence composer engine was also thrown in. The user interface was enhanced with adaptive scrolling and the auto-save engine was optimized. Some memory management
was added for machines with low RAM
.
Chasys Draw IES 2.57 ~ 2.59 : Internal distribution versions. JPEG 2000
read/write plug-in added.
Chasys Draw IES 2.60 ~ 2.61 "Ivy" : IES 2.60 introduced Anti-aliased Pen and Path object cutting, setting it a notch above other editors. Shell integration with thumbnail
s and application-level support for multi-monitor display setups was added to make it easier to use the editor with multiple screens at the same time. Metadata
was extended to support save, restore and scaling for text formatting and path data. A Photoshop import plug-in was also thrown into the works. IES 2.61 refined these features, and featured an improved palette with exchangeable swatches, loadable from all kinds of palette files. A slicing tool for web and user interface design was also included. A C++
code module output for inline image generation was added, as was a constrained recolor brush.
Chasys Draw IES 2.62 ~ 2.63 "Kazara" : IES 2.62 introduced the concept of a "fully anti-aliased work-flow", in which all drawing and selection tools are anti-aliased by default. To support this, a highly improved version of the JpDRAW2 engine was adopted, including the so-called Path API for JpDRAW2.
Chasys Draw IES 2.64 ~ 2.65 "Ivy" : IES 2.64 saw the introduction of full-page gradients (like you have in Photoshop), polygon selection and the famous "magnetic lasso" as an extension to Pen and Path. Restrictions on the API were removed to encourage third-party plug-in development. Poly-lines and poly-curves were made editable, and new shapes were added to the shape tool. Version 2.65 polished the interface, adding better support for tool editing and improving re-editable text support. The SDKs were streamlined, with no restrictions on use.
Chasys Draw IES 2.66 "Switch-Blade" : IES 2.66 introduced support for Photoshop plug-ins using Adobe's 8bf format, allowing user to utilize thousands of free plug-ins available online. A new blending mode
was also added: Overlay.
Chasys Draw IES 2.67 "EasterEgg" : IES 2.67 introduced the Just-in-Time memory compressor, significantly reducing the editor's memory requirements. Equivalents for the Pantone
palette
s (PMS 100 to 814-2x) were added. Improvements were made to super-resolution and stacking. Color management
(ICM) was also improved, as was the printing interface.
Chasys Draw IES 2.68 ~ 2.69 : IES 2.68 featured major changes to the Converter component, adding an improved parallel process engine and a re-designed user interface. IES 2.69 introduced a DirectSHOW
video import plug-in, minor changes to the SDK, all backward compatible, and a best-in-class post-edit heuristics anti-aliasing engine. For user of netbooks, a special small-screen mode was added.
Chasys Draw IES 2.70 ~ 2.71 : IES went freeware
. With the coming of the freeware IES, two blending modes
(Hue and Chroma) were added. Textures were improved to allow multiple layer-based textures. The TextArt G3 engine was enhanced with LINK metadata, and alpha shift was improved.
Chasys Draw IES 2.72 ~ 2.73 : IES 2.72 added the Luma Wand tool, fixed PNG and TIFF transparency issues, and fixed Smart-Paste transparency. TextArt's "border" fill style was also fixed. IES 2.73 introduced a TextArt engine that accepts alpha in textures, added 'Make Tile' effect, 'Save Group' option, Luma blending mode, hard merge (blit) and a Luma Wand tool for the adventurous.
Chasys Draw IES 2.74 ~ 2.75 : IES 2.74 introduced alpha protection, and 2.75 followed with a new adjustments engine that faced out many effects implemented by the effects engine. The adjustments engine was designed to appeal to experienced image editors, who find such an interface more intuitive and useful.
Chasys Draw IES 2.76 ~ 2.77 : IES 2.76 introduced a new transform engine and the Resizer for IES plug-in supporting multi-core and 18 scaling methods, including customizable windowed Sinc
interpolation
. IES 2.77 added Greyscale with Tint adjustment, separated the Lock and Click-Thru layer properties, extended the Cloning Brush with three options (this, below and composite) and also extended the Color Picker with multiple point sampling.
Chasys Draw IES 2.78 : IES 2.78 introduced the "Greyscale with Tint" adjustment and separated the Locked and Click-Thru layer properties. The Cloning Brush was extended with three options, this, below and composite, as was the Color Picker extended with multiple point sampling. The Texturizer tool and Photoshop 8BF Plug-in were updated and new curve-fitting algorithm added.
Chasys Draw IES 3.01 : IES 3.01 brought a new look and many breakthrough tools to the suite. It was geared toward touch and was fully compatible with Windows 7. The toolbox was reorganized, with some tools being grouped and new ones added. Some message boxes were replaced with a new popup system, and the working of the workspace was changed to use a back-blitter
, which enabled the addition of new blending modes, Screen and Mask. The printing interface was modified and given accurate proofing. Alpha Function Adjustment was added and a new Anti-Posterization Engine included for all adjustments to remove the need for 16 bits per channel editing. An internal clipboard was created to cater for copying images that are too large for the Windows clipboard, and translucency full-page gradients added. Some new tutorials were added and keyboard shortcuts made configurable.
Chasys Draw IES 3.05 : IES 3.05 brought the power of custom full-page gradients to the suite, supporting .ggr, .grd and .gra gradients. New gradient styles were included, as was support for Adobe color tables (.act), palette previewing, point color editing and a highly improved TextArt engine.
Chasys Draw IES 3.11 : IES 3.11 was done on a new development base. It added a new application, raw-Input. This was a RAW image format processor based on dcraw. A brush object and gadget were introduced, and with them custom & animated brushes in ABR, GBR and CD5 formats. An alternate pattern brush was also added. The UI got fluid scrolling and minor adjustments. The palette was enhanced, making it multi-method (Swatches, HSL, HSV). Alpha protection was extended to include merges, and a touch gadget was added to make life easier for tablet-PC owners.
Chasys Draw IES 3.21 : IES 3.21 introduced a new effects engine, complete with wavelet denoising. A multimode Brush Object was introduced. The application was optimized for Camera Phones, including a better super-resolution engine. The layer sub-system saw a major upgrade, bringing layer annotations and multiple layer attachments of unlimited size. The maximum tool width was increased to 1024pix. The UI also saw some changes, with the palette being upgraded to a five-method one (Swatches, HSL, HSV, RGB, CMYK), and some keyboard shortcuts (re-pressing a quick-select reverts to former tool, layer deletion via Del key).
Chasys Draw IES 3.24 : IES 3.24 came with a re-designed user interface, powered by a higher performance graphics core and better memory management. A history palette was introduced, as was a new screen capture function with video capability. The layer palette received drag-drop capability and unsharp masking got yet another upgrade.
Chasys Draw IES 3.27 : IES 3.27 introduced the Blocks tool and Soft proofing with ICC profiles. In raw-Photo, clipboard support was added and the preset for sRGB fixed. UI animation and response were improved, as was the Texture Brush.
Chasys Draw IES 3.29 : IES 3.29 introduced the use of project templates and color filter matrices. Animated cursor creation was added as was mark-up metadata broadcast; and the JPEG
plug-in had Exif mark-up added.
Chasys Draw IES 3.31 : IES 3.31 introduced a completely redesigned Viewer
, many fixes for UI, core and Win-7 support, improved zoom functionality, full EXIF read and write support, and a sizable Mark-up window.
Chasys Draw IES 3.33 : IES 3.33 introduced Pen and Tablet support (incl. Wacom
) an Object-aware Hand Tool, major upgrades to the raw-Photo component and improved Noise Reduction
. It supports JPEG DPI
mark-up and full EXIF-in-RAW support with editing, and popup information in Viewer
.
Chasys Draw IES 3.36 : IES 3.36 introduced Brush Engine 2.0 with brush metadata, AQuE (Anti-Quantization
Engine), improved Hand usability, configurable preview background and a highly improved screenshot
engine. It also supports CD5 v3,10.
Chasys Draw IES 3.37 : IES 3.37 replaced Resizer for IES with the Advanced Resampling Engine and included improved Gradient objects, TextArt and Video Screen Capture. It also had new Templates (CD Label, Scan, Screencast, Capture) and a few minor UI tweaks.
Chasys Draw IES 3.40 : IES 3.40 introduced LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling, Floating Layers, a new decorative, backing color specification, a highly improved Icon Generator engine, improved support for Photoshop 8BF plugins, improved Autosave subsystem and a new user interface for the Converter application. Many issues were fixed and the Device SDK was updated to release. The SDK also saw a few updates, including the addition of pi_BasicImage.
Chasys Draw IES 3.41 : IES 3.41 introduced the Crop
and Rotate tool, an improved Tool Engine, support for Adobe's pattern files (.PAT), improved texture object handling, and a host of internal changes.
Chasys Draw IES 3.56 : IES 3.56.01 was the product of porting Chasys Draw IES from ANSI
to UNICODE
. It featured the first version of the Live Language Translation Engine, with multiple language support
(7 language files included). It also featured an improved Crop and Rotate Tool, improved User Interfaces for all applications, FastExternals 2.21 and new pi_BASICIMAGE APIs (::translate, ::transform, and ::convolute)
Chasys Draw IES 3.60 : IES 3.60.01 introduced an all-new Converter capable of duplicating subfolder hierarchies, multipage support in Viewer, LLTE 1.2 and improved user interfaces. It had an improved updater and modernized installer. Diffuse Glow was added, and several internal changes were made to all applications. A build .02 and build .03 were released to fix a few bugs with some plug-ins and the installer.
Chasys Draw IES 3.61 : IES 3.61.01 introduced the TextArt G4 Engine, which was up to 10 times faster than its predecessor. New paper size presets were also included, as were some minor UI improvements and several bug fixes.
Chasys Draw IES 3.62 : IES 3.62 introduced the Dynamics Tool with 3 options (whitepoint, greypoint, blackpoint), Paste as New, and an improved Magnetic Lasso algorithm. Super-Res via Heuristics was expanded to do multiple layers, and shell integration was improved.
Chasys Draw IES 3.63 : IES 3.63 featured highly improved Photoshop 8BF support, a Silent Install option, Drag-drop to the Layers window, a censoring brush (under fx Brush), Improved RAW support, FastExternals 2.22 with a new callback suite (pi_StateStore), an external histogram window and a new Touch Gadget. It also included several bug fixes.
Chasys Draw IES 3.64 : IES 3.64 featured a cleaner, faster UI, major speed boost for effect previews, fault-tolerant file saving, taskbar progress reporting for Windows 7, improved transparency support in copy-paste, enhanced pi_StateStore functionality, improved Photoshop 8BF support, four new blur effects (Spin, Zoom, Motion, Surface) and fixes several bugs.
Build .02 introduced more UI changes and fixed bugs in fault-tolerant saving and Wacom Tablet support.
Chasys Draw IES 3.65 : IES 3.65 featured Brush Engine 2.4 with new brushes, an improved Razor tool, improved support for PCX, PPM and GTX, FastExternals 2.31, Power Management for all apps, improved Picker-Palette interaction and fixed some bugs in the Adobe Brush/Pattern plug-in.
The default image mode, composite
, renders the layers as a stack for the purpose of compositing
.
In the multi-resolution image mode, similar copies of the image are made at different resolutions. The destination device then has a choice of images to choose from, depending on the intended display resolution. This mode is primarily used for creating icons and cursors.
The animation
image mode is used for short videos, known as animations. In this mode, only one layer is displayed at a time, one after the other, after a duration of time dictated by the frame delay layer attribute. It is analogous to the way an artist can draw a slightly different figure on each page of a pad of paper so that when you flip between sheets rapidly, the drawing appears to move.
s, and support for others can be added using plug-ins. The native format is Chasys Draw Image (CD5).
- path super-sampling enables very smooth selections, smoother than you would get with any other image editor
Engines :
Transforms :
Adjustments :
Effects :
Blending modes
:
Miscellaneous :
giving it a 5/5 star rating and saying "Chasys Draw IES Artist is a free, full-featured image editing and drawing program that does what big-box programs like Adobe Photoshop can do, with a few unique touches that set it apart and actually make it easier to use than the competition." Some users have pointed out that it is a very powerful piece of software and one of those you need to try for yourself to really appreciate.
.
Layers (digital image editing)
Layers are used in digital image editing to separate different elements of an image. A layer can be compared to a transparency on which imaging effects or images are applied and placed over or under an image...
-based raster graphics editor
Raster graphics editor
A raster graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to paint and edit pictures interactively on the computer screen and save them in one of many popular “bitmap” or “raster” formats such as JPEG, PNG, GIF and TIFF....
with animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
, vista
Vista
Vista usually refers to a distant view.Vista may also refer to:-Software:*Windows Vista, the line of Microsoft Windows client operating systems released in 2006 and 2007...
-style icon
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
support and super-resolution
Super-resolution
Super-resolution are techniques that enhance the resolution of an imaging system. Some SR techniques break the diffraction-limit of systems, while other SR techniques improve over the resolution of digital imaging sensor....
via image stacking (Chasys Draw IES Artist), a multi-threaded
Thread (computer science)
In computer science, a thread of execution is the smallest unit of processing that can be scheduled by an operating system. The implementation of threads and processes differs from one operating system to another, but in most cases, a thread is contained inside a process...
image file converter (Chasys Draw IES Converter) and a fast image viewer (Chasys Draw IES Viewer). The whole suite is Vista UAC
User Account Control
User Account Control is a technology and security infrastructure introduced with Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems, with a more relaxed version also present in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2...
aware and is designed to take advantage of multi-core processors.
The software is developed by John Paul Chacha in Nairobi
Nairobi
Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city and its surrounding area also forms the Nairobi County. The name "Nairobi" comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyirobi, which translates to "the place of cool waters". However, it is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun" and is...
, Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
.
Chasys Draw IES is currently released as freeware
Freeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
, and is available for computers running Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s.
The suite is coded in a blend of C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
, C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
and assembly language
Assembly language
An assembly language is a low-level programming language for computers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other programmable devices. It implements a symbolic representation of the machine codes and other constants needed to program a given CPU architecture...
. It runs on x86 processors and supports the MMX
MMX
MMX is a single instruction, multiple data instruction set designed by Intel, introduced in 1996 with their P5-based Pentium line of microprocessors, designated as "Pentium with MMX Technology". It developed out of a similar unit introduced on the Intel i860, and earlier the Intel i750 video pixel...
, SSE
SSE
-Computing:*Server-sent events, a technology to push content to web clients*Simple Sharing Extensions, a specification that extends RSS from unidirectional to bidirectional information flows*SPARQL Syntax Expressions*Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition...
, SSE2
SSE2
SSE2, Streaming SIMD Extensions 2, is one of the Intel SIMD processor supplementary instruction sets first introduced by Intel with the initial version of the Pentium 4 in 2001. It extends the earlier SSE instruction set, and is intended to fully supplant MMX. Intel extended SSE2 to create SSE3...
and S-SSE3
SSSE3
Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 is a SIMD instruction set created by Intel and is the fourth iteration of the SSE technology.- History :...
instruction set
Instruction set
An instruction set, or instruction set architecture , is the part of the computer architecture related to programming, including the native data types, instructions, registers, addressing modes, memory architecture, interrupt and exception handling, and external I/O...
s.
History
Chasys Draw is a project that was started back in 2001 by John Paul Chacha, mostly as a hobby than anything else. Outlined below are some key stages in its development, as sites on the developer's site:Chasys Draw classic : The original Chasys Draw dates back to November, 2001. It was a rather simple bitmap editor, a lot like MS Paint save for its ability to do gradients. A humble application done in visual basic
Visual Basic
Visual Basic is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model...
, it wasn't much to write home about. This application underwent many changes, eventually leading up to Chasys Draw 5. This was the first version to have its own native format, referred to simply as CD5.
Chasys Draw DTFx : Major updates to the graphics code in May 2002 resulted in Chasys Draw DTFx (Direct Tool eFfects). The new graphics code being referred to here was actually a miniature bitmap abstraction engine that allowed for fast per-pixel operations and direct image buffer access (much as the DIB engine does for GDI). The engine was named JpDRAW. This version was also done in VB, but was much faster than all the previous versions. The new graphics code allowed for more tools to be implemented than was ever possible before.
Chasys Draw Artist 1.0~1.2 : 2002 was a year of many changes. For one, the developer decided to completely abandon VB as a programming platform and moved all the code to C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
/C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
. The power of C allowed a lot of things to be done with pixels, but this power needed control, so the developer started out on an ambitious project to turn JpDRAW into a full-fledged graphics engine witch was named JpDRAW2. Chasys Draw was then re-baptized as Chasys Draw Artist. The CD5 image format was also updated to reflect the new features. By coincidence, the module that implemented the file format was the fifth module to be added, so the format was called Chasys Draw module 5, retaining the .cd5 file extension. Internally, the format was referred to as "trendy" (hence the term "cd5 trendies") due to its ability to encode image data as mathematical trends (simple "equation-lets").
Chasys Draw Artist 1.22~1.27 : April 2004 saw the release of Chasys Draw Artist 1.22, which was loaded with new features, but was rather difficult to use. Subsequent updates led up to version 1.27, which was the first version to be posted on the internet (notably on betanews). User reviews posted on various websites provided useful input that ultimately guided the development of future versions.
Chasys Draw Artist 1.54~1.90 : In 2005, Chasys Draw underwent major user interface changes as well as internal changes. By December of that year, the project had reached version 1.63. This was the first version to introduce advanced features such as anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing
In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...
. It was also the first version with full support for alpha channels. The version had been intentionally pumped full of features to counter a code leak that had resulted in the cracking of version 1.60's security code. The CD5 image format was also upgraded to version 2, adding advanced compression
Data compression
In computer science and information theory, data compression, source coding or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation would use....
, full alpha channels, encryption
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
and metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
. Version 1.80 introduced the "chazy-glass" interface, from which the all later versions' user interfaces borrowed.
Version 1.63 was the first version to win an IEEE (Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
chapter) award in ICT.
Chasys Draw Artist 2.01~2.42 : Chasys Draw Artist adopted photo editing
Photo editing
Photo editing can refer to:* Image editing techniques applied to photographs.* The cultural impact and ethical concerns of photo manipulation....
features and many other functions that are generally considered essential for any proper image editing application in version 2.01. This version gained a lot of popularity from the fact that it performed typical tasks much faster than the industry giants. Subsequent revisions squeezed in more features and functionality, including automations that made workflow smoother for the user. Comprehensive tutorials were added and many features were re-designed to make them easier to use. Multi-threading
Thread (computer science)
In computer science, a thread of execution is the smallest unit of processing that can be scheduled by an operating system. The implementation of threads and processes differs from one operating system to another, but in most cases, a thread is contained inside a process...
was introduced to accelerate some tasks, such as the improved auto-save engine. Utilities such as a converter and browser were added.
Chasys Draw Artist 2.43 : The version 2.43 of Chasys Draw Artist was quietly released to the public in late 2007 without any announcements. It featured many fixes to the formal version 2.42, as well as many new features. The quiet release was due to a decision to re-build Chasys Draw Artist from scratch, while still continuing support for the old architecture.
Chasys Draw Artist 2.45 "Clara on Fire" : Version 2.45 was an experimental edition that was released only to beta-testers for the purpose of testing new technologies that would be included in the new architecture. This version revealed weaknesses in the original structure that would make the adoption of intended improvements such as layer
Layers (digital image editing)
Layers are used in digital image editing to separate different elements of an image. A layer can be compared to a transparency on which imaging effects or images are applied and placed over or under an image...
support difficult to introduce without compromising the stability of the code. Chasys Draw Artist 2.45 was officially withdrawn in May 2008.
Chasys Draw IES 2.50 "Latifah" : During the time when the versions 2.43~2.45 were being released, work was underway to create a Chasys Draw that, acoording to the developer "would change the face of the project forever". This edition took a radically different internal structure that completely transformed the way the application operated. The intention was to bring the project to a level that would make it "so good and so full-featured that it would shake the very foundations of the market giants and rip a huge chunk of the market share from them". It was not only to provide all the features they have, but to do so in a better way. The new application would be a suite designed to be fast, reliable, scalable, and fully Vista UAC compliant to attract new users. It is on this platform that the IES suite was born, and with it many supporting technologies, such as CD5 v3, the new multi-stream, stream-able, extendable, tag-based container-style image format.
Chasys Draw IES 2.51 ~ 2.52 : IES 2.51 introduced animation and multi-resolution support as editing modes. IES 2.52 brought in an unlimited undo engine, new plug-ins and several internal fixes. The application acquired a new look and several speed-boosting modifications.
Chasys Draw IES 2.53 ~ 2.55 : These introduced super-resolution
Super-resolution
Super-resolution are techniques that enhance the resolution of an imaging system. Some SR techniques break the diffraction-limit of systems, while other SR techniques improve over the resolution of digital imaging sensor....
and image stacking, support for video and video capture
Video capture
Video capture is the process of converting an analog video signal—such as that produced by a video camera or DVD player—to digital video. The resulting digital data are computer files referred to as a digital video stream, or more often, simply video stream...
, and other high-end features. Anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing
In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...
was later introduced in the line and shape tools. New super-resolution modes were added.
Chasys Draw IES 2.56 "Sniper-Kit" : IES 2.56 introduced support for metadata save and restore; and to keep Photoshop die-hards happy, the all-famous pen tool in the form of a "Pen and Path" tool. Physical measurement specification was added for the old-school class, and a video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
sequence composer engine was also thrown in. The user interface was enhanced with adaptive scrolling and the auto-save engine was optimized. Some memory management
Memory management
Memory management is the act of managing computer memory. The essential requirement of memory management is to provide ways to dynamically allocate portions of memory to programs at their request, and freeing it for reuse when no longer needed. This is critical to the computer system.Several...
was added for machines with low RAM
Ram
-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
.
Chasys Draw IES 2.57 ~ 2.59 : Internal distribution versions. JPEG 2000
JPEG 2000
JPEG 2000 is an image compression standard and coding system. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee in 2000 with the intention of superseding their original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG standard with a newly designed, wavelet-based method...
read/write plug-in added.
Chasys Draw IES 2.60 ~ 2.61 "Ivy" : IES 2.60 introduced Anti-aliased Pen and Path object cutting, setting it a notch above other editors. Shell integration with thumbnail
Thumbnail
Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words...
s and application-level support for multi-monitor display setups was added to make it easier to use the editor with multiple screens at the same time. Metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
was extended to support save, restore and scaling for text formatting and path data. A Photoshop import plug-in was also thrown into the works. IES 2.61 refined these features, and featured an improved palette with exchangeable swatches, loadable from all kinds of palette files. A slicing tool for web and user interface design was also included. A C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
code module output for inline image generation was added, as was a constrained recolor brush.
Chasys Draw IES 2.62 ~ 2.63 "Kazara" : IES 2.62 introduced the concept of a "fully anti-aliased work-flow", in which all drawing and selection tools are anti-aliased by default. To support this, a highly improved version of the JpDRAW2 engine was adopted, including the so-called Path API for JpDRAW2.
Chasys Draw IES 2.64 ~ 2.65 "Ivy" : IES 2.64 saw the introduction of full-page gradients (like you have in Photoshop), polygon selection and the famous "magnetic lasso" as an extension to Pen and Path. Restrictions on the API were removed to encourage third-party plug-in development. Poly-lines and poly-curves were made editable, and new shapes were added to the shape tool. Version 2.65 polished the interface, adding better support for tool editing and improving re-editable text support. The SDKs were streamlined, with no restrictions on use.
Chasys Draw IES 2.66 "Switch-Blade" : IES 2.66 introduced support for Photoshop plug-ins using Adobe's 8bf format, allowing user to utilize thousands of free plug-ins available online. A new blending mode
Blend modes
Blend modes in digital image editing are used to determine how two Layers are blended into each other. The default blend mode in most applications is simply to hide the lower layer with whatever is present in the top layer...
was also added: Overlay.
Chasys Draw IES 2.67 "EasterEgg" : IES 2.67 introduced the Just-in-Time memory compressor, significantly reducing the editor's memory requirements. Equivalents for the Pantone
Pantone
Pantone Inc. is a corporation headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey, USA. The company is best known for its Pantone Matching System , a proprietary color space...
palette
Palette (painting)
A palette , in the original sense of the word, is a rigid, flat surface on which a painter arranges and mixes paints. A palette is usually made of wood, plastic, ceramic, or other hard, inert, nonporous material, and can vary greatly in size and shape...
s (PMS 100 to 814-2x) were added. Improvements were made to super-resolution and stacking. Color management
Color management
In digital imaging systems, color management is the controlled conversion between the color representations of various devices, such as image scanners, digital cameras, monitors, TV screens, film printers, computer printers, offset presses, and corresponding media.The primary goal of color...
(ICM) was also improved, as was the printing interface.
Chasys Draw IES 2.68 ~ 2.69 : IES 2.68 featured major changes to the Converter component, adding an improved parallel process engine and a re-designed user interface. IES 2.69 introduced a DirectSHOW
DirectShow
DirectShow , codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's earlier Video for Windows technology...
video import plug-in, minor changes to the SDK, all backward compatible, and a best-in-class post-edit heuristics anti-aliasing engine. For user of netbooks, a special small-screen mode was added.
Chasys Draw IES 2.70 ~ 2.71 : IES went freeware
Freeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
. With the coming of the freeware IES, two blending modes
Blend modes
Blend modes in digital image editing are used to determine how two Layers are blended into each other. The default blend mode in most applications is simply to hide the lower layer with whatever is present in the top layer...
(Hue and Chroma) were added. Textures were improved to allow multiple layer-based textures. The TextArt G3 engine was enhanced with LINK metadata, and alpha shift was improved.
Chasys Draw IES 2.72 ~ 2.73 : IES 2.72 added the Luma Wand tool, fixed PNG and TIFF transparency issues, and fixed Smart-Paste transparency. TextArt's "border" fill style was also fixed. IES 2.73 introduced a TextArt engine that accepts alpha in textures, added 'Make Tile' effect, 'Save Group' option, Luma blending mode, hard merge (blit) and a Luma Wand tool for the adventurous.
Chasys Draw IES 2.74 ~ 2.75 : IES 2.74 introduced alpha protection, and 2.75 followed with a new adjustments engine that faced out many effects implemented by the effects engine. The adjustments engine was designed to appeal to experienced image editors, who find such an interface more intuitive and useful.
Chasys Draw IES 2.76 ~ 2.77 : IES 2.76 introduced a new transform engine and the Resizer for IES plug-in supporting multi-core and 18 scaling methods, including customizable windowed Sinc
Sinc filter
In signal processing, a sinc filter is an idealized filter that removes all frequency components above a given bandwidth, leaves the low frequencies alone, and has linear phase...
interpolation
Interpolation
In the mathematical field of numerical analysis, interpolation is a method of constructing new data points within the range of a discrete set of known data points....
. IES 2.77 added Greyscale with Tint adjustment, separated the Lock and Click-Thru layer properties, extended the Cloning Brush with three options (this, below and composite) and also extended the Color Picker with multiple point sampling.
Chasys Draw IES 2.78 : IES 2.78 introduced the "Greyscale with Tint" adjustment and separated the Locked and Click-Thru layer properties. The Cloning Brush was extended with three options, this, below and composite, as was the Color Picker extended with multiple point sampling. The Texturizer tool and Photoshop 8BF Plug-in were updated and new curve-fitting algorithm added.
Chasys Draw IES 3.01 : IES 3.01 brought a new look and many breakthrough tools to the suite. It was geared toward touch and was fully compatible with Windows 7. The toolbox was reorganized, with some tools being grouped and new ones added. Some message boxes were replaced with a new popup system, and the working of the workspace was changed to use a back-blitter
Blitter
In a computer system, a blitter is a circuit, sometimes as a coprocessor or a logic block on a microprocessor, that is dedicated to the rapid movement and modification of data within that computer's memory...
, which enabled the addition of new blending modes, Screen and Mask. The printing interface was modified and given accurate proofing. Alpha Function Adjustment was added and a new Anti-Posterization Engine included for all adjustments to remove the need for 16 bits per channel editing. An internal clipboard was created to cater for copying images that are too large for the Windows clipboard, and translucency full-page gradients added. Some new tutorials were added and keyboard shortcuts made configurable.
Chasys Draw IES 3.05 : IES 3.05 brought the power of custom full-page gradients to the suite, supporting .ggr, .grd and .gra gradients. New gradient styles were included, as was support for Adobe color tables (.act), palette previewing, point color editing and a highly improved TextArt engine.
Chasys Draw IES 3.11 : IES 3.11 was done on a new development base. It added a new application, raw-Input. This was a RAW image format processor based on dcraw. A brush object and gadget were introduced, and with them custom & animated brushes in ABR, GBR and CD5 formats. An alternate pattern brush was also added. The UI got fluid scrolling and minor adjustments. The palette was enhanced, making it multi-method (Swatches, HSL, HSV). Alpha protection was extended to include merges, and a touch gadget was added to make life easier for tablet-PC owners.
Chasys Draw IES 3.21 : IES 3.21 introduced a new effects engine, complete with wavelet denoising. A multimode Brush Object was introduced. The application was optimized for Camera Phones, including a better super-resolution engine. The layer sub-system saw a major upgrade, bringing layer annotations and multiple layer attachments of unlimited size. The maximum tool width was increased to 1024pix. The UI also saw some changes, with the palette being upgraded to a five-method one (Swatches, HSL, HSV, RGB, CMYK), and some keyboard shortcuts (re-pressing a quick-select reverts to former tool, layer deletion via Del key).
Chasys Draw IES 3.24 : IES 3.24 came with a re-designed user interface, powered by a higher performance graphics core and better memory management. A history palette was introduced, as was a new screen capture function with video capability. The layer palette received drag-drop capability and unsharp masking got yet another upgrade.
Chasys Draw IES 3.27 : IES 3.27 introduced the Blocks tool and Soft proofing with ICC profiles. In raw-Photo, clipboard support was added and the preset for sRGB fixed. UI animation and response were improved, as was the Texture Brush.
Chasys Draw IES 3.29 : IES 3.29 introduced the use of project templates and color filter matrices. Animated cursor creation was added as was mark-up metadata broadcast; and the JPEG
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
plug-in had Exif mark-up added.
Chasys Draw IES 3.31 : IES 3.31 introduced a completely redesigned Viewer
Image viewer
An image viewer or image browser is a computer program that can display stored graphical image; it can often handle various graphics file formats...
, many fixes for UI, core and Win-7 support, improved zoom functionality, full EXIF read and write support, and a sizable Mark-up window.
Chasys Draw IES 3.33 : IES 3.33 introduced Pen and Tablet support (incl. Wacom
Wacom
in Krefeld, Germany. Wacom is a Japanese portmanteau: Wa for "harmony" or "circle", and Komu for "computer". Wacom tablets are notable for their use of a patented cordless, battery-free, and pressure-sensitive stylus or digital pen...
) an Object-aware Hand Tool, major upgrades to the raw-Photo component and improved Noise Reduction
Noise reduction
Noise reduction is the process of removing noise from a signal.All recording devices, both analogue or digital, have traits which make them susceptible to noise...
. It supports JPEG DPI
Dots per inch
Dots per inch is a measure of spatial printing or video dot density, in particular the number of individual dots that can be placed in a line within the span of 1 inch . The DPI value tends to correlate with image resolution, but is related only indirectly.- DPI measurement in monitor...
mark-up and full EXIF-in-RAW support with editing, and popup information in Viewer
Image viewer
An image viewer or image browser is a computer program that can display stored graphical image; it can often handle various graphics file formats...
.
Chasys Draw IES 3.36 : IES 3.36 introduced Brush Engine 2.0 with brush metadata, AQuE (Anti-Quantization
Quantization (image processing)
Quantization, involved in image processing, is a lossy compression technique achieved by compressing a range of values to a single quantum value. When the number of discrete symbols in a given stream is reduced, the stream becomes more compressible. For example, reducing the number of colors...
Engine), improved Hand usability, configurable preview background and a highly improved screenshot
Screenshot
A screenshot , screen capture , screen dump, screengrab , or print screen is an image taken by a computer to record the visible items displayed on the monitor, television, or another visual output device...
engine. It also supports CD5 v3,10.
Chasys Draw IES 3.37 : IES 3.37 replaced Resizer for IES with the Advanced Resampling Engine and included improved Gradient objects, TextArt and Video Screen Capture. It also had new Templates (CD Label, Scan, Screencast, Capture) and a few minor UI tweaks.
Chasys Draw IES 3.40 : IES 3.40 introduced LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling, Floating Layers, a new decorative, backing color specification, a highly improved Icon Generator engine, improved support for Photoshop 8BF plugins, improved Autosave subsystem and a new user interface for the Converter application. Many issues were fixed and the Device SDK was updated to release. The SDK also saw a few updates, including the addition of pi_BasicImage.
Chasys Draw IES 3.41 : IES 3.41 introduced the Crop
Cropping (image)
Cropping refers to the removal of the outer parts of an image to improve framing, accentuate subject matter or change aspect ratio. Depending on the application, this may be performed on a physical photograph, artwork or film footage, or achieved digitally using image editing software...
and Rotate tool, an improved Tool Engine, support for Adobe's pattern files (.PAT), improved texture object handling, and a host of internal changes.
Chasys Draw IES 3.56 : IES 3.56.01 was the product of porting Chasys Draw IES from ANSI
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
to UNICODE
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
. It featured the first version of the Live Language Translation Engine, with multiple language support
Internationalization and localization
In computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market...
(7 language files included). It also featured an improved Crop and Rotate Tool, improved User Interfaces for all applications, FastExternals 2.21 and new pi_BASICIMAGE APIs (::translate, ::transform, and ::convolute)
Chasys Draw IES 3.60 : IES 3.60.01 introduced an all-new Converter capable of duplicating subfolder hierarchies, multipage support in Viewer, LLTE 1.2 and improved user interfaces. It had an improved updater and modernized installer. Diffuse Glow was added, and several internal changes were made to all applications. A build .02 and build .03 were released to fix a few bugs with some plug-ins and the installer.
Chasys Draw IES 3.61 : IES 3.61.01 introduced the TextArt G4 Engine, which was up to 10 times faster than its predecessor. New paper size presets were also included, as were some minor UI improvements and several bug fixes.
Chasys Draw IES 3.62 : IES 3.62 introduced the Dynamics Tool with 3 options (whitepoint, greypoint, blackpoint), Paste as New, and an improved Magnetic Lasso algorithm. Super-Res via Heuristics was expanded to do multiple layers, and shell integration was improved.
Chasys Draw IES 3.63 : IES 3.63 featured highly improved Photoshop 8BF support, a Silent Install option, Drag-drop to the Layers window, a censoring brush (under fx Brush), Improved RAW support, FastExternals 2.22 with a new callback suite (pi_StateStore), an external histogram window and a new Touch Gadget. It also included several bug fixes.
Chasys Draw IES 3.64 : IES 3.64 featured a cleaner, faster UI, major speed boost for effect previews, fault-tolerant file saving, taskbar progress reporting for Windows 7, improved transparency support in copy-paste, enhanced pi_StateStore functionality, improved Photoshop 8BF support, four new blur effects (Spin, Zoom, Motion, Surface) and fixes several bugs.
Build .02 introduced more UI changes and fixed bugs in fault-tolerant saving and Wacom Tablet support.
Chasys Draw IES 3.65 : IES 3.65 featured Brush Engine 2.4 with new brushes, an improved Razor tool, improved support for PCX, PPM and GTX, FastExternals 2.31, Power Management for all apps, improved Picker-Palette interaction and fixed some bugs in the Adobe Brush/Pattern plug-in.
Features
Chasys Draw IES emphasizes speed and ease of use as major design goals, and its design is intended to reflect this.Layers
Chasys Draw IES uses the concept of a free-style layer. A free-style layer is one that can be positioned anywhere, including totally removing it from the image and keeping it aside. Chasys Draw IES Artist provides free-style layering as a way to enable people to work with images the same way they would if the images were photos placed on their desk - you may stack what you need together, while placing pieces that you are not currently using outside the stack but within reach.Image modes
The rendering (drawing) of layers in Chasys Draw IES Artist is dictated by a parameter called the image mode.The default image mode, composite
Compositing
Compositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called "chroma key", "blue screen", "green screen" and other names. Today,...
, renders the layers as a stack for the purpose of compositing
Compositing
Compositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called "chroma key", "blue screen", "green screen" and other names. Today,...
.
In the multi-resolution image mode, similar copies of the image are made at different resolutions. The destination device then has a choice of images to choose from, depending on the intended display resolution. This mode is primarily used for creating icons and cursors.
The animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
image mode is used for short videos, known as animations. In this mode, only one layer is displayed at a time, one after the other, after a duration of time dictated by the frame delay layer attribute. It is analogous to the way an artist can draw a slightly different figure on each page of a pad of paper so that when you flip between sheets rapidly, the drawing appears to move.
Layer attachments (metadata)
Chasys Draw IES can add descriptive information, such as the name and style of font used, path data, etc. to a layer. This information is called metadata, and is saved along with the layer. If the layer were to be opened for editing later, this information will be restored to facilitate easier editing.File formats
Chasys Draw IES supports saving and loading a large number of different file formatFile format
A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...
s, and support for others can be added using plug-ins. The native format is Chasys Draw Image (CD5).
General
- Super-fast internal graphics engine (JpDRAW2)
- Free-style layeringLayers (digital image editing)Layers are used in digital image editing to separate different elements of an image. A layer can be compared to a transparency on which imaging effects or images are applied and placed over or under an image...
with blending modesBlend modesBlend modes in digital image editing are used to determine how two Layers are blended into each other. The default blend mode in most applications is simply to hide the lower layer with whatever is present in the top layer... - CompositeCompositingCompositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called "chroma key", "blue screen", "green screen" and other names. Today,...
, AnimationAnimationAnimation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
and Multi-resolution image modes - Full alpha channel throughout the workflow
- Re-editable tools and fully re-editable text
- Alpha protection (a.k.a transparency protection)
- Multi-core aware software architecture
- Vista UACUser Account ControlUser Account Control is a technology and security infrastructure introduced with Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems, with a more relaxed version also present in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2...
aware - Multiple display setup aware
- Shell integration with thumbnails
- Asynchronous auto-save engine with 1 minute latency
- Anti-aliasingAnti-aliasingIn digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...
and super-sampling support in tools and paths* - Unlimited Undo/Redo - undo any action any time
- Just-in-time memory compression
- Best-in-class post-edit heuristics anti-aliasing engine
- Image Stacking for super-resolutionSuper-resolutionSuper-resolution are techniques that enhance the resolution of an imaging system. Some SR techniques break the diffraction-limit of systems, while other SR techniques improve over the resolution of digital imaging sensor....
, stitchingImage stitchingImage stitching or photo stitching is the process of combining multiple photographic images with overlapping fields of view to produce a segmented panorama or high-resolution image. Commonly performed through the use of computer software, most approaches to image stitching require nearly exact...
and moving object removal - Advanced printing and scanning engines
- Video captureVideo captureVideo capture is the process of converting an analog video signal—such as that produced by a video camera or DVD player—to digital video. The resulting digital data are computer files referred to as a digital video stream, or more often, simply video stream...
from devices (e.g. TV/Video) - Video sequence composer engine
- Video Screen CaptureScreencastA screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration. The term screencast compares with the related term screenshot; whereas screenshot is a picture of a computer screen, a screencast is essentially a movie of the...
- In-built utilities (Calculator, Notepad)
- MetadataMetadataThe term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
save, restore and scale to imitate vector art - Extensive plug-in support
- Support for Photoshop Filter Plug-ins (.8BF)
- Support for older formats such as PPM/PGM/PBM, PCXPCXPCX is an image file format developed by the now-defunct ZSoft Corporation of Marietta, Georgia. It was the native file format for PC Paintbrush and became one of the first widely accepted DOS imaging standards, although it has since been succeeded by more sophisticated image formats, such as GIF,...
, TGATruevision TGATruevision TGA, often referred to as TARGA, is a raster graphics file format created by Truevision Inc. . It was the native format of TARGA and VISTA boards, which were the first graphic cards for IBM-compatible PCs to support Highcolor/truecolor display...
, etc. - Uses the latest CD5 specification with animation and multi-resolution
- Vista-style icon import and export
- Can output C++C++C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
code module for inline image generation - Includes plug-ins for JPEG 2000JPEG 2000JPEG 2000 is an image compression standard and coding system. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee in 2000 with the intention of superseding their original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG standard with a newly designed, wavelet-based method...
, AVIAudio Video InterleaveAudio Video Interleave , known by its acronym AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback...
video, animated cursors, JPEGJPEGIn computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
, PNG, animated GIFGIFThe Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....
, etc. - Physical measurement specification
- Streamlined SDKsSoftware development kitA software development kit is typically a set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform.It may be something as simple...
with no restrictions - PantonePantonePantone Inc. is a corporation headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey, USA. The company is best known for its Pantone Matching System , a proprietary color space...
equivalent palettes for PMS 100 to 814-2x
- path super-sampling enables very smooth selections, smoother than you would get with any other image editor
Chasys Draw IES Artist
Tools :- Hand - for moving layers around
- Pencil - for pixel art, draws thin single-pixel lines
- Line - for drawing thick, straight, anti-aliased lines
- Curve - enables you to draw smooth curves that join points on an image
- Brush - allows you to draw thick anti-aliased free-form lines in any color of your choice
- Effects Brush - for special effects, such as smoke, red-eye reduction, and re-color
- Cloning Brush - (healing brush), copies pixels from one area of an image to another
- Pattern Brush - used to fill an area with a pattern, tiling it if and when necessary
- Smoother - smoothens the area around it
- Sharpen - sharpens the area around it
- Spray gun - sprays paint over a surface
- Texturizer - "roughens" the area around it
- Filling Paint - fills areas with even color with selected color
- Border Fill - fills areas within a border with selected color
- Transparency Fill - makes areas with even color transparent
- Color Picker - picks (selects) colors from the image
- Rectangular Selection - cuts out rectangular portions for editing
- Elliptical Selection - cuts out circular portions for editing
- Polygon Select - cuts out free-form portions for editing
- Pen and Path - allows you to create a path, which you can then use to select, fill and stroke regions. Supports several modes of operation, including elastic and magnetic lasso
- TextArt - allows you to add plain and decorative text to your images
- Magic Wand - erases pixels that have the same hue or brightness as the selected pixels
- Eraser - allows you to make pixels in a layer transparent
- Opaquer - allows you to make pixels in a layer opaque
- Crop and Rotate - crops part of an image and optionally rotates it
- Razor - slices (splits) the current layer into two pieces
- Mark-Up - allows you to set hot-spots and make measurements on the workspace
- Lens - used to view small areas on your work up close
- Shape - allows you to draw various common shapes such as rectangles, circles, etc.
- Custom Shape - allows you to draw a custom shape (polygon) of your choice by setting vertices
- GT Shape - draws a variety of gradient- and alpha-shaded shapes
- Triangle List - draws a series of triangles in a polygon fan or strip manner
- Blocks Tool - draws various 3D block shapes
- Full-page Gradients - draws gradients covering the entire layer; such gradients are usually used as backgrounds
- Decorative GTs - draws various gradient- and alpha-shade objects and effects
- Texture Mapper - transforms an image into any four sided polygon
- Texture Plexus - transforms an image into a region of any shape and complexity
- MyTool™ - allows you to use tools exposed through MyTool™ plug-ins
Engines :
- Icon Generator (supporting 32 bpp Vista style icons and cursors)
- Video Sequence Composer
- Palette Generator
- Super-Resolution: for Photo (via Stacking)
- Super-Resolution: for Line Art (via Heuristics)
- Sequence Averaging (via Stacking, 2 modes)
- Sequence Stitching (via Stacking)
- Moving Object Removal (via Stacking)
Transforms :
- Flip
- Rotate
- Skew
- Perspective
- Stretch
- Tile
- Kaleidoscope
Adjustments :
- Brightness and Contrast
- Hue, Saturation and Lightness
- Greyscale with Tint
- Levels and Gamma
- Curves / Transfer Function
- Alpha Function
- Auto-Level
- Histogram EqualizationHistogram equalizationHistogram equalization is a method in image processing of contrast adjustment using the image's histogram.-Overview:This method usually increases the global contrast of many images, especially when the usable data of the image is represented by close contrast values. Through this adjustment, the...
- Invert Color
Effects :
- Synthetic Enhance
- Dynamic Contrast
- Replace Color
- Duo Tone
- Bilevelize
- Channel Swap
- Chroma-keyingChroma keyChroma key compositing is a technique for compositing two images together. A color range in the top layer is made transparent, revealing another image behind. The chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production...
(Blue-Screening, Four modes) - Blur (Low-passLow-pass filterA low-pass filter is an electronic filter that passes low-frequency signals but attenuates signals with frequencies higher than the cutoff frequency. The actual amount of attenuation for each frequency varies from filter to filter. It is sometimes called a high-cut filter, or treble cut filter...
, GaussianGaussian blurA Gaussian blur is the result of blurring an image by a Gaussian function. It is a widely used effect in graphics software, typically to reduce image noise and reduce detail...
, Spin, Zoom, MotionMotion blurMotion blur is the apparent streaking of rapidly moving objects in a still image or a sequence of images such as a movie or animation. It results when the image being recorded changes during the recording of a single frame, either due to rapid movement or long exposure.- Photography :When a camera...
, SurfaceBilateral filterA bilateral filter is an edge-preserving and noise reducing smoothing filter. The intensity value at each pixel in an image is replaced by a weighted average of intensity values from nearby pixels. This weight is based on a Gaussian distribution. Crucially the weights depend not only on Euclidean...
) - Sharpen (High-pass filterHigh-pass filterA high-pass filter is a device that passes high frequencies and attenuates frequencies lower than its cutoff frequency. A high-pass filter is usually modeled as a linear time-invariant system...
, Normal, Unsharp maskingUnsharp maskingUnsharp masking is an image manipulation technique, often available in digital image processing software.The "unsharp" of the name derives from the fact that the technique uses a blurred, or "unsharp," positive to create a "mask" of the original image...
and Smart-sharpen) - Noise Reduction
- Wavelet DenoiseImage denoisingImage denoising refers to the recovery of a digital image that has been contaminated by additive white Gaussian noise .-Technical description:...
- Red-eyeRed-eye effectThe red-eye effect in photography is the common appearance of red pupils in color photographs of eyes. It occurs when using a photographic flash very close to the camera lens , in ambient low light. The effect appears in the eyes of humans and animals that have no tapetum lucidum, hence no...
Reduction - Color-play Reduction
- JPEG Artifact Reduction
- Emboss (2 modes)
- Edge Detect
- Drop Shadow
- Create Halo
- Pixelate
- Oilify
- Dither to 256 Colors
- Reflection
- Diffuse Glow
- Swirl & Pinch
- Tile maker
- Post-edit heuristic Anti-aliasing (2 modes)
- Custom Effect via Convolution MatrixConvolutionIn mathematics and, in particular, functional analysis, convolution is a mathematical operation on two functions f and g, producing a third function that is typically viewed as a modified version of one of the original functions. Convolution is similar to cross-correlation...
- Custom Effect via Color Matrix Filter
- Custom Effect via GraphAsm Program
- External Effects via Plug-ins (Photoshop Effects is bundled)
Blending modes
Blend modes
Blend modes in digital image editing are used to determine how two Layers are blended into each other. The default blend mode in most applications is simply to hide the lower layer with whatever is present in the top layer...
:
- Alpha-blendAlpha compositingIn computer graphics, alpha compositing is the process of combining an image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render image elements in separate passes, and then combine the resulting multiple 2D images into a single, final image in a...
- Additive
- Subtractive
- Multiply
- Overlay
- Hue
- Chroma
- Luma
- Screen
- Mask
Miscellaneous :
- Fully UNICODEUnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
with multi-language supportInternationalization and localizationIn computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market... - 18 scaling methods, including BicubicBicubic interpolationIn mathematics, bicubic interpolation is an extension of cubic interpolation for interpolating data points on a two dimensional regular grid. The interpolated surface is smoother than corresponding surfaces obtained by bilinear interpolation or nearest-neighbor interpolation...
(Cardinal, BSpline, BCSpline) and Windowed SincSinc filterIn signal processing, a sinc filter is an idealized filter that removes all frequency components above a given bandwidth, leaves the low frequencies alone, and has linear phase...
(Bartlett, Blackman, BlackmanHarris, Bohman, Cosine, Gauss, Hamming, Hann, Kaiser, LanczosLanczos resamplingLanczos resampling is an interpolation method used to compute new values for sampled data. It is often used in multivariate interpolation, for example for image scaling , but can be used for any other digital signal...
, Parzen, Rectangular, Welch) - Video Screen CaptureScreencastA screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration. The term screencast compares with the related term screenshot; whereas screenshot is a picture of a computer screen, a screencast is essentially a movie of the...
- CD Labeling and other project templates
- Brush Engine version 2.1
- AQuE (Anti-Quantization Engine)
- Pen and TabletGraphics tabletA graphics tablet is a computer input device that enables a user to hand-draw images and graphics, similar to the way a person draws images with a pencil and paper. These tablets may also be used to capture data or handwritten signatures...
support (all WinTAB devices including WacomWacomin Krefeld, Germany. Wacom is a Japanese portmanteau: Wa for "harmony" or "circle", and Komu for "computer". Wacom tablets are notable for their use of a patented cordless, battery-free, and pressure-sensitive stylus or digital pen...
) - Color filter matrices
- Animated cursor creation
- Mark-up broadcast and EXIF support
- Soft proofingPrepress proofingA Contract Proof usually serves as an agreement between customer and printer and as a color reference guide for adjusting the press before the final press run. Most contract proofs are a Prepress Proof....
with ICC profiles
Chasys Draw IES Converter
- Support for dual/multi-core processor acceleration (up to 32 cores for 32x speed)
- Animation conversion and Metadata transfer
- Super-fast internal graphics engine (JpDRAW2)
- Vista UAC aware
Chasys Draw IES Viewer
- Touch-friendly UI with zoom and rotate
- High-speed loader function
- Animation and animation rotation support
- In-built support for plug-ins with lossless rotation (e.g. JPEG)
- Super-fast internal graphics engine (JpDRAW2)
- Vista UAC aware
Chasys Draw IES raw-Photo
- Based on dcrawDcrawdcraw is an open-source computer program which is able to read numerous raw image formats, typically produced by high-end digital cameras. dcraw converts these images into the standard PPM and TIFF image formats...
- Floating point and 48-bit workspace engine, combined with JpDRAW2
- Artist-like interface
- Curves and Gains adjustment
- Vista UAC aware
Latest Changes
- Full-screen mode for Artist
- AQuE 2.0 (Anti-Quantization Engine)
- Improved Tablet support (Brush Engine 2.5)
- Arrow-head option for Line and Curve tools
- New image presets
- Thumbnails in recent-list
- New UI for Levels adjustment
- Improved support for AVI video files
- Preview speed-up for animations in Artist
- Comic-strip view for animations
- Change of terminology: Texturizer is now "Roughen Tool"
- FastExternals 2.41 with pi_BasicColor
- Improved Photoshop 8BF for IES functionality
- Some workspace optimizations
- Jitter-corrected Video Screen Capture
- Links to Facebook and Twitter
Reviews
Reviews of Chasys Draw IES have been largely positive, with the editors at CNET download.comDownload.com
Download.com is an Internet download directory website, launched in 1996 as a part of CNET. Originally, the domain was download.com.com. The domain download.com attracted at least 113 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study....
giving it a 5/5 star rating and saying "Chasys Draw IES Artist is a free, full-featured image editing and drawing program that does what big-box programs like Adobe Photoshop can do, with a few unique touches that set it apart and actually make it easier to use than the competition." Some users have pointed out that it is a very powerful piece of software and one of those you need to try for yourself to really appreciate.
Criticism
Chasys Draw IES has been criticized for its lack of a native CMYK mode. This has been partly resolved by the addition of CMYK soft-proofingPrepress proofing
A Contract Proof usually serves as an agreement between customer and printer and as a color reference guide for adjusting the press before the final press run. Most contract proofs are a Prepress Proof....
.
External links
- Developer's site
- CNET Download.com Review
- CD5 file format description
- Betanews
- http://eng.centurionsystemsltd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=30&limit=1&limitstart=1IEEE KenyaKenyaKenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
chapter report]