 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group TriVista Suite Bernadette Houghton bernieh@iaccess.com.au |
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Create online photo galleries in a snap, display your photos in 3D virtual worlds, and present your friends and relations with customised photo cubes. The TriVista Suite is a set of five fun programs that can really spark your creativity and liven up your Web pages.
Written in Java, each program in the Suite is a separate entity in its own right. The main program, A Smaller Image, is a fuss-free image editor, while the other programs produce a variety of graphic output. Except for A Smaller Image, all the programs share a similar wizard-type interface and include an integrated, modified version of A Smaller Image.
A Smaller Image
Using A Smaller Image, you can touch up and reduce the size of images prior to e-mailing or publishing to the Web (Figure 1). There aren't a lot of options - just smooth/sharpen, lighten/darken, rotate and resize. However, all the controls are slider-operated and you can preview the results of any adjustments immediately. A Smaller Image can open files in BMP, JPEG, PCX, GIF, TIF and WMF format, and save in BMP, JPEG and PNG format.
There is no online help, but it really doesn't matter. A Smaller Image is such a simple program that if you can't work it out on your own, the Tips of the Day (all 11 of them!) should be more than enough to teach you to become a proficient user.
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Paper PhotoCube
With Paper PhotoCube, you can create attractive, personalised photo cubes, for printing, e-mailing or publishing to the Web (Figure 2). There are three resolutions to choose from, including a 400x400 designed specifically for images from Kodak Picture Disks. Paper PhotoCube includes online help and a Quick Start tutorial. However, as with A Smaller Image, its such a simple program that you should be able to nut it out by yourself. One drawback - it reads only JPEG images.
Ultimate Online Photo Gallery
With Ultimate Online Photo Gallery, you can create captioned photo galleries from your JPEG or GIF images (Figure 3-4). The wizard-like interface makes the process quick and easy, and you can choose from three sizes of thumbnail and three kinds of gallery - tables, montages or photo strips. The number of images permitted per gallery permitted depends on the thumbnail size chosen - ranging from 16 images with the largest thumbnails, up to 32 images with the smallest. These limits ensure that galleries download quickly, but you can have an unlimited number of galleries. Once uploaded to the Web, the user clicks on a thumbnail to display the full image in a separate browser window, sized-to-fit popup window or frame.
An annoying feature of Photo Gallery is that you must place all the images you want to include in a gallery into the same directory on your hard disk.
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3D ImageScene
With 3D ImageScene, you can display thumbnails of your images in a range of 3D virtual scenes (Figure 5). For instance, as billboards along a highway, in an art gallery, a photo album, a rotating carousel, a series of postcard racks or a simple landscape. The user controls the scene with the mouse or keyboard, and clicks on a thumbnail to display the full image.
3D ImageCube
3D ImageCube enables you to create animated Web guides, such as tumbling cubes or rotating carousels, where each cube face and carousel wall links to a URL (Figure 6). Both cubes and carousels can contain up to six images, and the user controls the animation via a series of simple buttons. As with the other products in the Suite, ImageCube is very straightforward to use - just drag and drop your desired images onto a template then answer a few simple questions.
How They Work
Except for A Smaller Image, each program is largely drag-and-drop. Basically, you drag images from a browse window and drop them onto a template. Double-clicking an image opens it in the modified version of A Smaller Image, where you can quickly adjust the thumbnail view as necessary. One or two more screens, where you choose your output options and file names, and that's that. Each program automatically creates any necessary HTML, VRML and image files using JavaScript, then sends the files to your browser for previewing. If you choose, you can also output non Java 2D frame versions so users with older browsers can view your output. There is an option to upload files to your Web server, and some programs also include a Batch Reduction feature, where you select a group of files and automatically reduce their dimensions for faster downloading.
Assessment
The programs in the TriVista Suite don't have a lot of bells and whistles, but they're all easy to use and don't take much learning - "quick and dirty" comes to mind. You can have a set of working files ready to upload in a very few minutes. The help files (when they exist!) and HTML output pages include instructions for linking your output to other Web pages. You'll probably want to edit some of TriVista's output, though, adding further teat or navigation bars; this you should be able to do in your usual Web authoring program.
While I didn't have any problems using the programs, I did encounter some irritating tendencies, mainly inconsistencies across programs. For instance, each program supports a different set of file types; some include a batch reduction feature and some don't. Each help file is implemented differently, and some are easier to navigate than others.
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For each program, you must choose specific files to display in the browse window - you can't just select a folder and automatically display all supported files.
Overall, the TriVista suite is a nice set of programs. You don't need any technical knowledge, and you can create some eye-catching pages to include in your Web site.
Cost and Availability
Individual products are available at prices ranging from US$15 for A Smaller Image to US$30 for 3D ImageScene. The full suite is available for US$49.95 as a download, or US$54.95 on CD-ROM. Purchase or download a trial version from www.trivista.com.
Minimum System Requirements
Pentium processor, Windows 95 or NT. A VRML 2.0 capable browser is required to view the results of 3D ImageCube and 3D ImageScene.
Reprinted from the December 1999 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
