IBM PerfectPhoto is an image editing suite from 1999. It comprises of three main applications:
- Album Explorer
A photo library tool used to “capture” images from digital cameras and scanners as well as sort and organise photographs stored on your computer. - Image Editor
A fully featured image editor with a variety of tools and effects available. - Gallery Editor
A tool for creating slideshow galleries in DPG format (IBM proprietary), Windows executable, animated GIF or Windows Screensave (scr) files.
The software also includes a Macromedia Flash enabled tutorial which guides the user through how to perform various tasks with the software. A traditional user guide is also provided in a Hypertext format (HTM) to be viewed in a web browser such as Internet Explorer, a copy of this user guide is available here.
System Requirements
The software package has the following minimum system requirements as stated in the included ReadMe.txt file:
- 133 MHz Pentium processor (or higher)
- 32 MB RAM
- Available hard-disk space
- Minimum installation: 20 MB
- Default (Program files, Sample images, Retouch Navigation
data): 90 MB - All (Program files, Sample images, Retouch Navi. data,
Online document, Templates, File Transfer Program): 200 MB
- VGA graphics card (640 x 480, 256 colors), XGA graphics card (1024 x 768, 64,000 colors) is recommended.
- Microsoft Windows compatible CD-ROM drive for install
- Microsoft Windows compatible mouse
- Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 (Intel version)
Changelog / Known Issues
The ReadMe.txt file also includes a changelog containing the following items:
- Album Explorer
- Disk Space dialog’s Disk utilization calculations showed incorrect results for disk partitions with 2G bytes or more space on Windows 95 with no service pack.
- Image Editor
- Paint fails when applied to images larger than 2000 x 2000 pixels.
- Gallery Editor
- Screen savers (.scr) executing on Windows NT may occasionally fail when terminating and returning to the system.
- Printing
- Printing may stop when Image interpolation of Print options is set to Best quality.
- Others
- File association was not reset even after uninstall of PerfectPhoto.
- You can not select the Find tab in the Help Topics dialog box that appears when you select Help -> Help topics.
While testing the software in a VMWare virtual machine we experienced no faults or issues when running the software under Microsoft Windows 98 SE.
Extras
The software includes some samples including:
- 16 background music files in MIDI format
- 131 photographs in JPEG format
- 44 sound clips in WAV format
Gallery
- Image Editor with Included Sample Photo
- Gallery Editor with Sample File Loaded
- Album Explorer
- Start Up Selection
- Tutorial Menu
- User Guide Index
- Windows Setup
Further Reading
Test Information
Software was tested and installed from an ISO copy of Computer Buyer April 2002.
Software was run under Microsoft Windows 98SE running in a VMWare Workstation 15 environment with the following spec:
- 256MB RAM
- 10GB HDD
- VMWare SVGA II graphics adapter at a resolution of 1280 by 960
- VMWare sound card with Creative Sound Blaster driver loaded
Around 1 hour has been dedicated so far to the testing of this application.