The first shock I got upon opening ImageMaster's box was the fact that the sizeable manual they used to include was gone. I wondered for a second whether there had been some sort of mistake, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed one of the sheets of paper accompanying several disks in an otherwise bare box. This sheet went to great lengths to explain that since Black Belt were such an ecologically sound company they would no longer be producing their manual on paper (only later did they go on to say that it's also really rather expensive).

So we have a pirates dream. Software complete with manual on seven disks. But is it a user's dream too? Hmm, well, a manual on a disk sounds OK in theory but there are a couple of problems. The first is that ImageMaster uses a separate screen for ApAssist, their online manual program, and so you have to continually flip screens to go from one to the other, it owuld make things easier if you could just flip back and forth using the Help key but, unfortunately, that just puts you back at the contents page each time resulting in the user having to re-find her place all the time. The other major problem with online documentation is a lack of portability. Until someone brings out a laptop Amiga you are never going to be able to read this manual on the train.

I would like to be able to go straight into sections detailing Special F/X, transformations, etc. from the contents page. There are a lot of buttons on it for what seems like introductory stuff that could have all been on one button and then only a couple of buttons where there should be a dozen.

However, there are a lot of good things about this manual. For instance, the little animations playing inside the manual and the interactive tutorials which work by clicking a button on the manual page which takes you back into ImageMaster's interface where you are presented with whichever effect you have chosen demonstrated on an existing buffer, with the option to undo the effect at the end of the demonstration.

On now to the program itself. ImageMaster has always been the leader of the three main image processing packages in terms of effects appliable and this version still offers more little gizmos to play with than either ImageFX or ADPro. Not all of them are very useful, but having a reasonably good morphing package built-in to ImageMaster will certainly win it a number of friends straight away. The stability of ImageMaster also seems much improved (the version I own was prone to frequent crashes) and the interface is a lot more consistent if still a little overwhelming with the sheer amount of options presented and the names chosen for these options. As an example, how about cropping an image? Since ImageMaster gives the user such a wide variety of area selection tools a crop should be a doddle wouldn't you think? But no, try as I might, I couldn't find a crop command in the interface and I had to resort to the manual which didn't seem to detail a crop command either (even in the index). Shurely shome mishtake? No, it's just that ImageMaster refers to cropping as "clipping" and hitting the Clip button in the manual brought me to the description of how it is done. Now, this is a trivial example and if it hadn't been about 4AM when I was trying to crop this image I probably would have said: "Oh yes, silly me. Black Belt call the process clipping. Easy peasy.", but it just goes to show that unfamiliarity can breed contempt just as easily as familiarity. (At the time I was even sorely tempted just to load the image into ADPro because it was easier to crop the file in there).

Insisting on the user having to type stuff into gadgets is also not on in my opinion. If you are going to require ARexx scripts for a redraw (why?) then at least present the user with a file requester to choose the script from. While on the topic of niggles with the user interface, why did Black Belt decide to lump absolutely everything in the main executable? The ImageMaster file is over 2MB in size which must make far less easy to upgrade than using a modular approach which can be picked apart as necessary. Other problems include the fact that clicking on the ImageMaster R/t logo in the main interface is supposed to bring up a list of information specific to your computer (it doesn't do anything) and the fact that you are supposed to be able to relocate your selected area by holding down the right mouse button whilst drawing the area out (this doesn't work either). And when you get right down to it, what sort of interface doesn't give you any option but to carry on with a process, even if you don't want to, and relies on you being able to hit the cancel gadget while the operation in question is being performed or having an Undo buffer.

Next comes the question of the FilmStrip, ImageMaster's preview window for animation and morphing/warping operations. I don't consider my machine under-specified with 14MB of RAM, but even before I loaded an image there was "No RAM available for FilmStrip". I tried all sorts of things to get it going, but to no avail (if you'll excuse the pun).

Having exhausted all the possibilities I was willing to try to get the FilmStrip up and running, I decided I would have a go at the Wipe tutorial detailed in the manual. After a bit of faffing and a crash I eventually got the result you should see somewhere about these pages. It's really quite good and the stars can be replaced with ellipses, rectangles, etc. There is a large amount of control over these elements including X & Y quantities, rotation and whether or not to have a variable transparency as the wipe occurs. Although it all seems rather horrendous to achieve, after your first couple of wipes you'll wonder what all the head scratching was about.

ImageMaster is certainly one for the serious image processors out there with its ability to show 1D cross sectional palette information and spectrum analysis, logarithmic representations and a gorgeous 3D histogram whose only fault is that it can't be rotated at all. If you know your Variance Conversions from your Forced Dynamic Ranges then ImageMaster is the package for you.

As for the rest of us, well, I'm not so sure. ImageMaster doesn't really offer all that much over the ADPro/ImageFX axis other than its price which is much lower than either of the other two. It doesn't give as many file formats as the other two but does include ones that are fairly abstruse, such as NASA's JPL format which is probably used by about ooooh, five people in this country. And this is the type of failing that ImageMaster exhibits. In summary, while ImageMaster is a superb package in most respects it is let down by its insistence on an esoteric interface, its odd method of retargetting the display and its slow speed.

Boxout - Retargetable? Someone say Retargetable?

As those of you who read this rag regularly know, I am the proud owner of a Picasso II graphics card. So it was with delight that I read the blurb on ImageMaster's box saying it was retargetable. How disappointed can you get? Very. ImageMaster doesn't even use the display database for its preview screen choice and its choices for retargetting are limited to Firecracker (an NTSC frame buffer by Impulse that hasn't been made for a good couple of years), HAM-E (by Black Belt themselves, also no longer in production), Harlequin (and thus Retina) and AGA. I don't consider being able to run on AGA "retargetting", but I would expect to see an option to choose the screen mode yourself rather than a 1.3-type "Do you want HiRes, do you want Lace?" request. Come on, Black Belt get into the Nineties, man.

Boxout - Are you well supported? (Fnarr, fnarr)

As Black Belt incessantly remind you through all the literature accompanying ImageMaster, they are probably the finest Amiga software company around in terms of support and updates. However, I spoke to Ben Williams of Black Belt on the net earlier this year to enquire about the latest revision of ImageMaster (remember, my version is about two years old) and he was very helpful, as long as I had a credit card. Since I refuse to own one of the Devil's playing cards I was in shtuck. I asked him to check that they had my name and address on their database as I had never received any info about upgrading or news about the many bug fixes that went through from the version of ImageMaster I owned to the present one and I was somewhat shocked to receive the reply that Black Belt never send any info out to their registered users, let alone any updates. If I wanted to buy the latest upgrade it would cost me $25 plus shipping regardless of whether it was an upgrade or a bug fix. I don't mind paying for upgrades but I really think that users who loyally support a package should be entitled to receive free corrections of programmers mistakes.