February 1998

EQUILIBRIUM'S IMAGE WORKHORSE

DeBabelizer is a customizable automated graphics processing program that processes images quickly, supports 250 formats and works with many graphics programs. It takes up 20 MB of hard drive space.

DeBabelizer 3 gives you an unlimited number of open image files. You can cut, copy and paste sections between the open images. Well that is, as many as your system will let you open. Some systems may only have enough memory to open three large images. Other systems could let you open as many as 10.

Users can read and write CMYK formats including Scitex CT and DCS. Convert images from CMYK to RGB and vice versa. Process CMYK images without conversion or losing the original color quality. Even edit separations independently. Say you have the same background image for five pages of a newsletter you created. There's a color off in the background. Normally, you might have to reprocess all the colors of the five pages. Using DeBabelizer 3 you can set up a script that specifies to only reprocess the off color in each of the five pages. This saves a great deal of time.

A neat feature is HTML parsing. This lets you get the most from each image on a Web site. Drag a URL address to a batch list. DeBabelizer 3 goes through all the HTML links associated with the address and grabs the graphics off each page that is linked to the URL address. It doesn't matter what file format the graphic image is associated with. You can then view all the images that were grabbed from the multiple Web pages in a slide show.

After you view them, you can apply a process that each picture has to go through. You may have downloaded images in a variety of formats like JPEG or TIF. You may want them all in one format like GIF. Using DeBabelizer 3 you could create a script that will enlarge each image, apply a filter and change the file format to GIF. Normally you have to go through each image individually and do it yourself. With DeBabelizer you create a script and DeBabelizer 3 does the rest. Depending how many images are in the batch, you could have the changed images in minutes or overnight. The more images you have the longer it takes.

You may think it's great that you can process and alter images quickly with little effort on your part but what about errors? These happen. When they do they can freeze your machine and stop the entire process. The creators of DeBabelizer 3 realize this. DeBabelizer continues to process images even when two or three (or more) have an error half way through the processing session. When the job's finished you get an error report. You then decide if you want to reprocess the images with errors.

This latest version is for the Mac and costs $600. But don't be upset if you're converting images on Windows 95 and NT. They sell DeBabelizer Pro 4.5 for $600. It doesn't have all the nifty features parsing and CMYK support) but you still get the great automated image processing power of the product.