Color It v2.3 - Any Personal Stories?

[Scott Baret]

Fourteen years ago I read a pull-out from Macworld entitled "The Best of Macworld Mac Secrets". I liked this little booklet so much my dad bought me the 1000+ page David Pogue/Joseph Schorr classic, which I read through in one month. This book, as those of you who own it may recall, came with a three-disk set containing licensed commercial software, shareware, and freeware. One of the programs on those disks was Color It, which appears to be the old-time equivalent of Photoshop Elements in terms of power.

I never played around with it back then. I had Kid Pix, Flying Colors, and MacPaint to keep me occupied and didn't feel the need for another graphics program. However, I decided to put it on the new PowerBook 180c since I have plenty of 256-color photos (converted on Elements 2.0 on my iBook) and want some way to manage them on the go. I also want a program that can read MacPaint and PICT files other than DeskPaint. Color It appears to meet both of these needs.

Has anyone out there used this program and if so what are your opinions of it as a productivity tool? Also, can I do any serious photo work with only a 256 color screen?

 

[porter]

Also, can I do any serious photo work with only a 256 color screen?

Only if you don't smile, or in this context, say cheese.

You really need 24bit colour for photographic rendering, although dithered results on 8bit with CLUT can be quite effective. Once you start dithering you have lost the original quality.

8bit monochrome is identical to 24bit colour with a monochrome picture.

 

[II2II]

Depends whether the program retains the 24-bit colour information, but displays it as 256 colours. It sounds hard to work with though and, given the limitations of older hardware, it would probably be impractical to work on 24-bit images of any size.

 

[ChristTrekker]

ColorIt! 2.x and GraphicConverter were my main graphics editing apps until I went to OS X. The only thing I found I missed was layers.

 

[benjgvps]

I think the PowerBook 180c has a 16 colour screen from what I remember from mine.