MicroFrontier's ColorIt 3.2.1
By WilliamLH
As a long time user of MicroFrontier's ColorIt 3.1, I was glad to see a newer and improved version of ColorIt come out. This version of ColorIt 3.2.1 introduces a few much needed improvements, including some I complained about when I first used ColorIt 3.1. As you well know by now, I am a professional web site designer (and software reviewer ;->), so I use JPEG compression and the GIF (pronounced JIF, short for Jiffy; I was corrected by Jim Maxey, one of the people involved in its creation) format quite a bit. ColorIt 3.1 would not import or save as GIF or JPEG, which rendered the product useless for the Internet without another program to convert images to these formats. In version 3.2.1 they have added both GIF and JPEG support that allows the creation, opening and import of these formats.
ColorIt 3.2.1 now also allows 16 levels of undo, which is quite handy when experimenting with graphics and scanned images (you can scan directly into ColorIt). ColorIt 3.2.1 supports most PhotoShop plug-ins, including Alien Skin Software's BlackBox filters (I do not have Alien Skin's Eye Candy, so I can't tell for sure if it is supported, but I imagine that they do work, since BlackBox works very well with ColorIt). I was disappointed that my favorite 216-color web CLUT did NOT work with ColorIt, but ColorIt 3.2.1 includes a Netscape-safe CLUT to work with.
ColorIt 3.2.1 also allows CMYK four-color separation for various color printing options. In addition, ColorIt 3.2.1 has built in support for pressure sensitive stylus input, which means your art tablet will work with ColorIt 3.2.1.
On the down side, ColorIt 3.2.1 did not save GIF images quite as well as I would have liked, or not as well as GIF Converter does. Of course, GIF Converter only does one thing, whereas ColorIt 3.2.1 is a full-blown image editing program. Also, ColorIt 3.2.1 does not support layers, but use of the opacity control does allow the combination of multiple images. This, combined with the 16 levels of undo, gives PhotoShop-like image creation ability.
On the up side, ColorIt 3.2.1 handles text much better than PhotoShop does, and even includes its own Extrude and Drop-Shadow one-step filters that work very well as long as you watch the opacity level. ColorIt 3.2.1 also allows painting with textures, which is a neat feature.
The Nutshell:
To put it simply, and sorry for the bad analogy, ColorIt 3.2.1 is the "poor person's" PhotoShop. If you do not have the hundreds of dollars that PhotoShop costs, need a good 32-bit image editing program that allows the use of filter plug-ins, has low memory requirements and multiple undos, supports scanner plug-ins, including Twain acquire, and has good text manipulation and many of the features of the high-end image editing products, ColorIt 3.2.1 is for you.
Price:
System Requirements:
Technical Support:
Free to registered users (it will cost you the phone call; no 1-800 line).
Reviewers Grade: 
Copyright 1997 WilliamLH. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited.
WilliamLH's reviews can be viewed at WilliamLH's Reviews, and he is the creator of The Mac Trading Post (tm).
