Adobe’s Photoshop CS3 is the undisputed champion in image editing. Still, not many need all those heavy duty features and most can’t afford the hefty price tag that it comes with. Latching onto the opportunity of a Photoshop substitute, a lot of indie software developers are coming out with interesting image editors that don’t claim to be as powerful as the mighty Photoshop but do have a few things going for them. The latest in this lineup of Mac image editors is Nolobe’s Iris.
Touted as a one-window image editor, it strives to take away all the clutter what is associated with Photoshop’s side panels and floating windows. More importantly, Iris retails for $79, which is several times cheaper than Photoshop. So can this cheaper application satisfy as a substitute for Photoshop or do we need to wait a bit more?
Single window vs. floating interface.
Mac OS X generally doesn’t have a fullscreen mode so developers generally create floating window applications, ones where you can rearrange windows and move panels all over the place. While this gives freedom, it also comes with a lot of clutter, especially in applications like Photoshop and other apps from Adobe. With Iris, everything resides in one window—all the panels, palettes and even a thumbnail bar at the bottom displaying all the opened images (a feature much needed in Photoshop).
The interface draws a lot from Apple’s Aperture—he same grey window and similar colour scheme make Iris almost a companion app. However, is this all really just skin deep? Well, to a certain extent, yes.
The tools.
Iris comes with all the tools from Photoshop that you use on a regular basis. There are the usual selection tools, brushes and the dodge and burn. Even the shortcuts are mostly the same. They do have a minor design flaw—there’s no straightforward way to identify whether a tool has another level or not, though pressing and holding a tool does pop out a fly-out menu. Also, there are on tooltips so you will have to figure out what tool you are using by its icon or through trying it out.
(Notice that none of the icons give any indication of there being a fly-out menu.)
Colour Management.
Iris uses the Apple Color Picker for its colour-ific needs. Personally, I prefer the one included in Photoshop as it gives you a lot of flexibility in choosing your colours, entering hex codes and picking colours from outside the picker. Your mileage may vary.
Palettes.
Ah, don’t we all just love those pesky palettes? I’m sure version 2.0 will bring in some more, but for now there are just three of them affixed to the right hand column. The first one is Options, which is a context sensitive palette that changes according to the tool selected; the second one is the Colours palette and the third one is for the layers. (Full screenshot)
Iris does have a few adjustment tools like this Levels adjust.
Layers.
One of the most important aspects of any image editing application is Layers and, unfortunately, this one sucks at it. There are almost no features when it comes to layers. Just the basic merging of layers and duplicating them (the sort that I don’t even consider “features”). One can’t create masks or adjustment layers and it doesn’t have any blending options, layer styles or even text layers! That’s right—nce you type text, it cannot be edited. So if you forget to type text on a brand new layer, you have pretty much ruined your image (unless, of course, you hit Command-Z in time and save your arse). Also, you cannot move things around using the pointer tool. So if you create something on a new layer and want to move it, you have to drag out a selection, cut it out, paste it back in and then move the image data.
Filters.
There are some basic filters for blurring and sharpening and a few ‘effects’ that imitate some of the layer styles of Photoshop.
Exporting options.
Thankfully, you save an image as a PSD (for that “I’m sorry I ever left you!” moment), TIFF, or what have you.
All things considered.
Can Iris be a substitute for Photoshop? No way! There is absolutely no balance among the tools provided which makes it impossible to use it to work on any serious or even semi-serious projects. As for the interface, the single window mode is quite refreshing, although a floating window mode is also required. The thumbnail bar at the bottom is quite convenient but, the screen real estate being at a premium, should get out of your way when not in use. One nice feature I noticed was that when you quit the application with many documents open, it throws up a neat Save Images menu, so you can quit/save them all at once or one at a time.
Even so, the lack of features just cannot justify working with a nice interface, even if it has subtle core animation effects. At $79, it is greatly overpriced for the amount of features it has on offer. A much better alternative in that price range would be Pixelmator($59) which is a stronger contender for the Photoshop alternative crown. That said, I’ve yet to come across anything so far that poses a challenge to the real thing.
