August, 2005

By: Graphics.com

BeLight Software's Image Tricks is a free application for Mac OS X that makes it easy to apply real-time effects to images.

Image Tricks makes use of the OS X Core Image architecture for accessing filters, transitions and effects, called Image Units, one hundred of which are supplied with Tiger. It's also relatively easy for developers to create and add their own Image Units, since the architecture is extensible, with the added bonus that these image processing plugins can be shared across host applications.

OS X Tiger users can apply the 35 Image Units supported by Image Tricks, including blur, tiling and distortion, to images imported in 20 file formats, including TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PDF and EPS. The resulting images can be exported to TIFF, PNG, GIF and JPEG formats. Image Tricks can also be used as a plugin within other BeLight products and is available for download on the BeLight site.

The release follows the recent update of Stone Software's iMaginator to version 2.0, which also makes use of the OS X Image Units, but supports more of them and adds nine custom plugins of its own. This is currently available as a commercial product, priced at $49.

Look for more free and shareware applications based on the Core Image/Image Unit capabilities of OS X, with more ambitious commercial versions adding functionality via proprietary still and video effects.

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