Product Reviews

If you find that you spend hours at a time processing images, it's time you invested in an automated tool, such as DeBabelizer from Equilibrium. Version 5.0 is the first outing for DeBabelizer in a few years, and is Mac OS X native and much more Web friendly. One of its headline new features is the ability to automatically publish Web catalogues.

DeBabelizer enables you to create complex workflow using the built-in scripting facilities. You can access this via AppleScript, and so have multiple application workflows for content management. You can also apply multiple scripts to multiple batches within a command line or through AppleScript. This is where DeBabelizer comes into its own: while Photoshop and similar tools can provide scripting support, DeBabelizer allows you to reuse scripts across virtually any kind of source and image.

The program offers control over most aspects of an image. To help explain this, DeBabelizer 5.0 includes a well-written primer on graphics processing. All its functionality is explained in a straightforward manner in the documentation. The manual is also available as electronic help within the application.

DeBabelizer can process a huge variety of different graphics files, from very old file types to current Web formats, and can import around 100 different file types. It can convert between these using custom reader and writer modules, which allow you to control the exact parameters for file input and output.

Change your image

Version 5.0 can also import and process CMYK files for print work and has facilities for dealing with video files on a frame-by-frame basis, although batch processing is also possible. It can correct for video palettes and perform scan line correction. However, it isn't really aimed at large-scale motion video processing. There are differences between platforms: while the Mac version can convert and compress QuickTime and AVI files, it doesn't have the Windows version's ability

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to encode RealVideo.

As well as its batch processing features, DeBabelizer 5.0 provides image editing and optimisation facilities - there are many tools for scaling, cropping or slicing. Detailed colour processing tools are controlled and previewed with the usual histograms and sliders, and there's a collection of blur and sharpen filters, plus a custom filter supporting 7x7 convolutions.

DeBabelizer provides precise control over the palette used by an image. This is useful for controlling the minimum bit depth for a set of images to reduce their file size. The SuperPalettes facility allows you to generate an optimum 256 colour or lower palette from a set of thousands of images. It analyses images on a pixel-by-pixel basis, so it's possible to maintain skin tone over landscape colours by adding an image multiple times. This facility is great for multimedia applications or Web GIF graphics, and will become useful for handheld mobile devices as colour screens become more common.

DeBabelizer's scripting and batch processing facilities sit at the core of the application, offering reusable control over an image library. You can create a list of files from local disks or from Web pages, and then assemble scripts to modify the images based on specific features of the files by creating 'if then... else' logical constructs that allow conditional processing of files. Version 5.0 includes standard operations, such as catalogue, comparison between image files and various Save options, as well as the SuperPalette creator.

Batch me if you can

DeBabelizer's script creator allows manual creation of scripts by selecting commands from the application's menus and then specifying parameters. These scripts can be exported so they can be shared between users. They can also be called directly from AppleScript.

Basic Web pages can be created using html templates, and it's possible to create batch lists by extracting images from Web pages for post processing. Watch folders are a useful feature, processing images automatically when they appear in a particular folder.

DeBabelizer is a great application. It offers power and control to those with large numbers of images, and this upgrade is essential. If you have few images or need individual control over each one, then it might not work for you, but if big collections of images are your business, then DeBabelizer is the tool you need.

Needs: PowerPC G3 or higher, Mac OS 9.1 or Mac OS X 10.1, 1024 x 768 display, 64Mb memory, 100Mb disk space, QuickTime 5.0, CarbonLib 1.4