Treehouse Review Week
Graphics-Toolbox by Great Software Tools, Inc.
These days posterboard and gluestick doesn't always seem to cut it, now that we have computers to do the messy work.
Design Christmas cards. Jazz up your blog header. Do a school project. Show your toddler sitting in the middle of a flower. Get the red-eyes out of a family photograph. What's not to ooh and ah over with a quality graphics program?
Unfortunately, I may be one of the few Crew members who ended up with a negative impression of a product many people seemed to like.
The positives of this product:
* It's designed to be used for many, many applications--everything from "what's different about this one" photos to homeschool board games to business presentations.
* The creator is very interested in working with customers and teaching them to get the most out of her program; a one-on-one personalized training service is offered (for a fee), and the company is creating tutorial videos that cover basic functions of the program and teach you how to create special projects. She has sent many encouraging emails to the Crew members, trying to help us get the most out of the product.
* If you want colours, this program seems to have infinite ways to match, create and group colours.
* There are some comparisons with other graphics programs here, down the left-hand side of the page.
* You can get a thirty-day free trial of the program.
The negatives:
* The program is pixel-based rather than vector-based. Vector-based graphics are based on a mathematical formula that allows you to work in layers and easily shift things around once they're applied to your project; pixel-based graphics are more like gluing something down on top of something else, and therefore not being able to cut something out afterwards without leaving the equivalent of a hole. For some applications, that could be an advantage; but even the program's creator admits that many people find that difficult to get used to.
* The interface, for me, was very hard to figure out, even with a printable manual to refer to. For instance, it took some searching to figure out what to click on to import a photo. According to the website, "Graphics-Toolbox has no wordy definitions and intricate procedures to learn. Our tools were designed to be logical, intuitive and require the least amount of steps possible." But I found it difficult to sort out the basic buttons from the frills.
Our own experience with the program:We had some hassle initially downloading the program; it took us four tries, but eventually we got it downloaded without crashing.
Our twelfth-grade Apprentice decided to try out Graphics-Toolbox for a chemistry class project (a typical poster that included a background photo, a header, and several text boxes). She had so much trouble making it work on G-T (even though she has used other graphics software) that she asked Mr. Fixit to download another program so that she could finish the project. Which he did, and which she did.
What I didn't notice until a couple of days later was that the Graphics-Toolbox icon had disappeared from the desktop, and that the program itself was gone. Since the email with the access code (making the program permanent) had somehow gone astray, I thought perhaps that when the trial period was up, the program had Mission-Impossibly self-destructed. I emailed the company to ask, but they didn't know why it had disappeared; they gave me the access code and suggested re-installing the program.
Mr. Fixit figured out what happened: when he downloaded the second graphics program, there was an installation conflict with the other program. This was resolved by uninstalling and reinstalling Graphics-Toolbox.
Since then I have spent some time trying to learn from the online training videos, but still don't find even those easy to follow. One suggestion would be using some kind of graphic arrows or highlighting to show which buttons are being pushed as the program is being demonstrated. I really did try, but I guess I'm still more of a gluestick person.
Final Take: If you don't have other programs already running that might cause incompatibility problems, and want to try a pixel-based graphics program, give Graphics-Toolbox a try--as I said before, there's a 30-day free trial.
Price: $149 for one user license. Discount for 2+ users. Details here.
For more reviews of this product, see the Review Crew Home Page.
Dewey's Disclaimer: This product was received free for review purposes. No other payment was made. The opinions expressed in this review are our own.
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