Software Review of:
FlashBox
The Brightest Ideas for Photos 

FlashBox is one of those programs that you have to see to understand. It is pre-literate - everything is managed by an icon. There are no menus or keyboard commands. 
 

Let me take you on a tour of the screen and explain how I transformed meek and mild Joe Barth, neighborhood wimp, into Joe Barth, neighborhood punk.

There are three icons in the top-left corner of the screen - a shoebox, a Xube Browser and an input Browser. The shoebox is where you store your photos and projects for easy accessibility. By clicking on the shoebox icon you will get an inventory of all of your shoeboxes. You'll see the shoebox icon repeated on the right side of the screen, with a string of graphics tumbling down from it. This is my current project shoebox, containing graphics, photos and completed projects. You can create as many shoeboxes as you wish, and stuff them with photos of your summer vacation or whatever strikes your fancy. Now how did they know that I store my old photos in a shoebox? 

Next to that is a Xube icon, pronounced cube. This is the heart of the program. A Xube is a collection of related art, provided to you by the company, Xaos (pronounced chaos, of xourse.) Each cube contains six shelves that hold projects, backgrounds, picture frames, lettering, props and tools. The Xube I used to create the punk picture is called Body Art, but the program also comes with a generic FlashBox Xube, a garden Xube, and a holiday Xube. There is also a "new" cube that you can stuff yourself, and additional Xubes are available for purchase from Xaos. You can mix and match items from the shelves off different Xubes. 

The final icon in the corner is the input browser. This is what you use to access your own images, from a scanner, a digital camera, a CD or your hard drive. Now let's warp Joe. 

Using the input browser, I opened the photo of Joe Barth that I had taken with my digital camera. The program can import JPEG, TGA, BMP, SGI and PNG files. I then cropped the photo. The basic editing tools are on the palette that runs across the bottom of the screen - paint, crop, staple, transparency, rotate and flip and move layers backward and forward. I had to rotate him, too. 

Next, I decorated him. All of his punk accouterments came off of the Body Art Xube's prop shelf. You really need to look at this image in its full glory. I'm sure that the Mohawk, stud collar and sunglasses will reproduce well, but I also gave him a couple of ear studs and a nose ring which are probably too subtle for this magazine. To add props, you just drag them from the shelf, resize and rotate them. 

I had to use the masking tool, kept on the tool shelf, to edit the nose ring. If I just laid the ring on top of Joe's nose, it would look fake. By rubbing the masking tool over it, I was able to make part of the ring transparent so it looked like it really pierced his nose. Each Xube comes with its own tools. Some of them have spray tools, similar to the tubes in PaintShop Pro, that let you spray paint a series of small images across a photo. The holiday Xube comes with snowflakes, autumn leaves, patriotic stars, for example. Finally, I added an off-the-shelf frame around the entire photo. 

The funny money graphic consists of a money project from the generic Xube. It is superimposed over a photo of my nephew Nick when he was in 4th grade (he's a high school sophomore now.) Both styles of lettering are from the text shelf, as is the thought balloon. The money project actually gives you a sheet of six bills; I cropped the rest out. 

There's lots more that you can do. The tool shelves contain many effects, from warps and ripples to drop shadows and paint squiggles. Projects range from stationery, to bookmarks, postcards, name badges and sheets of tattoos. There are all sorts of backgrounds that you can add. The feel of the projects runs from Generation X to hearts and flowers. 

The images are saved as JPEG files, so the could be used on web pages. The Nicholas money, saved as a color JPEG at medium quality, 270 pixels wide x 119 high and 72 dpi was less than 18 KB. 

The program installed in about five minutes with no glitches. It comes with an excellent 66-page manual. It requires at least a 133 MHz Pentium-class processor, Windows 95/NT or higher, 16 bit video (24 is recommended) at least 32 MB of RAM, 40 MB of free hard drive space and a CD-ROM drive for installation. They recommend that you shut down all other programs when you run FlashBox, but I had no problem running other stuff in the background - but then, I have a 400 MHz system with 128 MB of RAM. 

The program was designed to be intuitive, and it is. With about five minutes of poking around I had most of the basics figured out. All of my minor befuddlements were resolved by skimming the manual. 

This should not be your primary photo editing tool but is certainly a fun one to keep on the side. FlashBox retails for a slim $45 - that's U.S. dollars, not FlashBox generated funny money. You can download a demo copy from their website, and if you can't find it in a local store, you can order it by calling toll-free, 800-289-9267. I highly recommend it - it's xool!