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Ulead Smart Saver Pro by Roy Colquitt Published on Aug 26, 2001 12:00 AM

As technology marches forward and real estate on the web becomes easier to come by, the creation of quality graphics for the web or to share via e-mail becomes a more and more desirable capability for people other than just professional web designers. Whether you're a video hobbyist who wants to share some frame grabs or you're someone a little more serious, creating your own graphics for your commercial web site, getting the most out of your still images may be an important concern. SmartSaver Pro, from Ulead, is an image editing plug-in and stand-alone application that addresses this concern. Its features offer those working with images destined for the e-world several useful tools including automation of several useful HTML Table and JavaScript tricks, preview directly in a web page, and quality vs. size optimization.

Installation

Installation of the software went well with one very minor exception. There was a hitch with locating my Photoshop plug-ins directory. The installer searched for "plugins" instead of the hyphenated "plug-ins." Although Ulead's web site says that SmartSaver Pro works as a plug-in with any software that uses Adobe's Photoshop Plug-in Architecture, the installer only searches for Ulead PhotoImpact and Adobe Photoshop 5.0.

The Interface

The SmartSaver interface includes a work area surrounded by tools and controls. There is a tool bar at the top of the display and palettes on all sides of the work area with the some familiar looking tools for things such as selecting, grabbing, drawing lines and shapes, etc. When the program is started as a stand alone app, you have two options for opening an image file, the standard "Open" dialog (with thumbnail preview after selecting files), or what is called "Visual Open" which displays a thumbnail of every image in the selected directory. With the opening of an image, five tabs appear at the top of the work area, one for each of SmartSaver's individual tools: Slicer Tab - Offers the ability to (as the name implies) "slice and dice" an image into table cells. In Slicer, you can create cells by applying a grid with evenly sized cells, or you can draw and drag horizontal and vertical lines and join and split the cells that result to make custom divisions. Slicing images creates HTML table data and allows image segments to be edited or optimized individually. JavaScript Tab - JavaScript is an advancement on HTML that allows "scripted events" to be built into web pages that take things beyond the mundane pointing and clicking of colored text. A popular example of JavaScript that is automated with SmartSaver Pro is called rollover. Rollover effects essentially "animate" images and buttons so that when the mouse pointer is moved over them another image appears.

Image Map Tab - The image map tool is similar to the slicer in a way. It allows you to create areas called hotspots in images. These hotspots are clickable regions within a single image that can be made into links. The image map feature creates HTML data just like the slicer.

Optimizer Tab - The Optimizer, which Ulead considers to be "the heart" of SmartSaver, is a very handy and easy-to-use tool that allows you to (again, as the name implies) "optimize" images. The optimizer offers choices of file type, quality, color, blurring, encoding and other parameters that affect file size. Your original image is displayed on one side of the screen while the result can be seen on the other. You can see the effect on the appearance and size of the image at the same time as you change parameters yourself, or you can choose a target size and see the result SmartSaver gives you.

Preview Tab- The preview tool displays (yet again, as the name would point to) a preview of your image as it will appear in a web browser. As with the Optimizer, results are displayed immediately.

Conclusions

I have to concede up front that my very limited experience in creating web pages limits my ability to fully appreciate the advanced editing and design tools in SmartSaver Pro, but camcorderinfo.com (as the name suggests) is not a web site all about web design. In looking at SmartSaver from the perspective of a video enthusiast, the value of the Optimizer is what was immediately apparent to me. I have shared still images using the web and e-mail and SmartSaver Pro's Optimizer would be an absolute benefit to anyone doing that because of its excellent ability to strike a balance between size and image quality and to save images in the most popular web formats.

A friend of mine has a new baby, a Digital8 camcorder, a cable modem, and no idea of the amount of data she is sending out sometimes. She can do some serious damage to a 56k dial-up account holder's mailbox (and she does). My friend will be getting SmartSaver Pro as a present sometime in the near future.

If you share images electronically or have a personal web site, SmartSaver is probably worth a look for the optimization tool alone. You can make images significantly smaller than is otherwise possible without giving up more than you want to in terms of quality. If you prepare images for the web on a more serious level, SmartSaver might be worth a look for the excellent optimization tool as well as all of the other features.