Power of the Paintbox

Quantel is letting the Mac world in on   company claims, makes it an off-line
the power of the Paintbox with its lat-  stencil and cut-out production work-
est product introduction. The Desktop    horse for the Graphic Paintbox, as well
Paintbox integrates totally with the     as a visualizer.
Mac, allowing a free exchange of files    Frank Poloniak, national manager
between the two. Text and linework       of Quantel's Graphics Division, says
are prepared on the Mac, and creative    that Quantel is "looking to move the
color work is prepared on the Desktop    Desktop Paintbox to the mid-range
Paintbox.                                printers that have facilities in-house,
 The Darien, Connecticut-based com-      such as catalog manufacturers." He ex-
pany claims that the Desktop Paintbox    plains that, "The strength of the Mac
has the same capabilities as its high-   is to set type and to build a page.
end Graphic Paintbox, including the      Where it falls short is in doing the
ability to perform sophisticated image   [photo-] retouching."
manipulation and photo montaging.         Poloniak offers the example of a
 Desktop Paintbox offers a user inter-   camera catalog company trying to dis-
face via on-screen menus, pressure-      play several tripods on a page. The
sensitive pen and tablet, and all the    specific task in this case was to place
Paintbox tools such as paint, airbrush,  dropped shadows under all three legs
soft-edged stencils, and cut and paste.  of the tripods. "If they try to do that on
Output is via the Mac to its full range  a Mac," he says, "it'll take forever and
of peripherals.                          a day because of the processing time.
 Desktop Paintbox can exchange im-       So, do it on a Desktop Paintbox [in real
ages with all other Paintboxes via its   time], and pour the image back into
magneto-optical disk. This ability, the  the page that's been built on the Mac."

The Desktop Paintbox will be avail-
able in the first quarter of 1992 and
will cost about $150,000.

Quantel has also announced that the
Graphic Paintbox now has higher reso-
lution. With a new Quilt option, the
capabilities of the Graphic Paintbox
extend into the production of the larg-
est, high-quality transparencies, up to
14 by 14 at 1000 Ipi.

The company claims that Quilt's res-
olution has been achieved without sac-
rificing any of the simplicity, speed,
and ease of use of the Graphic Paint-
box. Quilt looks to the user like an ex-
tension of the system's Zoom function,
roaming around the image in a contin-
uously variable window or patch. Each
patch is 5000-by-4000 pixels. Opera-
tion remains in real time, with images
ready for output as soon as creative
work is complete. Quantel says that
Quilt will be available in late fall.

Other Paintbox announcements in-
clude a Postscript file import facility
called Transcript.LB
CIRCLE 151 ON INFORMATION CARD

                 