For professional-level control over color and high-end output, not even Adobe Photoshop can top the new version of ColorStudio, an Image-editing and painting package from Letrase. But be prepared to pay a price to exploit ColorStudio's talents fully. Although dollarwise the new $995 ColorStudio costs a whopping $1,000 less than the original version and costs only slightly more than the $895 Photoshop, Letraset's program is decidedly more complex and difficult to use than Adobe's package.
Industrial Strength
ColorStudio is an indispensable tool for users who work regularly with color images destined for high-end prepress systems such as Hell or Scitex. It's an industrial-strength package that requires a significant investment in hardware and memory. We recommend a Mac II-class machine with at least 8 megabytes of memory, a 32-bit display card, and a largescreen display.
You also need vast quantities of disk space to accommodate the virtual files that ColorStudio creates as you work. A good safety margin for virtual disk space is four times the size of the size you're editing (don't forget to allow for the original file and the saved-as modified version). ColorStudio's high-quality images create huge files — you can easily end up working in the 30-megabyte range. A SyQuest or Bernoulli drive comes in handy for storing large finished art files.
Users well versed in color theory will immediately appreciate the program's exceptional control over color balance. Once you've scanned an image directly into ColorStudio (Letraset supplies drivers for most popular scanners), you can correct shadows, mid tones, and highlights in each color component of the image. When you're satisfied with the image, you can save your correction settings and apply them to future scans when you want an exact match between images.
ColorStudio's software-based monitor calibration lets you correct the way onscreen colors are displayed. You can choose to make settings permanent so that calibration operates system-wide for other applications as well. Modification of ColorStudio’s Calibration File gives you just about the most accurate picture you can get without add-on hardware.
ABCs of Color
ColorStudio's handling of four-color separations is outstanding. After adjusting the RGB settings to an acceptable level, you can use the CMYK Color Correction dialog box to fine-tune the separations. You can save the CMYK adjustments you make and apply them to future work. You can preview all separations in color or black-and-white. Screen angles and frequencies are user-definable lo four decimal places.
ColorStudio provides support for a large variety of proofing systems and film recorders. Letraset also plans to provide auto-correcting output filters for the DuPont 4Cast and Kodak XL 7700 dyesublimation printers.
Although ColorSludio's tools may be more powerful than Adobe Photoshop’s, they’re not as easy to learn and use. Several steps are often required in ColorStudio to accomplish tasks that you can complete in one step with Photoshop — for example, converting a 24-bit-color file to 256 shades of gray is a simple menu choice in Photoshop, whereas ColorStudio requires a multistep, lengthy workaround.
The program provides a variety of powerful selection tools. The lasso operates in the standard fashion, as well as in Polygon, Oval, and Auto Selection mode. The Auto Selection mode lets you choose image areas on the basis of color, close hues, color range, and mask. You can refine all selections by additions and subtractions. Selected areas “float” over the main image so you can work on other areas or perform operations without losing the selection. Then when you’re ready to drop the selected area onto the main image, ColorStudio lets you specify feathering values to facilitate anti-aliased, blended edges. You can save all selections as selection regions and then reselect them later, a function similar to Photoshop’s Alpha Channel. ColorStudio's selection tools are powerful bul complex — the kind that will appeal to professionals bul that may frustrate casual users.
ColorStudio provides a powerful mask layer, which it stores as a separate grayscale image. This approach gives you fine control over the brightness, color, and saturation of masked areas. The density of black in the mask layer controls the degree to which masked areas are affected or protected. You can make masks by painting directly in the mask layer or by copying a portion of the original image into that layer.
Custom Painting
As a true-color painting program, ColorStudio again outshines Photoshop with its superior color control. With ColorStudio, you can vary paint opacity on the fly and in 10-percent increments, using numeric keys. Color palettes based on RGB, HSV, and CMYK are easy to set up and store. The palettes are especially useful for work, such as textile design, that requires many variations based on a limited selection of colors.
You can customize the program's painting tools to your heart's content, and you can change tool shapes and functions quickly and easily, using the program's floating palettes. The palettes remain onscreen for instant modifications until you choose to close them. However, you'll need a large display if you want to accommodate all of ColorStudio’s palettes, because they take up a hefty share of screen real estate. Once you've modified a tool, ColorStudio lets you name and save the custom settings for future use.
The art of filling objects and areas with color is well implemented. Graduated fills can range from straight ramps to circles to arcs. There is even a triangular gradation that ramps among three colors, something that's very difficult to accomplish in Photoshop. You can combine fill areas to form any variety of shapes and ramps.
New Shapes Annex
An optional add-in package for the latest version of ColorStudio gives you drawing as well as painting tools — something you don't get with Photoshop, The $295 Shapes Annex drawing program installs directly into ColorStudio and provides a draw layer over the program's paint layer. You use Bezier control points and handles to manipulate drawings, just as you do with FreeHand and Illustrator, You can also import EPS line art from other PostScript-based packages.
Once you've moved your drawings into their final position over the paint layer, ColorStudio renders them into the paint image as perfectly anti-aliased lines and fills. You can also create custom tools with the drawing package that you can use in the paint layer for blurring, painting, and editing, ColorStudio supplies a variety of special effects, including scaling, stretching, slanting, and rotating. You can also use its filters to create effects. Unfortunately, you're on your own when it comes to figuring out how to use them, because there's not much in the way of documentation about them. Experimentation yields the best results.
ColorStudio is a Rosetta stone of file formats. It can read and write just about any format, including non-Mac formats such as Targa, Scitex, and Crosfield.
The Bottom Line
Although ColorStudio may be beyond the scope of most casual users, professionals will appreciate the power and precision of its tools, particularly tor sophisticated color-image processing. Once they've gotten beyond the initial con fusion arising from the software’s complex interface, ColorStudio will open up new vistas to savvy users.
Barnard, Doug. (May 1991). ColorStudio. MacUser. (pgs. 56-57).
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ColorStudio_Application.bin
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
