14 DAY TRIAL // Taking pictures and editing them into personalized, unique creations or designing graphical art from digital images are currently two very popular hobbies, as well as steady jobs for many people. Today, graphic design is not only for artists and professionals, but also an activity that gains more and more disciples with various levels of knowledge and skill. Almost anyone with a digital camera and a specialized piece of software can edit and transform a regular photo into something original that reflects more than a common landscape.
Adding effects and morphing elements of an image are far more accessible now than a few years ago. And this is thanks to the emergence of so many applications that can individually or in diverse combinations give the same superior quality to the output as the full-blown suites that once ruled untroubled. Nowadays, with no more than two or three dedicated utilities, you can change photo dimensions, format, colors, add frames and other enhancements, without having to pay a cent.
The abundance of freebies doesn't mean that all of them work flawlessly and produce stunning results, on the contrary. Perhaps too many are difficult to operate even though their job is very simple or the final results are just what you'd expect them to be and this is why finding the right tool for the task you need to accomplish is paramount. In this latter category of the appropriate apps that can actually lend a hand without asking anything in return is Moo0 ImageInColors, a freeware converter for colors.
This may sound original to say the least for some of you, especially for those accustomed to classical graphical converters that take a bunch of JPEGs and make respectable BMPs out of them. This particular piece of software can, indeed, read and work with five different graphical formats (JPG, BMP, ICO, GIF and PNG), but what it does is manage only the hue, brightness or saturation. What this means is a new color scheme for each of the loaded pictures that is gradually rendered more or less accentuated in up to two hundred variants for a single photo. To be even more specific, what you can do with it is load an image and get in return no less than 200 versions with all the possible degrees of colorization.
Imagine what you can do if you are a graphical designer who needs to get as many color tones as possible for selecting the optimal illustration. You can process an entire album and then pick out only the most representative items that are not necessarily the originals. The actual operation of the software should be a breeze, because all the options are out in the open. In fact, some could say that the interface is rather dull, with a single button for activating and hiding the advanced settings. There are no catchy menu effects or animations, just a drop box for the files you want to handle and the output configurations.
Using the ''View'' menu, you'll be able to access a set of interesting and also helpful commands. First of all, you can make the utility sit on top of all the others. Another function that comes in handy is the ''easy drag'' that lets you move the main window by clicking and holding the left mouse button, with the cursor placed anywhere in the interface. The ''right-click transform'' function enables you to switch between the advanced and basic mode, while the last available feature gives you the possibility to exit the application by using the mouse middle button, if you have one.
As presented above, Moo0 ImageInColors will take care of the three main aspects of the RGB color scheme, namely hue, saturation, and brightness. The software offers you a choice in variants and range that will be reflected in the number of consequent photo variations and diversity of their color palette. If you go for the maximum, you'll be able to get two hundred images that differ one from another in increments of one percent. If 100% is the upper limit, why do I get a double number of items, you may ask. Well, this is because to the original picture color is added as well as subtracted, so all the possibilities are covered.
The conversion doesn't take too much time: in the case of a single picture with the maximum number of variants and range selected, the whole job was done within a minute, with a bit of stress on the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 1.90 Ghz CPU peaking at 30 %. The RAM usage was negligible, with under 15 MB out of the available 2GB. Now, if you'll be looking for the resulting images, you'll find them stored in a folder that is automatically generated in the same location as the input files.
The Good
The Bad
The Truth On the whole, Moo0 ImageInColors puts up a very good performance and introduces itself as a useful piece of software that shouldn't be absent from your tool belt if you plan on customizing digital photos. Fast and accurate, even though not too good-looking, this utility does a great job, as you'll see for yourself if you give it a go.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
