Press Releases

Fast and Friendly Mobile Imaging with Spb Imageer

February 9th, 2004 - Spb Software House is pleased to announce the release of Spb Imageer, a flexible photo viewing and editing tool for the Pocket PC platform, featuring one-tap slideshows, album creation, multi-threaded thumbnail generation and many other robust features.

Spb Imageer was built with two main priorities: speed of image display, and a simple user interface to access key functions quickly. In designing Imageer, the Spb Software House team focused on common scenarios that users would perform with their Pocket PCs, and optimized Imageer around those tasks.

Jason Dunn, VP of Marketing and Imageer Product Manager, explains the focus: “Rather than adding features just for the sake of adding them, we took a hard look at the top five scenarios a user was likely to perform with their pictures: viewing a slideshow, editing a photo, optimizing a photo, building an album of photos, and uploading photos to share with others. We then made sure that doing these tasks took as few clicks as possible – for instance, with our one-tap slideshow, users can take the memory card directly from their digital camera, put it in their Pocket PC, and the storage card notification portion of Imageer will pop up a window giving them several options. A single tap on Slideshow will trigger a full screen slideshow, complete with transitions.”

Imageer was built with a sophisticated software engine that can open even the largest photos – the Spb testing teams used massive 11-megapixel images on storage cards to simulate a worst-case scenario, and Imageer made quick work of displaying and editing the images, even on a mid-range Pocket PC with 64 MB of RAM. Imageer also features read-ahead image caching, which drastically reduces the time required for subsequent images to load. When the user is looking at one image, the next is loading in the background, so when the user requests the next image, it appears instantly. Without a feature like this, slideshows of large photos off a storage card would be a tedious affair.

Editing features include functions commonly required: red-eye reduction, cropping, auto-level adjustment, brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, lightness and full control of the red, blue and green color channels. Adjustments can be made to the image using the blur and sharpen plug-ins. Once the image has been edited, it can be saved as a JPEG with customized quality settings.

For Pocket PCs with wireless Internet access, Imageer offers an especially compelling feature: Web album creation. By partnering with Fotki (www.fotki.com), one of the leading online photo sharing communities, Imageer users can create optimized versions of their photos, and upload them to Fotki, all with a few clicks. If users don’t have a Fotki account, one will be created for them automatically as part of the uploading process. Fotki offers free accounts with basic features, and paid options with premium services.

Album building was designed to be as simple and fast as possible – it’s possible to, with a few clicks and decisions, take hundreds of photos off a storage card and create an optimized album, small in size and easy to share with others. Imageer supports all the common imaging file formats, including JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF and PNG.

Spb Imageer is available in the following localized languages: English, Italian, Spanish, and Russian. French and German versions will be available shortly. A free 15-day trial can be downloaded, or Spb Imageer can be purchased for $14.95 USD, from www.spbsoftwarehouse.com. Owners of any Palbum product can upgrade to Imageer for $7.50 USD. Further details are available at the Spb Software House Web site.

 

Further Information and Downloads

Further information regarding Spb Imageer 1.0 can be found on our Web site:
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/imageer

Features demonstrated through screen shots:
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/imageer/screenshots.html

A free 15-day trial can be downloaded from:
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/imageer/download.html

Upgrade information for previous owners:
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/imageer/upgrade.html

About Spb Software House

Spb Software House is a software development company, specializing mainly in Windows Mobile software for Pocket PCs. Founded in 1999, the company offers advanced software solutions for use in a wide range of applications.