Stardust™ Image Encoder™ 4.5 is a suite of three powerful and time-saving
tools designed to allow you to easily convert images into smaller high-quality
compressed formats. The main application allows you to fine-tune your image, and
provides an interactive real-time preview of changes made to an image. The batch
wizard lets you update an entire collection of images at once. The console
application makes it possible to perform unattended actions on images in batch
files and scripts.
Now, it's easier than ever before to enhance, crop and resize your images, apply
artistic effects, and compress them into smaller high-quality formats. With Image
Encoder you can save time and create the best quality images for sharing
with friends through email and web sites, displaying in slide shows or including
in a screen saver, or archiving to a standardized collection.
State of the Art Compression
Image Encoder supports many popular formats, and offers state of the art compression.
Different formats
are best for different applications. For smaller image size and quick upload/download
time, choose a format such as JPEG or JPEG2000, which offers high quality with maximum
compression. Two different versions of JPEG2000 are offered, JPEG2000 Code Stream (JPC)
and JPEG2000 JP2, which offers the same format as the basic code stream with other
compatible information such as color space information. The popular GIF format (now in
the public domain) offers small file size in a 256-color format, portable across many
platforms. PNG-8 offers better compression than GIF, and PNG-24 offers 24-bit color in
a lossless format.
Interactive Real-Time Preview
The interactive real-time preview eliminates the guesswork of image compression and allows
you to get the best quality image in the size you want, on the first try.
The "Compressed" tab always shows you exactly what your encoded image will look like,
based on the changes you have applied, and the "Uncompressed" tab shows your image without
compression, but with the same sizing and other changes so you can easily compare the two
section by section. The compressed file size is tracked for you, so when you're ready to
save a copy in the new format, you know how big the file will be. You can set "Auto-Apply"
for compression changes and many other areas, then just check boxes or move a slider to see
your image immediately update -- no more guesswork or frustration.
Image Encoder never changes your original image - each time you save, you're saving an
optimized copy of the image, and not overwriting the original. And, any time you make a
change to your image and don't like it, it's easy to undo. If you're not happy with a
crop or tone adjustment, just click the appropriate Reset button to undo it, or uncheck
the particular modification that you don't want. Any modification can be undone at any
time, without affecting other modifications you've made. It's like a built-in safety net,
that allows you to experiment as much as you like.
Fine Tune Your Images
Image Encoder is more than just an image compressor. It can enhance images, convert
to standard size, apply artistic effects, add watermarks to images, and more.
Resize your entire image to any dimensions you like. Or, crop your images to save just
the part you're interested in. You can crop images to exactly the desired image area and
dimensions, with no guesswork about the size of the final cropped area. Or, set your size,
choose an area, and let Image Encoder resize the cropped section to fit -- in minutes you
can convert a series of images to 640x480 or another standard size, and include only the
part of each image that you want to preserve, with no frustration about getting the
cropping frame "exactly right" as in other imaging programs. At any time you can undo your
crop, without losing other changes you've made to the image.
Easy adjustment controls allow you to set brightness and contrast, sharpen your images to
exactly the right level, rotate horizontally and vertically, even convert images to black
and white (with full shade depth) and sepia tone. All adjustments can be viewed in real
time, and easily changed or undone.
To protect and customize your images, add a watermark -- just choose any small image,
then select the alignment, margins, and degree of transparency. Each formatted copy that
you save will contain the watermark as part of the image. To protect a series of images,
just use the Batch Wizard (see below).
Save Time with the Batch Wizard
The Image Encoder Batch Wizard allows you to convert multiple images in one operation.
You can fine-tune color, size, and format settings with the main application, then use
those settings to convert an entire batch of related images. You can even include a
watermark on every image in a batch! If you're preparing images for a slideshow or screen
saver, you can convert them all to the same format, resize them all to the same dimensions,
add your personal watermark to each image, and save to one folder, all in a single pass
through the batch wizard.