WinImages 6 is a very powerful program. Its range of capabilities is monumental. Anything WinImages can perform on a still frame it can perform on an animation. This gives the user an infinite number of possible simultaneous effects. However, it has, in my opinion, a very steep learning curve. This, of course, is true with any very complicated and powerful program. Since I use Adobe Photoshop for most of my image editing, I found that understanding similarly named areas, such as layers, confusing because I was trying to fit the Photoshop definition into the WinImages parameters. However, once understood, the concept was not hard to understand.

The requirements for WinImages are: Microsoft Windows 95/98/2000/ME/NT 4.00 or higher; a 486 or higher processor; a minimum of 16MB ram; Netscape release 3 or higher or Internet Explorer release 3 or higher.

WinImages does not install into the Window's registry so that uninstalling it is easy to do. And unlike other Window's Registry resident programs, uninstalling it will not uninstall other important dll files. For version 5 owners, the upgrade price is $49.95. For new WinImage users, the price is $399.95. At present, Black Belt Systems does not offer a demo version. The program is downloadable from their website. The manual is also downloadable and is excellent.

Two components comprise WinImages. These are FX_6 and Morph_6. Both components are well documented with tutorials for beginners as well as advanced users. I found the tutorials to be easy to follow, and they helped me begin to understand the program not just the steps presented in the tutorials. The above left picture is a gif animation that can be created using the Advanced Getting Started Tutorial. This animation will unfold and continuously run.

WinImages 6 can be used to create this Advanced Getting Started Tutorial or it can be used for something very simple. An example of how the shape of a tree can be controlled is shown on the right. For an image I was creating in Adobe Photoshop, I needed to bend this tree and to be able to control whether the whole tree bent, a part of the tree bent, and how much of a bend I wanted.

Many, many more features of WinImages 6 can be seen on the Black Belt Systems' website at: http://www.blackbeltsystems.com/r6.html

Morph_6 is the other part of the package. The WinImages 6 morph component uses two basic techniques for morphing - warping and transition. Warping means basically distorting a single image around certain positional controls determined by the user. Distortion filters in other programs can accomplish this; but normally the user does not have precise control of the final effect.

Single frame Transition Morphing means using two images and combining them to form a third; again, using specific points of reference.

WinImages provides the tools to be able to do this statically or in motion using multiple sequences of events. WinImages, also, has the capability of Tweening or adding intermediary frames in an animation using the first and the last as points of reference. Thus, WinImages encompasses a very large scope in how it allows the user to create simple single warp morphs or multiple, complicated transitional morphs.

I decided to do a simple Transition Morph. I chose to use WinImages 6 only for the morphing process and Photoshop to get the images ready for morphing and then to make final changes in the resultant morphed image. The Print Screen Image shows the three steps: The start frame shows the dog's head. The end frame shows my husband's head. The result frame shows the combination.

The last shot shows how I added the head to the whole body of the dog. The work in both WinImages and Photoshop only constitute rough, quick work. Neither show the depth of either program. But the below shot illustrates a bare minimum, and I stress the word minimum, of what can be done in WinImages 6.

WinImage 6 performed flawlessly. As stated earlier, all the tutorials were easy to follow. I could apply them to my own work and continue from there.

I recommend anyone who wants to do complicated, special effects imagery or morphing not only for still frames but for animation to purchase Black Belt Systems' WinImage 6 program.