Auto F/X to stock tools for Web graphics

Auto F/X Corp. introduced a tools suite this month at Seybold San Francisco to help designers ready their graphics for the Web.

WebVise Totality, priced at $129 and due for PowerPC Macs in December, will feature six modules for optimizing graphics for Web publication, including compression, color conversion and watermarking.

The WebVise package will include a pair of compression engines for GIF and JPEG files. The company said its GIF Compression Engine will achieve compression ratios of 175-to-1 for illustrations and 20-to-1 for bit-mapped images. It will offer before and after comparisons, and users will be able to control dithering and transparency. The JPEG Compression Engine will boast ratios of 30-to-1 at the highest quality setting, Auto F/X said.

Hybrid Web Safe Colors will increase the number of Web safe colors to thousands by mixing shades from the 216-color palette adopted by Netscape Communications Corp. Auto F/X said WebVise Optimized Dithering Engine will let users perform selective color correction on 8-bit images.

Users will be able to encode copyright information in their graphics using the suite's Digital Watermarker and freely distributed reader software, the company said.

For putting moves on graphics, WebVise will feature Animator, an export filter for Adobe Photoshop that lets users create frames as they work within Photoshop. In addition, the software will offer batch processing of several popular image formats.

WebVise Totality will be available as a stand-alone application and as plug-ins for several popular graphics applications. A version for Windows 95 and NT will ship later this month.

Auto F/X Corp. of Wolfeboro, N.H., can be reached at (603) 875-4400; fax (603) 875-4404; shayne@autofx.com; http://www.autofx.com.