http://www.sgi.com/products/Indy/publish_barco.html (Silicon Surf Promotional CD, 01/1995)

Publish

Barco Graphics Creator 5.2

Creator isn't for the squeamish; it's targeted at skilled imaging professionals. Barco Graphics is a division of the Belgium-based Barco Group, and while Creator has achieved success in the European market, the program has been less successful in North America (in part because of a lack of interest in UNIX-based image editing programs on this side of the Atlantic).

The Canvas select View in Barco's Creator gives the name and thumbnail previews of the images available in the current open directory.

Creator is the image-design component of Barco's more complete color publishing system, which consists primarily of workstations such as the BG-2400, a high-performance system optimized for graphics.

The other image-design component is Strike, a vector illustration program thats comparable to Adobe Illustrator or Aldus FreeHand, with a touch of QuarkXPresss page layout capabilities thrown in. Together, Creator and Strike offer everything you need for extremely high-end color production and reproduction, from design to prepress. Designed to complement each other, Creator and Strike together offer a wide range of features, from Strikes page layout to Creators photo editing capabilities, all of which perform at speeds that break the sound barrier.

Although billed as a stand-alone product for general image editing needs, Creator has three drawbacks that hinder populist appeal: first and foremost is its price. Not many design firms have this kind of money budgeted for software, so right off the bat, Creator is knocked out of the mainstream market.

Also, Creator's system requires a whopping 64 MB of hard disk space to install and at least 1 GB of hard disk space to manipulate images comfortably. This doesn't leave much room on your Indy for much else except the basic installed system and peripherals. (I had to strip my Indy's 1.2-GB hard drive down to the bone to free up enough space for installation and sample images.) Plus, the program requires at least 64 MB of RAM; 128 MB of RAM is preferred.

The final drawback is Creator's interface. Developed in 1986 before standards such as icon-based toolbars and palettes were established, most of Creator's tools and commands are accessed from pull-down menus that hide layers and layers of submenus. While working in the program I constantly forgot my last feature selection and ended up hunting for the command I required. All told, you need to climb a fairly steep learning curve to work easily in Creator. The manual, a hefty three-ring binder rife with jargon and assumptions, is little help, but with purchase Barco does include five free days of training through dealers; or you can arrange for an in-office, personalized training program through Barco itself.