A software publisher who writes an application for simplifying publishing pictures for the web faces stiff opposition, with many of the major imaging/browsing applications incorporating a web gallery publishing feature. Inzomia has risen to the challenge and released an application called Zoom Studio 2.

Zoom Studio incorporates some novel features such as Pan & Zoom on web images, full screen view on images, animations on pictures, image gallery templates and Inzoomify, which will convert your web pages to zoomable objects.

Installing the application is simply a matter of inserting the CD and following the on-screen instructions. On launching Zoom Studio the screen is split into four areas; Directory, File, Info and Output views. Navigate via the directory view to the folder containing the images you want to publish. Now make a Gallery via the file menu File > New > Gallery. Select individual pictures from the File panel, or from the menu choose Select all Images, and press Ctrl + G to add the images - you can also drag the images straight to the Gallery. Presumably, most readers will want to publish their digital camera images.  Zoom Studio does not have a facility to downsize pictures, you have to do this in your imaging application prior to adding them to the gallery. However, you can set the thumbnail files size.

The animation feature is, quite frankly, basic i.e. the image moves about the screen not doing much else.  You define positions by dragging the image around  on the Output screen and then press the Add pos button.  Animated Gifs can be more interesting to look at.

With the images in the Gallery you can choose a Template from a choice of seven, and can set various elements such as a title and the Inzomia window size. Clicking the Configure button gives more options. The Output of your images in the chosen template is displayed in the bottom right corner of the screen together with navigation links. The next stage is to Export the HTML files to a folder of your choice.  This is a very fast process that takes a few seconds.

The choice of templates supplied with Zoom Studio is limited and they don’t do much to inspire, although you can customise these in a limited way. The Pan & Zoom feature requires people viewing your site to download a 524 kb JavaScript which takes approx 2 minutes.  After downloading the viewer will be confronted with an Inzomia sales pitch screen, the download link is placed on the main.html page in your gallery. The viewer works quite well, the zooming feature works within the bounds of the Inzomia window you have defined.  When scrolling the image the cursor remains stationary, which feels awkward. The full screen view leaves the web browser window, press the esc. key to return. The full screen image is optimised to give the best quality without seeing pixels, small files look quite good even though they look slightly soft.

Verdict:

A limited use application which will appeal to some but lacks useful features for us to recommend this product.

Pros
Quick to create HTML pages

Cons
Limited amount of pre-defined templates
Requires viewer to download a script
Animations are basic

Price: $39

www.inzomia.com

©Vincent Oliver www.photo-i.co.uk 2002