Barco Creator
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| Developer(s) | Barco Graphics |
|---|---|
| Stable release |
7.2 / 1999?
|
| Operating system | Silicon Graphics IRIX |
| Type | Graphics editor |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | Archived December 6, 1998, at the Wayback Machine. |
Barco Creator was an image manipulation program targeted at the repro and print shop markets. It was developed by the Creative Systems (later Graphics) division of the Barco Group from 1988 (first shown as a prototype at Parigraph in April 1988, then later at Ipex 88) to the late 1990s, and ran on several generations of Silicon Graphics computers. Barco (later Esko) ColorTone for Windows NT is considered its successor.
Up until the late 1980s digital retouching depended on specialized hardware such as the Quantel Paintbox. Barco Creator was one of the first products to break the mold by running on off-the-shelf SGI workstations instead. Originally targeted at the "high end", Creator evolved into a slightly more mid-market alternative with the "personal"-edition running on the Indy. Still the price was in the $10k to $100k range depending on options, and additional hardware was sometimes needed to speed up specific operations. While Creator could rely on superior features and performance to justify its price through the mid-1990s, it became increasingly clear that each new Photoshop version made the Barco package harder to sell. After the release of version 7.1 in late 1997 there were few new sales. In the end Creator was abandoned, like many of its contemporaries; Dalim Tango, Linotype-Hell DaVinci and Alias Eclipse. Its spiritual successor, known as Esko ColorTone, is still available.
Creator was set up to be a modular system, tailored to the specific needs of each "shop" or user. The base for version 7.0 for example was the "CT-Brix" software library (colour selection, basic compositing, selection, transformation, shapes, basic colour correction, densitometer, layers etc.), also featured in other Barco Graphics CT (continuous tone) products, e.g. ColorTone. On top of this Creator added the "Creative functions" libraries (special effect filters; mosaic, emboss, b/w, warp etc.), "basic brush" module (size, thickness, shapes, styles, pressure sensitivity), "advanced brush" module (brush profiles, textures), "basic colour correction" module (gradation correction, pick mixer, plane mixer, colour mixer), "advanced colour correction" module (chain all of the basic correction tools, batch corrections, instant preview) and finally the "auto mask" module.
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