AutoEye examines, and then automatically enhances digital images providing full spectrum color corrections, increased color vibrancy, contrasting & sharpness, and rebuild detail. AutoEye automatically removes moiré patterns that occur when scanning printed images and features a basic dust and scratch remover. Auto F/X Press Release

Product Review

Abstract Dimensions
Linda Cole

How many times have we all had that perfect photo... almost. It's almost perfect, it's just a little too dark, too light, slightly blurred, off color or any number of defects that displeases the perfectionist in us. Out come the graphics programs and we start to twiddle, adjusting contrast, changing color, brightening and sharpening. If we're lucky, and after a long tedious session of twiddles, we come up with our perfect photo. The good folks at Auto F/X have taken the hassle out of finding the prefect pic. Their newest program, AutoEye 1.0, offers the option of a one click automatic enhancement to your image, or manual settings for the more adventurous.

With the "one click" feature even the novice can bring out the best in most photos. I'm not going to say it's a perfect solution, you will run across images that do not do well with the one click feature for one reason or another. Some images are beyond hope, others have been saved to the wrong format and have lost quality that can't be replaced.

The image to the right was scanned and saved to pcx format. It was then resized and saved to .gif format which reduces the number of colors to 256. Then the color depth was increased to 16 million, and the image was resized yet again. As you can see, the automatic enhancement didn't do well, and looks worse at original size. The manual enhancement, on the other hand, suffered no ill effects from the previous file format changes.

Images that have not undergone a great deal of saving and re-saving do exceptionally well with both the automatic and manual enhancement of Auto Eye. Note that the Automatic Mode enhances clarity and color depth while the Manual Mode allows you to adjust color settings to your own preferences.

The Manual Mode offers a great deal of control over image enhancement, with separate settings for Enhance SubDetail, Colors, Saturate, Contrast, Sharpen Anti-Noise, Brightness, Tonal Range, Red-Green-Blue, Despeckle and Anti-Moiré.

Adjusting the Saturation, Contrast and Tonal Range adds new life to the image to the right, increasing the vibrancy and depth of the existing colors. Definition was added using the Contrast slider.

If you're an amateur photographer, or a grandma with a camera, I highly recommend AutoEye be included in your graphics arsenal.

System Requirements & Product Compatibility:

AutoEye ships as both a plug-in and as a stand-alone application.

AutoEye 1.0 is compatible with Windows 95/98/NT – minimum 32MB of RAM recommended. AutoEye works in most image editors that support plug-ins, including: Adobe Photoshop 3.0, 4.0 & 5.0, Corel Draw 8.0, Corel PhotoPaint 8.0, JASC Paint Shop Pro 5.0, Fractal Design Painter 5.0 and Adobe Photo Deluxe 2.0.