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Automate hundreds of repetitive editing, optimization, and conversion tasks
on the desktop and server with a drag and drop.
Editing
DeBabelizer Pro 6 includes many features and options for editing and manipulating image files. When you edit an image or animation/video frame, you are modifying the pixels in the image, which produces a change in the image's appearance. Editing any image involves adding, removing, or changing the color or one or more pixels.
You can apply most of DeBabelizer Pro's image manipulation actions to an entire image document or to a selected area on an image. You can apply most of these actions to a frame within an animation/video file (Such as an FLC animation file of a QuickTime movie). When you become familiar with DeBabelizer Pro's image editing capabilities, you can use these actions as building blocks for custom processing all your graphics files.
Batches
One of the most powerful and unique features of DeBabelizer Pro 6 is its ability to automate graphics processing and output. Batches enable you to create groups of images, animation frames, and palettes that you can then process together, automatically. They also provide the unique capability of referencing any number of files, grouping and organizing them according to your specifications, and making this information accessible as a source for automated processing. No matter how you manipulate the content of a Batch, the source files stored on your system remain unchanged.
You can also use Batches to generate SuperPalettes and animation/video files, and to perform automated file translation quickly and easily. Batches are re-usable tools for your desktop automation, as well as remote server processing. DeBabelizer Pro 6 stores Batches in two ways within the Global batches and as individual Batch files. Batches are integral to defining automated processes. As you become a more advanced DeBabelizer Pro user, you will find Batches an extremely useful tool for executing desktop and server-based processing.
Palettes and the SuperPalette
A palette (also called a color lookup table) is a table containing 256 or fewer colors, and each of these colors has an index value (between 0 and 255). Indexed images (8 bits or less contain a palette, and each pixel in the image is mapped to a particular index value. Palettes are an important resource for reducing and modifying image colors.
DeBabelizer Pro 6 enables you to create, edit, and store palettes, which you can then apply to any image or animation/video frame, and to any Batch containing images and/or animation frames. SuperPalette is Equilibrium's powerful proprietary method for creating the best palette for a series of images/frames, and in DeBabelizer Pro 6, you can now include any palette as a base for a new SuperPalette. You can then remap the group to the SuperPalette and display the graphic simultaneously without sacrificing image quality.
In DeBabelizer Pro 6, there are two types of palettes: a standalone palette stored in the palette list and an image's palette. Both palette types contain between 2 and 256 index entries, and each index entry contains a set pf red, green and blue color values that define the color for that entry. It is important to remember that colors and bit depth are related: The more colors an image uses, the higher its bit depth.
26 Built-in Palettes for Web and mobile devices
The palette stored in the palette list are some of the most important resources you will use when processing images and animations in DeBabelizer Pro 6. Each of these stored palettes contains a color table you can apply to images and animations/video frames repeatedly. You can also combine these palette to create new palettes containing specific colors for specific index values.
DeBabelizer Pro 6 includes 26 built-in palette documents, such as the Windows default 256, the Mac default 256, the Palm OS and Windows CE for mobile devices. These palettes are designed to enable you to include specific colors for many different system types and applications. You can use these palettes as they are, use them as base palettes for generating custom (adaptive) palettes, or edit and combine them to create your own customized palette.
Workflows and Actions
In DeBabelizer Pro, a Workflow is a unique resource that serves not only as a list of image processing actions, but also as a graphics processing tool you can implement in a number of ways to modify an unlimited number of image and animation/video files to your specifications. You can create, customize, and save Workflows and then reuse them, or edit them for other projects or graphic types, and apply these Workflows to images and animations, as well as any Batches or folders containing these file types or a text file containing references to these file types. If you are running Mac® OS X (v10.4 Tiger), you can utilize Action packs, which are Automator-ready, external Workflow files that can be used as Actions in Automator.
Combining DeBabelizer Pro 6 Workflows and Batches is a powerful, automatic method of processing multiple files. Workflows can include nearly any executable action and you will find that processing large groups of images and animation/video frames is easier and more effective when you use Workflows right on your desktop, or with server-based automation. Workflows are also an integral part of server-based processing using the new DeBabelizer Server.
DeBabelizer Pro 6 Actions
Each action is equivalent to executing a menu command by using your mouse on the desktop. DeBabelizer Pro 6 actions are designed to execute in a "batch mode," so that they are easily applied to multiple files at a time rather than applied on a image-by-image basis. You can put together any sequence of actions in a Workflow, which functions as a re-usable tool for processing image and animation files. DeBabelizer Pro stores Workflows in two ways: within the Global Workflows and as individual Workflow files.
Global Workflows
The Global Workflows is a collection of Workflows that reside within the DeBabelizer Pro resources. It contains some pre-defined Workflows at installation. You can add your own custom Workflows to the Global Workflows, as well as delete them for the list if you no longer need them.
Workflow Files
You can also create an individual Workflow document as a Workflow file. Workflow files are like most types of text-based documents, but they contain a list of DeBabelizer Pro actions and parameters to be used for automated processing.
DeBabelizer Pro 6 Action Packs
Another way to put together a sequence of DeBabelizer Pro actions is creating an Action Pack. While Workflows are executed within DeBabelizer Pro, Action Packs give you the same capabilities for building, editing, and saving an ordered list of actions, but as an "Automator-ready" file. Automator users can build these multi-action workflows in DeBabelizer Pro and use the saved Action Pack files when constructing Automator workflows.
DeBabelizer Pro 6 Automator Actions
If you are running Mac OS X version 10.4 (Tiger) or higher, you can create customized Automator Actions for DeBabelizer Pro 6. Use these Actions to incorporate DeBabelizer Pro's powerful image processing capabilities into re-usable multi-application Workflows.
Part of the DeBabelizer Pro 6 installation is an Automator Action Pack, which includes over 50 pre-built Actions for common DeBabelizer Pro processing tasks. Everything from color reduction, to CMYK conversions, to high-quality image scaling, padding, and cropping can all be added in your Automator Workflows.
Using Automator, you can also make DeBabelizer Pro your export/import tool—with over 120 readers and writers, you can easily import nearly any file format, process, and then export to any file you need. You can combine these Actions with other application Actions to make powerful workflows all driven by Automator. Additionally, you can create custom Actions Packs to implement the same full-featured, complex processing capabilities of DeBabelizer Pro Workflows, but as Automator-ready modules that you can link to actions of other applications. This gives you the power to achieve multiple image actions (without requiring that you save between each one) inside of DeBabelizer Pro, including multiple save commands, renaming and other powerful professional features for which DeBabelizer is famous.
DeBabelizer Pro 6 Actions in Automator Workflows
The scripting pane in Automator allows you to select a DeBabelizer Action to be applied to files passed in from the previous Action. When called, DeBabelizer Pro applies the action and generates files that can be passed to the next action.
Most of the standard Actions available for use in Automator do a singular task. For many image editing applications, this singular task is one image editing command to modify an image passed from a previous Action. However, in DeBabelizer Pro 6, Actions are more typically a series of processes or commands that can be applied to the passed image.
While it is possible to use Automator to create a sequence of applications to create a process, files must be saved between each Action even if the next Action is performed by the same application. This saving process saves over the original source image file and requires a great deal more processing time and memory to save the file between each command of a complex process. However, using DeBabelizer Workflows to generate Automator actions, you can build more complex processing into your workflows and save various forms of output to different locations.
Workflow Droplets
As easy as it is to create, edit, and apply Workflows within DeBabelizer Pro 6, it is even easier to apply Workflow Droplets. A Droplet is a small application that applies a Workflow to one or more image files that you drag onto the Droplet icon. Embedded within the Droplet is an exported AppleScript that can be executed from any location on your Macintosh. You can use Workflow Droplets to process images on your desktop without launching the DeBabelizer Pro application.
Joblets
When you have implemented the new DeBabelizer Server to utilize server-based processing, you can also use Job Droplets, or Joblets. This type of Droplet executes a remote processing using a Workflow, destination, and remote server execution that is defines in the Job Creator window. You can drag the Joblet™ icon in the Job Creator window into a Finder window to create a Joblet . Dropping files on a Joblet submits the defined job to the server using the dropped files as the source. Double-clicking the Joblet opens it for editing the Job Creator window. While a Workflow Droplet provides a saved execution of the Workflow using the dropped files, a Joblet has the ability to save an unlimited number of job "versions" under different file names and save those versions for later recall.
Opening Multiple-Layer Photoshop files.
DeBabelizer Pro 6 includes support for reading multiple layers in Photoshop files, as well as channel support for layers. These multiple-layer files are handles like multiple-frame files, and DeBabelizer Pro 6 provides automation tools for handling the individual layers. Artists and animators who work with layers to create animation artwork can use DeBabelizer Pro as an "auto-processing" workflow application for generating optimized derivatives, or separating out cells.
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