Nolobe Iris Software for Mac [REVIEW]

It’s getting tough out there in the naming business: Adobe’s got Lightroom — good name; Apple has Aperture — OK too; then it gets down to such words as ‘iris’ — and would you believe there’s a whole forest of irises splashed across the computer village. There’s an iris for accountants, astronomers, the people in flight simulation and there’s even an I.R.I.S. that deals with OCR tasks.

And then there’s an Iris that deals with images. Figures huh!

Introducing Nolobe’s Iris Software.

This unassuming yet clever piece of software has been developed by a Perth, Western Australian company — Nolobe.

It’s a Mac application and runs at full speed on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs using OS X 10.5 Leopard. There’s much to like about Iris, not least of which is the US$79 price. There’s also a bit not to like … there’s no online Help for example. Oh well!

However Iris is ideal for computers with space limitations. The app weighs in at only 8.4 MB installed. Kicking it off you get the feeling you’ve seen it all before as it has a distinctively Photoshop-like GUI. Even the toolbar has similarities.

In my usual operating style the first thing I do when opening a camera image for the first time is to set Levels. With Iris, many will appreciate the presence of an Auto Levels function, a feature now missing from the current Photoshop.

You can also start by selecting the White Point and place the picture’s colouration either in a neutral full white zone or somewhere amongst an RGB/CMYK rainbow; this will suit beginners people but annoy the more advanced.

Iris has a one-window interface with no clutter from multiple palettes and there’s much to enjoy: as I said, you can ‘Auto Levels’ as well as ‘Auto Contrast’ an image, then move on to select its Gamma, colourise it, alter the saturation, exposure, invert colours, posterise and more. Image size is handled very simply as are changes to the size of the canvas itself. All the nice things that Photoshop does — but much simpler to deal with.

There’s Layers! You can paint and dabble with the image. Clone, erase and select sections of an image. Use an eye dropper. Add coloured text. With each of these a small palette pops up on the right upper corner of the window; the options are clearly defined and simple to use.

When you get to the Filters department, not much is missing and, if you’re of the cautious type, there’s quite a bit you can leave alone. Most of the Blurs are there … Gaussian, Motion, Noise Reduction etc; there’s a group of half tone screen options that will be useful for those who insert images into school newsletters and the like; there are only two sharpen options — but I figure they will be enough for most people.

Taking an overview of Iris’ attractions, I presume the software is sharply aimed at newbies — and it’s all the better for it. Iris does it all very well.