WELCOME TO PHOTOFINISH  4.1

The Learning Company is proud to introduce PhotoFinish 4.1. 

ROYALTY-FREE USE OF PHOTOGRAPHS

1.	 Photographs:  Subject to the restrictions described below, you may resell the photo images in printed form and you may make copies of the images for use in advertisements, public or private presentations, business communications, multimedia presentations, and other similar uses. For example, subject to the restrictions described below, you may use the images to create posters, greeting cards, invitations, calendars, reports or catalogs.

	The restrictions are:

	(i)	You may NOT resell, sublicense or distribute the photo images in any electronic form, including, on any on-line service or the Internet.  For example, you may NOT include photos in another software product for resale, or distribute the  or photos on any on-line bulletin board service.

	(ii)	You may NOT use photos of identifiable people, trade names or trademarks in any product for sale, distribution, or in any public presentation or public display.  For example, you may use photos of people in private presentations, but not in newsletters, advertisements or public presentations.

	(iii)	You may NOT use photos of people or identifiable entities in any manner which suggests the endorsement or association of any product or service or in connection with any pornographic or immoral materials.  For example, you may use a photo of a non-human object such as an animal in an advertisement, but you may not use a photo of a person in an advertisement.

	(iv)	You may NOT resell or distribute the photo images as  collections, photo collections or stock photography.

	(v)	Users must credit The Learning Company as provided below.


2.	Copyright Notice:  End users that use the photographs as described above must credit The Learning Company and reproduce the following notice in the publication:  "(c) 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. and its licensors."

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VERSION 4.1 INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING NEW FEATURES:

WINDOWS 95 - Support for 32 bit environment, OLE 2.0 drag & drop, long file names, context sensitive menus, tool tips, mail enable and much more!

UPDATED CONTROLS - You can now control the pressure and transparency of brushes, pens, and many other Natural Tools with the new, easy-to-use slider bars.

MASKING - Masking protects selected areas of an image from being affected by editing or retouching. This ensures that both novice and experienced graphics users will have the control to create the perfect image.

PLUG-IN FILTERS - In addition to an extensive set of built-in filters, PhotoFinish 4.1 also supports 3rd party plug-in filters such as Kais Power Tools and other Photoshop-compatible filters.

MORE SPECIAL EFFECTS - New filters include Solarize, and Antique with easier to use Filter Samples.

FILE FORMATS - In addition to PCX, BMP, TIF, JPG, TGA, PCT, Kodak PCD; PhotoFinish 4.1 now imports common vector files (WMF, CGM, EPS).

MULTI-LEVEL UNDO & REDO - Experiment with the knowledge that any unwanted edits can be reversed.

NEW CLONING CAPALITIES- It is now possible to paint a piece of one image into another image or paint it into another location within the same image.

COLLAPSIBLE PALETTE- A collapsible palette allows you to see more of your image by allowing the palette to use less space.

TOOL OUTLINES- Each tool, after selecting it, will display an outline to enable you to see the size and shape of the paint/draw area.

RESIZE FEATURES- The resize feature now includes an option to resize a picture or a section of a picture by percentage.

NEW TEXT OPTIONS- It is now possible to include outline and drop shadows to text placed in a picture.


INSTALLING & UNINSTALLING PHOTOFINISH 4.1

PhotoFinish 4.1 Install requires "Share" to be running.  This requires that your system have the file Share.exe in the root of your boot drive ( typically C:\ ).  If the install prompts you to add "Share" to your Autoexec.bat on multiple instances then you need to add the file Share.exe to your boot drive.

Please see the User Guide for additional uninstall information

VIDEO CARD CONFLICTS
Older drivers for some graphics accelerator cards can sometimes cause the installation process to halt before it is finished. If You have problems installing PhotoFinish 4.1, please contact the hardware manufacturer for updated drivers.

LOW MEMORY CONDITIONS
If you are editing very large images and your system contains only 8 MB of memory, PhotoFinish 4.1 will create temporary files on your computer's hard drive to store information that has 'overflowed' from memory. This means that you must have enough space available on your hard drive to accommodate these temporary files. If you do not have enough free space on your hard drive for PhotoFinish 4.1 to create temporary files, you may not be able to successfully edit large images.

Please refer to the User Guide, or click the Help button on the OPTIONS | PREFERENCES | MEMORY window, to learn more about managing memory within PhotoFinish 4.1.

SCANNERS & DIGITAL CAMERAS
PhotoFinish 4.1 supports most scanners and digital cameras via standard Windows TWAIN drivers and hardware-specific drivers supplied by the manufacturer. When you select File | TWAIN | Select Source from the PhotoFinish menu, you can view and select the correct driver for your scanner or digital camera. Depending on the manufacturer, you may be asked to choose between a 16-bit or 32-bit driver.

The Learning Company recommends the following guidelines when using TWAIN compatible devices:
WINDOWS 95; WINDOWS NT 3.51 - 32-bit
WINDOWS 3.1; Windows 3.11 - 16-bit

If you are running Windows NT 4.0, the manufacturers drivers may not yet have been updated to support this operating system. Please contact the hardware manufacturer for updated drivers.


THE TOOL SELECTOR BAR
You will notice that several of the tool icons on PhotoFinish 4.1s Tool Selector Bar have black triangles in the lower right corner, indicating that additional tools are available. You can click anywhere on the icon to expose those tools. You are not limited to clicking on the corner triangles, as in PhotoFinish 3.0.


THE TOOL OPTION BAR
If your display is set to 640 x 480, the 'Apply Paper', 'Set Defaults', and 'Restore Defaults' icons on the TOOL OPTIONS BAR may not be visible on your screen. To access the functionality for these tools, double-click anywhere on the gray area in the Tool Options Bar to display the Tool Options dialog box. Double-click anywhere on the gray area in the dialog box to restore the Tool Options Bar.


TILE PATTERNS
PhotoFinish 4.1 installed over 25 tile patterns to use with the Rectangle Draw tool. Optimal sizing of a tile pattern depends on the size of the rectangle you draw. For example, the 'gradient tile pattern works best when you draw a large rectangle. 'Wood' is effective at all sizes. You should experiment with the various tile patterns to identify the sizes and patterns that best suit your requirements.


PCT (PICT) FILES
PhotoFinish 4.1 will read the PICT files created by most Mac imaging programs. However, a few older Macintosh programs, and some screen capture utilities, create PICT files that PhotoFinish may not be able to read.


MASKING & FEATHERING
When you make a mask selection and click on the Feather Tool, a dialog asks you to enter the percentage of feathering. When you Copy/Paste your feathered selection to another area or image, you will notice that the edge of your selection extends beyond the marquee. The area between the marquee and the edge is the "feathered" area. While you can draw or paint across the entire selection, the pressure of your stroke is always reduced in the feathered area.

