RGBee Color Fun v1.01

Reviewed by: Songmuh Jong, send e-mail
Published by: JADTech Corporation, go to the web site
Requires: Windows 95 or higher
MSRP: US$19.95

(Ed. Note: reviewed in January 2000)

RGBee Color Fun is a simple program that allows you to change the attributes of a graph quickly, including the colors, color depth and brightness. It also allows you to print the graph at various magnifications. That's all it can do. Judging from the simple functionality of the application, the asking price is too high.

Installation of RGBee Color Fun was straightforward except two things: (1) The software only allowed TWO full installations. That made me nervous and seemed to throw me back to 15 years ago when Lotus 1-2-3 used the same technology to prevent copying of the program. (2) The installation program asked me to turn off my virus-detection program before performing the installation. Although it sounded scary, I decided to give it a try. Nothing damaging hashappened so far.

The application can recognize quite a few graph formats. However, it only allows you to save the changed picture as a BMP file. Also, the preview function is only valid for BMP files. That appears to be too limiting nowadays, especially when the prevailing graph formats on Internet are GIF and JPG, not BMP. It doesn't recognize GIF files, although it does recognize JPG files. It doesn't have the Save As option, but the Save option is actually a Save As function. It allows you to change the file name rather than saving to the same file automatically. I must say that I was a little bit nervous when I first tried the Save option because I worried that I was about to change the original file.

Changing the colors, color depth and brightness are only matters of clicking. Although it is designed to be simple, RGBee Color Fun does not give you the option of varying the degree of change. Instead, it displays five or six choices that you can click on. Every attribute is limited to five or six different choices. It also doesn't give you the option of changing part of the picture. Rather, the whole picture is changed in the same way.

Overall, the product is designed with kids in mind. It wants kids to have fun changing a picture by varying the colors, amount of colors and brightness. The company claims that the product is a quick way of changing your logo or making watermarks. However, you are probably better off using a full-featured application such as PaintShop Pro.

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