Preview:

In this article we will take a general overall picture of photoimpact's 12 interface .

Almost every computer program there is today comes with a way for users to interact with it. If it didn't, the program wouldn't be of much use to anyone. Most older programs offered nothing more than a rather frightening and intimidating text-based command line interface which required you to know awkward commands to be able to use it. The more recent programs today provide us with a graphical user interface (called a GUI) which is user-friendly and an intuitive way of telling the program what it is we want it to do. Fortunately for us, Photoimpact comes with all kinds of "GUI" goodness, which makes our life a whole lot easier right off the bat.

Menu Bar

Menu Bar
If you've been using a computer, you're undoubtedly familiar with the concept of a menu bar, usually located at the top of the screen. The browser you're using to view this web site has one, and with most programs, it's where you'll find the standard options like, open, close, save and print files, as well as various other options and commands specific to that program.

The Toolbox

The Toolbox
Photoimpact's Tools box, located by default on the left side of the screen, is where you'll find, as the name implies, all of Photoimpact's various tools.
The Toolbox panel may seem at first to be a random selection of icons, but if you look closely, you'll see horizontal lines running through it. These lines are there to separate the tools into related groups.
Also if you look closely, you'll notice that some of the tools have tiny black arrows pointing down. These arrows indicate that there are additional related tools hidden behind them, and if you click your mouse on one of these tools, the tools that were hidden behind them will appear.

Attribute Bar

Attribute Bar
When you select one of the tools from the Toolbox the attribute Bar will highlight below the menu bar, displaying options specific to tool selected in the Toolbox.
This is one of the most important bars when doing web based graphic designs; example above is when selecting the "path drawing tool".

The Panels

The Panels
Panels are dialog boxes on your screen which enable you to interact with Photoimpact. They allow you to view things such as Layer manager, Selection manager, Document manager, Browse manager, Easy Palette, Color Panel, Quick command panel, Tool settings-path which you see above, Histogram Panel, Smart guide.
You can also view a list of all the panels available in Photoimpact by clicking on the Window Menu in the Menu Bar at the top of the screen.