Wizard's Integrated Framer Free Demo CD

[Coxby]

Has anyone tried out Wizard's free software demo in this months issue of Picture Framing Magazine? If so, what did you think of it; personally I thought it was actually very good as it allows you to choose from the mount and moulding samples captured from the work top and therefore giving a much better colour match. The final view has good shadowing giving a much more realistic snapshot of how the final job would look and very easy to use. The only two things I found a let down was the poor merging of the moulding sample and THE PRICE!!!

[Dermot]

Links from the US Grumble

Wizard's Integrated Framer
http://www.thegrumble.com/ubb/ultimateb ... 4;t=000903

First Sale with Intergrated Framer
http://www.thegrumble.com/ubb/ultimateb ... 4;t=001008

[markw]

Hi Ed
The demo is very impressive but without the capability to use the link to a Wizard CMC i feel that you are using a lot of time to give the customer a fairly vague picture of the expected outcome.
Following the discussion on the Grumble I looked at an Australian site http://www.chameleonsmart.com/framesmart/FLO/ - It looks as if the future POS software is moving rapidly towards being a visual tool as well as pricing - the framesmart software takes this concept even further by ordering the frame elements online as you go - free software - you pay 2.5% for the privelidge when you pay the supplier - could make the IF software look fairly inexpensive.

One problem with the programmes that take a section of moulding seems to be when you have a distressed moulding you get a very distracting pattern from the repeat- I can just imagine persuading my customer that this isnt how the finished frame will look.

[WizSteve]

Coxby said:

poor merging of the moulding sample

Not sure what exactly you mean by poor merging, but it should allow you to get a very good representation of a tiled moulding texture fairly easily. The latest version from the magazine also allows you to rotate the texture region to align it to the angle of the moulding sample, thereby eliminating the need to always have to square up the samples to the camera. Perhaps that is the problem?

and THE PRICE!!!

Over here in the states at least, our competitor sells their program for almost double of what Integrated Framer runs for... so while it does seem rather expensive on its own, it's actually one of the cheaper programs on the market...

markw said:

but without the capability to use the link to a Wizard CMC i feel that you are using a lot of time to give the customer a fairly vague picture of the expected outcome

So far I believe Integrated Framer is the only program that visualizes anything other than rectangles. But we have had quite a few users with CMCs (other than Wizards) install our MatDesigner software along with IF to get our full shape library. They may not be able to cut all the same shapes, but there is quite a bit of overlap between most CMC template libraries..

But even if you don't have a CMC or MatDesigner installed, Integrated Framer will still show both rectangles and ovals. And as far as time goes, I can snap a picture and show the customer the difference between a blue top mat and a green top mat, side by side, with different borders and different frames, all in under 30 seconds.


So I apologize if I come across as a little too "commercial"... normally I try to limit my replies to straight Q&A. I'm not a sales guy, I'm just a programmer.. But I just wanted to clear up any possible misconceptions..

[markw]

Thanks Wiz Steve - your explanation came over as helpfull - not commercial. - The Demo disc on PFM (was it just my copy or did we all have the same articles printed twice this time) was very usefull - I have looked at a few similar programmes in the past - but this has taken the concept a huge leap forward. In an ideal world we would of course all like software that connected to your CMC - did the pricing - entertained the customer - oh! and didnt cost much.

How do you get around the repeat pattern?
When i used the rotate function - even when enlarged, I tended to get a portion of the grey background at the bottom of the frame - this wasnt shown in the cut out window as the sample filled the box - the illustration of the finished frame contains a grey inner border.

There you go - two straight questions.

[WizSteve]

Thanks Wiz Steve - your explanation came over as helpfull - not commercial. - The Demo disc on PFM (was it just my copy or did we all have the same articles printed twice this time) was very usefull - I have looked at a few similar programmes in the past - but this has taken the concept a huge leap forward. In an ideal world we would of course all like software that connected to your CMC - did the pricing - entertained the customer - oh! and didnt cost much.

Personally, I'd go for the CMC espresso attachment.. "Yes, I'll have a double mount, triple shot, 2% with ovals mat latte' please.. "

How do you get around the repeat pattern?
When i used the rotate function - even when enlarged, I tended to get a portion of the grey background at the bottom of the frame - this wasnt shown in the cut out window as the sample filled the box - the illustration of the finished frame contains a grey inner border.

Hmm.. some of the grey may actually be a simulated shadow, plus I draw a 1-pixel wide rectangle between the inside of the frame and mat for contrast. To double check you can set your frame region so that the bottom of the region is in the middle of the sample, and see if you still see the grey. That way you can be sure you're not accidentally picking up a bit on the background beneath the frame sample.

Now for the repeating patterns.. the dirty secret is that some mouldings currently will always have a obvious repetition as it's tiled across - especially ones that have random "bold" features. The ones that visualize best are the ones that have a simple and narrow repeating pattern, or no pattern at all (i.e. smooth). The idea is to grab the smallest repeating section to minimize any variation in lighting across the sample. I'll try and post pictures when I get to work tomorrow.

I could see future versions of IF down the road include extra tools for framers trying to get the optimal visualization and aren't too concerned about speed (e.g. you're making a bunch of images for ads or for a website and you want them to look as good as possible). But for the moment we're focusing on ease-of-use and reducing the total time from image capture to visualized image..

Hope the helps,
Steve

[John]

We have been using visualisation for a couple of months now and were very concerned initially about the repeating tile effect on the frames and about colour correctness.

It has turned out that our fears were completely unfounded. Customer reaction has been very enthusiastic, they are delighted to be able to 'see' what their piece will look like when framed. The overall effect being much more important to them than absolute accuracy, they do not expect the visualised job to be true in every detail.

Visualisation does not substitute for the tradional use of mount and moulding samples when dealing with our customers. The customer is still shown samples of the actual materials that will be used in their frame, and seem to have no problem with mentally projecting these on to their on-screen counterparts.

Welcome to the forum Steve, good to have you on board.

[markw]

John

How do you work with visualisation and pricing - what programme are you using?

[John]

We are using Pre-View, (soon to be released).

Visualised jobs are priced automatically by EstLite and BBEst, but any POS software could be made to to the same.

[markw]

Ah - thought you were working on something. You can probably sign me up as your first customer.

[John Ranes II, CPF, GCF]

John,

So it sounds like Pre-View will be EstLite's version of visualization software. Not to put you in a spot, but approximately when do you plan on releasing this software? Will you sell it as a "stand alone" product, or only with EstLite? Estimated pricing in the UK?

At the moment, there appear to be three "off the shelf" products available in the U.S., in which Wizard's Integrated Framer has the most bells and whistles, and is currently linked to their CMC software.

LifeSaver's Picture It First is obviously linked to their POS Software, which seems like a tighter fit, and this also appears to be the direction you are headed.

As a framer in the real world, I'm still a bit concerned about the accuraracy of measurements, and tend to prefer imputing this data into our POS software directly, relying on the visualization software as a marketing and selling tool more than an efficiency tool. Your thoughts?

John

[John]

Hi John,

The program itself is just about ready, but there is a lot of other stuff, like the manual/helpfile, the installer, and the website, before it can be released to the world at large.

It is a stand-alone application, but it can easily be linked to by third party POS software.

As a framer who measures only to the nearest inch for pricing purposes, I find that scaling from the photograph is several orders of magnitude more accurate than I am used to. And after my initial cautious checking and re-checking, I am happy to accept the dimensions submitted by the visualiser.

However the workshop, unless specifically instructed otherwise, will ignore any precise measurements on the framing docket, and instead use it as a rough guide, preferring to 'eyeball' the spacing or cropping required for any given image.

[John]

Pre-View is now available from our new website where a free evaluation copy is available to download.

Link to Pre-View site

Any feedback will be appreciated.