News from APP Helmond

July 2009
Mosaizer Pro has a new feature: cropping the source file, to only render what you are interested in. It saves the use of additional bitmap editor tools to first cut out the part you need for Mosaizer pro.
The size selection has also been updated with an improved setting: the default is now set as HighQuality 5 Megapixel picture as printed on an A4 paper. Changing the size is now more intuitive and better understood when size changes are made.

June 2009
All three applications of APP Helmond underwent a redesign of the web-update feature (Mosaizer Pro, Mosaizer Lite and Textaizer Pro). This feature is now consistent between the versions and is more user-friendly. The download progress can be seen and the update can be opened upon request to start updating the software.

May 2009
Mosaizer Lite 1.1b5 has been released:

• to further improve our customer support, registration is now required after 30 days of unrestricted use (like Mosaizer Pro) .
• the possibility to update from our website has been added
• a little bug in the Colorize post-processing has now been solved (was only visible when changing source pictures)

Other news:

• New skins have been made available. Look at the Goodies page to download the skins.
• The rss feeds have been discontinued. It was fun when we started, but a pain to continue. The news page is sufficient.

April 2009
A new application has been launched: Mosaizer Lite ! This version is an extremely fast freeware photo mosaic creator. It is the simpler version of it's bigger brother Mosaizer Pro. This new application can be downloaded from the Download page. Additional libraries will be made available on the webite, but like Mosaizer Pro the user can make libraries her/himself. The major difference between a library for Mosaizer Pro and the Lite version is that the library for Lite is now one file and not a fixed link to pictures on the hard drive.
Mosaizer Lite has the following possibilities:

• Creation of photo mosaic pictures
• AutoMosaizing: cutting a bitmap into smaller parts, from which the application rebuilts the original
• Automated picture library creation (incl. 2 readily available libraries of pictures)
• Automated post-processing and picture enhancement
  • blending with the original bitmap
  • colorizing each individual cell
  • anti-aliasing for a smooth result
  • sharpening to create a fresh looking picture
• Easy workflow: just 4 buttons and a few settings

A new feature to Textaizer Pro has been added, and a few bugs in Mosaizer Pro have been solved. This is the shortlist:

• Textaizer Pro: the resulting bitmap can now be printed on multiple pages has been added (max. 100 pages)
• Mosaizer Pro: a bug in square pattern with non-square library images has been corrected
• Mosaizer Pro: 'floating point division error' message in printer menu has been debugged
• Mosaizer Pro: picture library creation has new been improved with a better and easier to use interface

March 2009
To both Mosaizer Pro and Textaizer Pro a skin selector has been added. The user can now select his or her favourite skin for the graphical interface. At the moment 6 skins are available after installation. More skins will become available for download soon.

Mosaizer Pro 7.1 has been released. The major change is a brand new color matching engine. This new engine effectively analyzes also the interior of each tile and library picture. This is the overview of changes:

• all color engines have been replaced with one new engine
• library color match prediction has also greatly been enhanced
• post-processing: blend en colorize have now a better user interface
• pre-processing: all filter changes are updated in real-time to better evaluate the effect
• source masks have been simplified: 'source mask as alpha' is not possible anymore
• some minor bugs have been solved
• minor language updates have been added and modified
• Vista users: 'floating point division' error has now fully been resolved

February 2009
Some debugging was done and two new (small) feature have been added:

• a bug in the color engine 'pixel comparison' was solved.
• the cell can now be rotated as well (only in combination with an alpha mask).
• the option to create a better color match with the Mosaizer's cut picture is now available (100% picture recovery when the pixel comparison engine is chosen).

On request of many users we have (finally) issued a series of tutorials. Currently there are 6 tutorials available:

• Three on the creation of a picture library, to make a photo mosaic and how to use the mosaizer tool.
• Three that describes how to create a specific effect with the provided tools of Mosaizer Pro.

Each tutorial includes an extensive walkthrough with lots of pictures to explain how it was done. The tutorials can be downloaded from the 'Goodies' page. And more to come ! We do requests on 'How to..', so suggestions are welcome....

January 2009
A number of problems have been solved in the latest versions of Mosaizer Pro:

• On some systems the irritating error message 'Floating division by zero' with Mosaizer Pro can be avoided by running the application in administrator mode, by right-clicking 'run as administrator' in the windows explorer. Testing in Vista and Windows 7 solved this issue.
• A bug in the pattern selector of Mosaizer Pro has been solved (build 7.0.30)

Mosaizer Pro, Textaizer Pro and Pattaizer all have built-in multi-language support.

• Currently English and Dutch are supported (Pattaizer and Textaizer Pro also German)
• We are currently working to translate in Spanish !
• We would like to issue other languages. Anyone volunteering?

Textaizer Pro has two new features:

• Spiralling text: in the previous versions the text always looped from left to right, from top to bottom. Now the text can also loop in a huge dense spiral.
• Font Art: a picture is build from strings of (short) text, where the print density of the strings determine the grayscale impression.

December 2008
We have been working hard on the Textaizer Pro version. It has now been released ! A fully new designed interface and exiting new features are available with the new version.

• a new GUI (Graphical User Interface) to fully meet the professional desk top publishing demands
• major improvements of almost every function has been achieved
• textures can now be applied to create a 3D surface effect
• pre-sets are now available (saving, loading) to recreate that special effect (and forgot to remember how)
• more intuitive menu structure, quick settings, improved workflow
• Textaizer 2.x will not be supported from December onward (customer service remains of course)

Mosaizer (Pro) has been published in the December edition of the Dutch Fotomagazine.info.

November 2008
Textaizer has been upgraded with an additional feature: printing the bitmap. This was done on request of Ben.

Mosaizer Pro has been launched on Nov 16 !

• a new GUI (Graphical User Interface) to fully meet the professional desk top publishing demands
• major improvements of almost every function has been achieved
• two new color matching methods has been added
• three new patterns are now available (circles, spirals, hexagons)
• the 'cell-edit' and 'mask rotation' features have been fully restored and improved
• more intuitive menu structure, quick settings, improved workflow
• printing functionality has been added (also to print the result on multiple pages to create home-made posters)
• Mosaizer 6 will not be supported from November onward (customer service remains of course), and the serial number will not be valid for Mosaizer Pro

The 'goodies' page was started. The first application that has become available is called 'iPlay2'. This little app manages multiple music libraries in iTunes. In case you have two iPods (or more) and 1 PC, this is the app to use.

October 2008
Mosaizer 6 got a new skin (build 12-15)

• a bug with non-blurring images has been solved
• minor changes and improvements
• some runtime bugs are now solved
• the 'cell-edit' and 'mask rotation' features have been disabled due to errors in certain circumstances.
• development of Mosaizer Pro was started: the cell-edit rotating masks will return !

August 2008
An interesting new feature in Mosaizer 6 was added: rotating masks (build 11)

• rotating masks can be used to simulate brush strokes (new sidebar ->)
• the brush mask was introduced as a special alpha mask

A new application called Pattaizer has been published (version 1.2 build 14)

• Pattaizer is a playful tool to create great effects with patterns
• 9 different basic patterns are provided, and lots of additional controls and effects
• create video footage from dynamically changing patterns, using scripts

June 2008
A major update of Textaizer 2 (builds 3-11) is published in which

• the Videaizer underwent a major upgrade (thanks Carl for suggestions and testing!)
  • the user has now two engines to choose from (ASCII art or Text Mosaic)
  • the vid-window has now been improved (bitmaps are now managed internally)
  • all filter, font-size and background settings for ASCII art and Text Mosaic also apply to Videaizer
  • improved video/media player controls
  • next to video footage, also a selection of multiple bitmaps can be taken as a source for Videaizer
  • frame grabbing to port the frames directly to the Textaizer window
  • script files to dynamically change font size, character rotation and -position
  • Use of key frames to better control and define the special effects
• a CPU priority selector has been added
• some minor inconveniences have been solved

May 2008
An update of Mosaizer 6 (build 8) is published in which

• an improvement in the blending feature has been introduced, by using the option to pre-blur the original prior to blending
• minor bugs have been solved

March 2008
An update of Mosaizer 6 (build 5-7) is published in which

• a major memory efficiency improvement has been implemented (the application now indicates the RAM usage, the 'split file size' can now be set)
• a new functionality called 'minimum distance between similar cells' has been added
• render time estimation added
• jpg compression quality can be set and results can be stored as bmp or jpg file format
• preference setting has been improved
• minor bugs have been solved
• available presets are now loaded when Mosaizer starts

Mosaizer 6 is published in a major Dutch computer magazine ComputerIdee.nl

February 2008
Mosaizer 6 is published, in which a Genuine Paintbrush has finally been added

• the paintbrush paints with (library) pictures
• the color of the 'paint' is determined by the underlying mosaic
• the type of 'paint' is determined by the choice of graphic effect
• masks can dynamically be changed during painting
• versatile effects with ALL basic functionalities
• the 'merge with background white' feature is added to improve color match impression

Textaizer 2.1 is published (build 1-11)

• a major change was made to Textaizer 2: IntelliDraw capability was added
• the application interface underwent a major upgrade for more intuitive user interaction
• swapping between the different functional tabs without losing the results from the other tabs
• background picture can now be hidden and shown again to improve result evaluation
• improved version update control and version recognition via the web
• extended ASCII characters ('block characters') are now available to create full-body ASCII art
• block characters are in color (bitmap and HTML)
• more settings are added to the ini-file to further ease the personal workflow and settings
• some bugs were solved

An update of Textaizer 2 (builds 8-10) is published in which

• a bug is fixed (when the free draw pencil moves 'out of the paper' an error message appeared)
• a feature was added (easy choice of the draw key in free draw mode).

January 2008
We are happy to blog some major achievements in this month:

• The new website is launched
• Textaizer 2 is published on the covermount of a leading computer magazine Computerbild.de
• Mosaizer 5 is published on the covermount of a major Italian computer magazine PC Open.it
• Textaizer 2 is also published on the covermount of a major Japanese computer magazine IP! (March 2008)

Updates of Mosaizer 5 (build 22-25) are issued in which new features are introduced.

• a different background picture can be chosen to replace the source picture (from which the mosaic picture is derived) or to replace the colored background
• the random settings have been improved:
  • a change of settings is now immediately visible
  • the random range is now bigger
• now the limit of 4 Mio sub-pictures has correctly been set
• improved Windows Vista compatibility
• preset functionality is added to quickly make a mosaic with your favorite settings
• video frames can now be saved to create true mosaic animations
• an automatic web-updater has been added to allow regular checks for updates of Mosaizer 5

Updates of Mosaizer 5 (build 18-21) are issued. Apart from minor fixes, some new features are introduced.

• now libraries be made from (picture) folders and its sub-directories as well
• all special settings combined now into a new tab
• now libraries can be added to other libraries
• improved help file
• a bug in working with regional settings has now been solved
• some minor typing errors in user-dialogs corrected
• now the 'Combine library' feature is available

Updates of Textaizer 2 (build 3-7) are issued. The following fixes were made and features were introduced:

• the multi-regional settings are now correctly taken care of
• font size can be 'fixed', 'dynamic' or 'following the luminance of the source picture'
• now the line spacing and dynamic font size are effectively aligned
• the screensaver feature is now documented and available

November 2007
The website breaks a new record of 20 GB of downloads. Thousands of downloads of Mosaizer and Textaizer are recorded and over half a million hits on Google were seen for both applications.

October 2007
Mosaizer 5 is introduced. This version is now fully freeware, with one restriction of the 30-day anonymous use. Apart from minor bug fixes, the following features were introduced:

• added the Pre-Processing functionality
• visual library color matching with source picture
• pre-filtering the source picture to enhance the color match
• the library quality indicator calculation has been improved to better reflect the color match
• anonymous use: time restriction limitation of 30 days, after that a serial number is required to keep using Mosaizer for free (e-mail registration required)

Textaizer 2 is introduced. Apart from minor bug fixes, the following features were introduced:

• the quality of the dynamic font size feature has been improved
• avoid Quick Text limitations on the number of lines
• new engine for color management

June 2007
First release of version Mosaizer 4.5 with some fixes, improvements and new features:

• improved pre- and post-processing workflow
• introduction of 3 different color matching algorithms (still in beta phase)
• better visibility of the effect of post-processing filters
• introduction of a library match indicator

May 2007
First release of version Mosaizer 4.4 with some bugs fixed and new features:

• with 'delete temp directory' the program doesn't crash anymore
• with 'buttonize circle' amount = 0 does not generate 'divide by zero' error anymore
• the sourcemasks now also work with split files for large bitmaps

Textaizer 1b23 is enriched with a video functionality, called 'Videaizer'.

April 2007 Textaizer is introduced. Builds 1-22 were gradually released next months. Some of these are:

• now ASCII text also work with italic text
• build-in a new limitation: max 255 characters for the ASCII text string

March 2007
Mosaizer 4.3 is introduced on the internet. This version is the first that was made available to a wider audience. Earlier versions were only used in the small circle of friends, collegues and relatives.