Quick Start

To help get you started quickly click on IEP Main Window.  The IEP Main Window topic has a screen shot of Image Explore Pro; simply click on the different items (i.e. menus, buttons, etc.) to jump directly to the help for that item.  For those of you who prefer the more traditional way you can access the same topics using the help Contents and Index.

Before you get started going through the help file, please read the following.  It may help you understand some of the terminology.

If you are not experienced with graphics, all the terminology can sometimes be confusing.  We have done our best to explain what each term means; however if you have any questions please feel free to contact us.

Since you will see 1 bit, 4 bit, and on up to 32 bit a lot in this program we thought the following might help simplify things.  If you want more detailed information please read Terminology Explained.

1-bit:   Black & White
4-bit:   16 colors (VGA)
8-bit:   256 grayscale colors
8-bit:   256 colors (paletted)
16-bit:   65,536 colors 24-bit:   16 million colors (16,777,216)
32-bit:   4.3 billion colors (4,294,967,296)

Note that you can determine the exact number of colors as follows:

8-bit is 256
16-bit is 256x256
24-bit is 256x256x256
32-bit is 256x256x256

When making colors the highest usable number is 255 because 0 is counted as the first number.

Another issue to keep in mind when trying to decide what color depth to use in saving images is the file size.  Generally speaking, the more colors an image has, the larger the file size will be.  However, compression is a factor which can alter this assumption.

One more factor to remember is people have their display set at different resolutions.  Unless you know the exact resolution the image you are creating is going to be viewed as, it is a good idea to see how the image will look at different resolutions by changing your display resolution and viewing the image.