LiveQuartz is a nice and easy-to-use image editor. It is based on layers and CoreImage filters.

You have the layers at the left and the filters at the right of the window.

To edit an image, you can open it with LiveQuartz or drag and drop it into the central view of the window and it will be added as a new layer.

Here are some key features of "LiveQuartz Image Editor":

· The arrow is a very important tool. It moves the layer(s) or the selected area.
· The brush allows you to paint with the color chosen at window's top right corner and with the tool size chosen beside.
· The duplication tool is here to retouch photos. To use it, you have to click on a reference point with 'alt' key pressed and then you can click where you want to duplicate the pixels. It uses the same tool size as the brush tool.
· The eraser tool erases an image by replacing it by a transparent color. It uses the same tool size as the brush tool.
· The background eraser tool helps you to very easily remove backgrounds and replacing them with transparent color. Just click on the background you want to remove and drag the mouse to adjust the color range of the erasing. The further you drag your mouse, the more different colors you will remove. (ONLY ON MACOS 10.5)
· The drawing tools are composed of a line tool, a stroke rectangle tool, a fill rectangle tool, a stroke oval tool and a fill oval tool.
· The gradient tools are composed of the linear and the radial gradient tools (when these tools are selected, a second color setting is available on the right of the main color setting).
· The text tool is for adding short texts. It is possible to modify the text by changing the layer name in layers' list at the left of the window. You can also change the font of the newly inserted text with the button "Font" at window's top right corner.
· The spiral tool (CoreImage tool) is for modifying "point" parameters of filters. To be able to use it, select the point parameter you want to modify in the filter's parameters list (bottom right of the window).
· The selection tool is used to crop the image (using the "crop" button), to copy a portion of the image and to restrict painting area and erasing area.
· The lasso is used to copy a portion of the image and to restrict painting area and erasing area. Its shape is determined by dragging the mouse.
· The hand is for moving the image viewing area (when image does not fit entirely in the window).
· The magnifying glass is here to zoom and unZoom ('alt' key).


Requirements:

Minimal:
· Processor: PowerPC G4 processor or Intel processor
· Memory: 256Mb
· Graphic card: Quartz Extreme or compatible graphic card
· Screen Resolution: 800 x 600

Recommended:
· IBM: G5 processor or Intel Core Duo processor
· Memory: 1Gb
· Graphic card: CoreImage or compatible graphic cards
· Resolution: 1280 x 800



What's New in This Release:

· New behaviour of drawing and gradient tools : By default, LiveQuartz is not creating a new layer each time you use the tool anymore (if you like the old behaviour, you can get it by typing this in the “terminal” application : “defaults write com.rhapsoft.livequartz IMDrawingWithoutMerging YES”).
· LiveQuartz keeps the current selected tool after drawing.
· With “shift” key pressed, rectangle and oval tools keep proportions 1:1. And with “shift” key pressed, the line tool steps 45°.
· When choosing “Save as…” to a standard image file format, you can see a preview of final file size.
· A file opening bug has been fixed (when there are empty layers)
· A very old bug with display of “lasso” selection doing some pauses is fixed
· “RHIF” Spotlight plug-in bug fix
· 1.8.1 only for MacOS 10.5.3 because LQ has some hanging issues on PowerPC with 10.5.2 .