Application Information

Art Palette is designed to be easy to use, yet as powerful as many desktop photo-editing solutions. With Art Palette you can create, save and email pictures, and edit photographs shot using the Hiptop camera accessory.

Q: How do I load an image from the "Memory Card Album"
A: Follow the steps in this tutorial

Q: How do I email pictures I've created?
A: First hit the menu key and select 'Save'. Then mark 'Photo Gallery' and hit the save button. Now you can exit Art Palette and go to the camera application and mail off your picture like you would mail off a photo you've taken.

Q: Why would I want to save images to 'Memory/Backend Service'?
A: The Hiptop operating system only allows for jpgs to be stored in the Photo Gallery. Jpg is a file format which won't preserve all the information in your image, which therefore reduces its quality. Saving instead to 'Memory/Backend Service' allows you to save an image in a lossless format so that if you need to stop working and return later to editing you are changing and image of the original quality.

Q: How do I delete images from 'Memory/Backend Service'?
A: Hit the menu key, then select 'Settings'. Scroll down until you see 'Image Manager' and click. There you'll be able to review all the images you have stored and delete them.

Q: Sometimes when using a large photo Art Palette seems slow, what can I do to speed things up?
A: Art Palette was built originally for the csk (sidekick 1) which took much smaller pictures than the sidekick 2. Since there was no memory upgrade between models the phone sometimes isn't able to handle the large picture sizes available with the sk2. The best approach is to hit the menu button, select 'Settings', then go all the way to the bottom to 'Max Image Dimensions' and change it to 320 px or below. This will automatically resize images larger than that dimension when it loads and therefore require less of a drain on the memory and speed things up significantly.

Q: How do I crop an image?
A:
1. Select the marquee tool.
2. Draw a marquee around the region you want to crop.
3. Copy the selection (Menu-C or Menu -> Edit -> Copy).
5. Create new image (Menu-N or Menu -> New Image) - the dimensions of the copied selection will be filled in automatically.
6. Press the 'Done' button; if you get the 'Invalid Dimensions' message, select 'OK' and then 'Done' again.
7. Move the cursor to the upper left corner of the screen.
8. Paste (Menu-V or Menu -> Edit -> Paste).

Granted this is a lot of steps to perform such a simple action - issues such as this will be addressed in the next generation of Art Palette.