It all sounds good....I'll have to check it out...

Hope it works well for you, Jafo. I think the biggest plus is that it fully utilizes multi-core processors for speed. Please give us a follow up.

Gonna give it a go Doc.

Here's his system requirements, took me a bit to find them:

http://www.jpchacha.com/chasysdraw/help.php?file=tech_sysreq.htm

Generally pretty forgiving, anything from a Pentium III 600mhz to "up to 32 cores"    I7 quad 2.66 recommended.  (I'm guessing it would "walk" on a Pentium III more than it would "run" )  XP/2003/Vista/Win7/2008/Win8

One thing to keep in mind is that it looks like it will read .psd's but not write them, so I guess any layered images a person creates and saves in his .cd5 format would be married to his software.  Here are his file format listings:

http://www.jpchacha.com/chasysdraw/help.php?file=files_image.htm

Thanks for the tip Doc, it does look like an interesting bit of software.

I think you're right abut the .psd file format, Dave. But, this software is pretty much for folks who don't have Ps/CS or the newest CC stuff, so I'm not sure it matters except in the case where you want to send someone a "psd".

I don't know if Adobe software can read that cd5 format or not, or if there's another file converter which would match up the file types. So, I wrote to the dev to ask him about that, Dave. If/when I get a response, I'll post it here and forward it to you in pm.

Thanks but there's no need to do that.  Just putting it here would be great.

I went poking around in his system requirements fully expecting it not to run on my rust-bucket, then saw his file formats and had visions of someone making some big layered images and then saying "Oops, wish I hadn't done that."

  "With a minimum of talent", much like the cookbook recipe that starts out "Take a clean dish....." always leaves me out.

I suppose you and I could test his definition of "minimum"

Sounds interesting! 

Kinda like a combination of Gimp (floating windows for tools, layers and history), PS (layers and blur tools) and Paint.Net (floating windows go semi transparent after mouse over). I found in the folder the .exe for the portable version plus the modules and stuff. I thought the portable was a separate download.

DaveRI:

Hi Seth,
The simple answer is no.

Native file formats (e.g. Chasys Draw's CD5, GIMP's XCF and Photoshop's
PSD) are generally unportable to other editors because they tend to be
very strongly tied to the internal structures of the editors they're
native to. The easiest way to illustrate this is to open a Photoshop PSD
file in Chasys Draw IES or the GIMP -- although the file is opened and
most attributes are maintained, some attributes will change or render
differently as a result of the differences between the editor in question
and Photoshop.

The reverse is also true. If, hypothetically, there existed a Photoshop
filter for reading CD5 files, it would have trouble handling CD5 files
with image-modes other than "composite" -- how would it present them to
Photoshop, given that there's no equivalent concept implemented there?
The user will also discover that some layers are "missing" as a result
of free-style layering (Photoshop does not render content that lies
outside the canvas, and does not handle textures as image entities).
And then there's the little matter of APPL attachments ...

I appreciate the challenge this poses, which is why I included support
for PSD (Photoshop), XCF (GIMP) and PDN (Paint.NET); however, I'm afraid
perfect portability of native files between different image editors might
not be very practical.

regards,
John Paul Chacha.



On 2013-05-25 13:49:
> Hi John,
> I was wondering about the cd5 format. Can Adobe Photoshop read this
> type of file, or convert it to PSD?
> If not, is there a common file type to convert the cd5 to preserving
> layers, etc. so that Photoshop could read it
> or convert to psd? Perhaps with some other file conversion software?
> 
> The reason I ask is that most of the folks I know work with psds and
> exchange them at times for help/advice, etc.
> 
> Thanks for any help you could give me with this question.
> 
> Seth

Thanks Doc.

I have to say his image viewer alone is worth having it installed to me, at least on XP.  I think the Win7 viewer has some improvements over the XP viewer, like being able to have more than one image in view at once, but for XP his is a step up.  So it remains installed if only for that, and I poke at his image editor from time to time.

Thanks again for the tip.

My pleasure, Dave.