Digital Home Thoughts: Whiteboard Photo by PolyVision

Everything You Need, Nothing You Don’t
It is said that simplicity is the essence of elegance. If we assume that premise, then Whiteboard Photo has to be the most elegant piece of software in the world. There are no fancy wizards or Flash based menus here. The entire program is displayed in a small adjustable window with a single row of function icons across the top along with the usual File, Edit, View, Tools, and Help. That is it. There are no insane tweaking menus or absurd options that would distract the target consumer from the product. That is what makes this product so neat. It's not designed to be used by crazy programmer types but by ordinary people who can click a mouse several times (4 to be exact). Another favorite feature of mine is the fact that it does not have any extra features! I don’t need my picture conversion software to play mp3s, and it doesn't. I have to mention that there is no printer manual, but you will have to take my word for it and click the four clicks: open, select, convert, save. Why can’t all programs be this simple and intuitive?


Figure 1: The interface is very easy to use. The options menu allows you to select which type of board the image will be.

Ease of Use, Redefined
Once you acquired the picture, either from a digital camera, a scanner, or from the Internet if you are so inclined, Whiteboard Photo offers to do everything for you. The only option that you have to select is the color of the input background; white for whiteboards, black for blackboards, and green for those weird green blackboards that no one uses anymore. From there you can have the program batch process your entire photo shoot and turn your often unreadable photos into perfectly legible text. One caveat that I found is that unless the entire board is filled with writing or you took your picture at some ridiculous slant, the program will not set nice output boundaries off the get go. Fortunately you can move the four corners in any direction on the photo thus accounting for angled photos. You can also adjust the concavity of the output by dragging the midpoint adjustment squares and thus compensate for any odd lens effects. You can also lighten or darken the picture as well as apply rotation and negative effect to assist the program in making the clearest image possible. After that short step, just click the “Clean Photo” icon and in a short instant, depending on your computer speed, the program will produce a clean image. You can save the image under the original name, eliminating the no longer necessary original photo, or you can save it under whatever name you wish. The new image will be the same size as the original. This is where a high resolution camera will yeild better results. PolyVision says that 1024x768 is the minimum that you should ever you if you want complete satisfaction from the program. You can also e-mail the image straight out of the program. Clicking the e-mail button opens up the Word as an e-mail editor and you are off! Speaking to the quality of the images, they tend to be fantastic. After several whiteboard shoots I decided to give it a challenge and have it convert a blackboard type photo from a plack on the wall of our school that I took from a weird angle. As you can see, the results are examplary and are a true testament to the great power of this program.


Figure 2: I took this picture from my desk during my Philosophy class. Tomas Aquinas was never clearer.


Figure 3: This photo was taken in a multipurpose room to test the contrast capabilities of Whiteboard Photo. As odd as I looked doing that, I think the result speaks for itself if you keep in mind that the original images are both 5 megapixels.


Figure 4: At the end of the day I decided to give this program a true challenge. Instead of picking some random blackboard, I used a bronze colored plaque in our school hallway as the ultimate test. Much to my surprise, the program was more than able to cope with my challenge.