HeliosPaint for Mac

As a full-featured painting program, Helios Paint for Mac includes all the tools you'd expect, but suffers from an unattractive, non-intuitive interface and performance issues.

Installation consists of downloading the ZIP file and extracting the software to the location of your choice. The first thing that gave us pause is the application's file type, a Java Archive, meaning that running it requires a working installation of a Java Virtual Machine. When we launched the app, we were put off by an uninviting Mac OS 9-style interface, and performance did indeed suffer from having to be passed through the JVM software interpreter. Selecting tools or opening files caused Helios Paint for Mac to flash white and then reappear instead of seamlessly refreshing like most apps. We opened a photo to play around with the software and tested out various drawing tools, like pencil, brush, and fill, all of which worked as expected. The application also includes more advanced photo tools like a cloning brush, and various filters for solarizing, posterizing, or converting to grayscale. We selected various filters from the drop-down menu to apply to our test image and none worked. Selecting the filter caused the screen to flash without applying any changes. Overall, we found this application to be more frustrating than useful.

A consumer-grade image editor, Helios Paint for Mac lags far behind modern alternatives, which more easily garner the same or better results.