Other features
In addition to creating and editing pictures, TealPaint has a few other fun tricks to fill your time, one of which is the Grab Screen feature. To use Grab Screen, you select a time in seconds, and then launch whatever application you want. A few seconds later, a screenshot will be grabbed. This process is shown in Figure C.

FIGURE C

TealPaint's Grab Screen feature allows you to take screenshots. Click picture for a larger image.

After the time passes, TealPaint will automatically take a screenshot of whatever you're looking at. When you return to the program, you are asked to name and categorize the screen. The screenshot is now identical to every other drawing, so you can edit it as you please. Interestingly enough, TealPaint's Grab Screen does not allow you to take screenshots of TealPaint itself. If you're writing a review of the program, this can get annoying (yep, it did, too!), but the majority of users won't be bothered by it.

In addition to Grab Screen and the basics (beam, delete, etc.), TealPaint offers animate and slideshow features. When your drawing is animated, it will rotate through its layers at an adjustable rate (changed in the preferences). Slideshow flips through every image in a given database, similar to the slideshow feature in many desktop image programs. Both of these features work quite well and allow for cartooning and presentations.

To round off its feature set, TealPaint has a template feature. To make a template, create a database called, surprisingly, "Templates" and add pictures like normal. In the future when you go to create a new picture, hit the "New from template" button and select a template. The template will be imported into the drawing, and you can edit it at will. This works well, and makes it easy to make similar drawings multiple times.

Desktop integration
Being able to draw is fine, but the real test of usefulness is what you can do with the drawing when you're finished. You can send, beam or even print your drawings using TealPoint's TealPrint program, but eventually you're going to want the thing on your desktop.

Fortunately, TealPaint makes this easy. When you HotSync, each database is backed up and stored as a .pdb file in your backup folder, just like any other file. The "PaintMgr" desktop application included with the program allows you to open those databases on the PC. From there, it's easy to save some or all of the pictures to your computer or add additional ones to the database. The PaintMgr application is shown in Figure D.

FIGURE D

Use the PaintMgr application to move pictures to and from your desktop. Click picture for a larger image.

The manual import/export used by the application is effective, but can be time consuming if you move pictures back and forth with any regularity. The lack of an automatic file mover is a downside, but not an overly large one.

If moving files back and forth using your backup folders isn't your thing, you can also save your drawings as bitmaps and move them to your PC with an expansion card and vice-versa.