Picture Quality / Size Options
The Canon PowerShot TX1 has a 1/2.5-inch CCD with 7.1 effective megapixels on it. The following image sizes can be found in the function menu: 3072 x 2304, 3072 x 1728 (widescreen), 2592 x 1944, 2048 x 1536, 1600 x 1200, and 640 x 480. There is no 3:2-formatted image size for perfectly cropped 4 x 6-inch prints, and there isn’t a 3:2 guide line feature like on some other PowerShots.
Picture Effects Mode
Canon has some of the best color modes available on compact digital cameras. They call it My Colors modes and they consist of the following: Vivid, Neutral, Sepia, Black & White, Positive Film, Lighter Skin Tone, Darker Skin Tone, Vivid Blue, Vivid Green, Vivid Red, and Custom. All but the Custom option are available in both the recording and playback modes, which is good for indecisive folks. The Custom color option lets users adjust contrast, saturation, sharpness, skin tones, and red, green, and blue channels on +/- 2 scales in full steps. In the “manual” position, the shooting mode can be changed to Color Swap and Color Accent, which Canon used to group with its My Colors modes. This allows users to center the camera on colors to “select” them; one color can be accented against an otherwise black-and-white image, or two colors can be switched with each other. Color Swap doesn’t work as well as the demos: it has trouble with shadows and highlights in color, and works best with completely flat planes of color. Still, this sort of color mode is unparalleled in any other digital camera’s offerings.
