Barco Creator was an image manipulation program targeted at the repro and print shop markets.
[citation needed] Originally targeted at the "high end", Creator evolved into a slightly more mid-market program with the "personal"-edition running on the Indy.
While Creator could rely on superior features and performance to justify its price through the mid-1990s, as time progressed each new Photoshop version made the Barco package harder to sell.
On top of this Creator added the "Creative functions" libraries (special effect filters; mosaic, emboss, b/w, warp etc.
As of Barco Creator 7 support for foreign (non-Barco) file formats depended on a dedicated software "interface".
Due to its high end focus Barco developed several dedicated hardware options to speed up Creator.
For the Power Series and Crimson Barco originally supplied a "Colcom/VME" colour computer board, a fast multi-dimensional interpolator.
For the release of Creator 6 Barco also added a Brush-accelerator board that made retouching with large brushes on files of several hundred megabytes possible.
Input was usually from high-end scanners: Linotype-Hell, Crosfield Electronics, Dainippon Screen, or ICG (Itek Color Graphics).