Art packages have proved a popular commercial offering for the Archimedes, at least from the suppliers' point of view. Minerva has now joined the fray with Atelier, a mode 15 painting package of some sophistication, but readers may be forgiven for wondering whether another such package is really needed.
Unlike previous art packages, Atelier has been designed to work from the outset within the RISC OS Desktop environment, but I have to report that otherwise Atelier appears to offer little that is significantly different to that which is already available through such packages as Art Nouveau (reviewed in Volume 2 Issue 5) and ProArtisan (see Volume 2 Issue 3). In this review I shall therefore concentrate on only those features which seem particularly deserving of a mention.
For your money you receive a single 3.5" disc, a 92 page manual and a reference card. This includes a keystrip to be cut out, as well as two labelled screens for use as a reference with Fill Style and Colour Menu. The packaging follows Minerva's usual style, but more colourful and attractive than has often been the case in the past.
From the Desktop, Atelier is installed on the icon bar. Double clicking on its icon changes the display to a full screen painting area, with a panel showing the Minerva logo and Atelier title which can be removed). From within Atelier, pressing F8 will return you to the Desktop, where you can change memory allocations for fonts and sprites, for example, using the Task Manager. Clicking on the Atelier icon returns you to your current picture with all options set as before.
Atelier is controlled by a hierarchical menu system activated with the Menu button of the mouse. Press Select to choose any menu option, including sub-menus. Moving the pointer outside the menu area causes the menu to disappear instantly. This may sound undesirable, but as Minerva suggests in the documentation, one soon becomes accustomed to this, and I found the whole menu system, with some practice, easy and efficient to use.
Colour control is quite complex (Minerva would no doubt argue 'quite comprehensive'), and a Colour Menu can be displayed by a second click of the mouse when any other menu is already on the screen. The Colour Menu merits further attention, as with practice I found it to be one of the most important and useful features of Atelier. You can, of course, select any colour from the 256 available. There are also Red/Green/Blue slide bars as an alternative way of choosing colours.
A second panel gives a choice of 16 sets of tints of a single shade, but tints can also be created for other user-generated colours. It is possible too, to reduce the range of tints in a set, and to switch between light to dark or dark to light. It is also possible to set a repeat so that painting can cycle through a range of tints (for example, to paint the leaves of a tree in various shades of green).
The other (third) main panel of the Colour Menu deals with what Minerva calls Priority Colours. When a priority colour (or colours) is in operation, painting only changes the other colours. For example, this can be used so that a new object can be drawn to appear behind an existing object (by making its colour a priority colour). It can also be used to change just one colour into a new one, without affecting the rest of the display. This will also work with a range of tints, either overwriting the tints only, or overwriting everything else only. The Colour Menu takes some mastering, but it is crucial to using Atelier effectively.
The Colour Menu also controls the choice between paint, patterns and sprites when creating pictures. There are separate pattern and sprite editors, and both patterns and sprites can be saved to disc for reloading.
Atelier contains all the features which we have come to expect from an art package: the ability to draw straight and curved lines and shapes, including three-point curves. Brushes may be in a variety of sizes and shapes, or you can define your own. A spray brush is also available, and all brushes can use paint, patterns or sprites.
Likewise, the Fill option can also work with paint, patterns and sprites, and with a range of tints. A separate Fill Style menu provides various controls, allowing graduated shading in a variety of styles.
The text option uses anti-aliased fonts, but you must allocate sufficient font space, and load the required fonts from the RISC OS Applications Disc 1 first. You then enter the text and create a box of the size and shape you want, and Atelier will automatically scale and position the text. The manual claims that Atelier will also work with the outline fonts (to be available with some DTP packages), but I was unable to test this.
Many other features of Atelier are much as you would expect, and I list the more important below.
Magnifier and pixel editor
Define and copy part of picture
Distort copy over user-defined shape
Copy and resize part of the picture using anti-aliasing
Pixellate a picture
Sprite editor
Bottle copy to wrap a picture round a three-dimensional object
Formula copy to create mathematical surfaces
Sequencer to animate picture sequences
Use of function keys to 'undo' actions
The Atelier manual is, by and large, well written and easy to follow. Working through the so-called 'Experimental' section provided an excellent and quite comprehensive introduction to the software. The reference section also reads well, but is not quite as detailed as perhaps it should be. I do have two gripes with the manual. The illustrations appear to have been taken directly from screen displays (this even includes captions and labels), but the rendering of various shades of colour in patterns of dots leads to highly unreadable text. This is important, as the illustrations are often an integral part of an explanation.
Secondly, I disagree (as I am sure will many artists and designers), at the manual's oft assertion that you only need Atelier to become the next Salvador Dali or Renoir of the art world. Any skilled craftsman will tell you that a tool is only as good as the user, and no software package will turn a dullard into an imaginative and highly regarded designer.
Atelier's competitors are clearly Art Nouveau and ProArtisan. As far as price is concerned, Atelier occupies the middle ground. I quite liked Atelier, and feel sure it would suit many Archimedes users. Art Nouveau is also very good value for money, but with fewer facilities. ProArtisan is the Rolls Royce in this market, and a lot of time and effort has gone into its production.
I have to confess that personally I dislike ProArtisan's highly graphic and often unintelligible use of icons, although Atelier is not entirely without this failing either. At the end of the day your choice will depend on the answers to two questions: which package will allow you to do the things you want to do, and which best suits your own style of working. I suggest you consider both these points with care.
Given that Atelier will work fully within the Desktop environment (although not completely multi-tasking), that, together with its very full specification, would make it my choice. However, do not dismiss ProArtisan out of hand just because of its price, while Art Nouveau still provides an excellent and easy-to-use introduction to the world of multi-coloured art.
Product Atelier Supplier Minerva Software 69 Sidwell Street, Exeter EX4 6PH. Tel. (0392) 421762 Price £99.95 inc. VAT and p&p