Coloring Book is a fun way to dress up black and white art. With Coloring Book, you can paint on line art from PNTG (M'Paint) or PICT sources, or you may choose to let Coloring Book colorize the black and white. It really makes some of the great art in the M'Paint files come alive.
Coloring Book recognizes the source of the picture you've opened, and will enable redisplay of PNTG pictures. With this feature, you can choose to display the line art as created, or as its inverse (negative), transparent (original background disappears, showing your hand-drawn background), or transparent inverse (your background shows where the original lines were).
In addition, once you've got a picture displayed as you like, you can still add color and make changes with the provided art supplies.
Coloring Book works well in B&W, and 8,16 and 24 bit color. It uses about 3500K in 24bit mode (it's set for a round 4M, but probably won't use it all), and much less in 8bit or B/W modes. Coloring Book will warn if there's not enough memory for it to run at the current color depth, and if the System (6.0.5/32-bit QuickDraw, or later) is not recent enough. Pictures are saved in PICT (that's why Coloring Book opens PICT...so you can retouch your own artwork).
Description of the Features:
<<Controls>>
At the top of the Controls Window, Fore, or line color, along with the selected pattern, are displayed in the right page. Back, or (back)ground color is displayed in the left page.
Clicking on the left page's left edge selects the left page, on the right page's right edge, the right page. Clicking on the overlap toggles between the two pages.
Scroll bars select red, green and blue components separately, and immediately display the new color in the selected active page (Line/pattern or background). At all times, you will see the color effect of the combination of pattern and two colors chosen.
Selecting a pattern immediately displays the choice in the right page at the top, in the currently selected line color, with the background color showing through when appropriate.
Scrolling shows over 60 patterns. If the solid black pattern is chosen, the background color will not be visible; if the solid white pattern is chosen, no line color will be visible..in this case, the background color will show as a solid color.
<<Tools>>
Line height and width can be set by clicking on the line bars on the left side (a new set can be selected by choosing the arrow head). Clicking on the left or right edge of the line will set the width and height separately. It is possible to select one and cancel the other, by selecting the dotted line. Line sizes effect the brush and the melted crayon funnel.
The brush applies color, with pattern, either like a crayon (opaque) or like a water color (partially transparent). Shift-click when starting to draw toggles between the two application modes.
The pen applies line color, ignoring both line sizes and patterns.
The star applies solid (no pattern) line color or pattern (shift-click toggles), in the selected line size, as a pinned straight line.
The melted crayon funnel applies pattern, in single size round/oval droplets (partially adjustable by line size choices), or in variable droplets (very realistic; shift-click toggles).
The bucket applies pattern or solid (no pattern) line color (shift-click toggles).
The hand moves the picture--there are no scroll bars. All tools except the tiny hand that moves a selection will momentarily become a "moving" hand by holding down the command key (shows apple or "clover") before clicking over the picture (command-click).
The eraser starts out erasing to white, but can be toggled (shift-click) to erase to preset background color (and, of course, toggled back the same way).
The marquee tool will select an opaque rectangle, or a transparent one (you guessed it, shift-click toggles). When a transparent region is Copied, Paste will do so as transparent, both to your picture and to the Scrapbook.
The eyedropper will use the color found to set the active page color, or may be toggled (shift-click) to set only the line (right page) color.
The spray can spray speckles of the right page/fore/line color, but ignores the pattern setting. This is a useful tool to add color to a heavily patterned area, and to paint with a chalky look.
<<Menu>>
File allows standard actions, and adds options which are active only when a PNTG picture is the latest opened. You may have any picture on the main screen, since the display options enable you to lay a PNTG over the current picture. Command-R redisplays with the last mode selected. Naturally, if you want to see the existing picture through the PNTG (M'Paint) picture, you will have to choose a transparent display mode.
Coloring Book is Shareware. If you're into forms, there's one below, but it's not necessary to use the form. What seems fair, however, is that if you like and use (or your kids use) Coloring Book, you'll register your copy by sending $12.95 (+6% Sales Tax-Thanks, Christy, it used to be 7% :-) to:
W.A. Hoffman III
436 East Saddle River Road
Ridgewood, New Jersey 07450
Please use the same address for comments, suggestions, wish list and bug reports.
