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@BEGIN_FILE_ID.DIZ /\_ ____________ ______/\___________/\___ / ¬\/ |¬\ __ / \____ / ¬\ |\ __ / / | \ | \/ ¬\/ & | _ \ | \ |_\/ ¬\/ \__|__/_____/\__/ |_____/____/____/\__/ +---------[ CRaZY GaNG ARE BACK! ]---------+ PhOtOGENiCS fULL mANUAl bY sHARd/Nut&Bolt @END_FILE_ID.DIZ · : ¦ . _________ ________ _____________ ._____¦ | · __ / : ___________/ _ \ \ __ _ / | \ |____: : \_/ -A : \______ \ | \_ _: \_/ \_/ | \ ¦ | ¦ \_ ··D_ / / _/ | / |___/ \_ | : : | |_______/ `N· _/ \ \_________/ | \________/ ¦ |_____¦ ¦ | : \__________/ \ ¦ \_ : : \__________| \___________/ . · . »»»» PRESENTS «««« PHOTOGENICS =========== TYPED BY SHARD - N&B Credits ------- Programming: Paul Nolan, Jolyon Ralph, Kriss Daniels, Keith Smith Graphics, Artwork and typesetting: Mark Tipper Photographs of 'Zebra', 'Portrait' and 'Sea-sky': Jane Knight Manual: Keith Smith Additional work: Dan Stopani Thanks to All our beta-testers - Dave Barnard, Eddy Carroll, Nigel Critten, Gary Fenton, Andy Gould, Jim Hawkins, Paul Kelly, Steve Loughran, Mike Sage, Toby Simpson, Jeff Walker, Mick Tinker, Richard Waspe. And - Paul Ralph, Bea Ralph, Emma Ralph and Claire Tipper the model, Neil Cartwright, Aaron Fothergill, John Findlay, Wouter van Oortmerssen, Ian Greenaway. Tom Lane and the Independant JPEG Group. Photogenics is a trademark of Almathera Systems Ltd. Photogenics is Copyright Paul Nolan 1993 - 1994. Portions Copyright Almathera 1994. All Rights Reserved worldwide. GIF is a trademark ot Compuserve Inc. OpalVision is a trademark at Opal Technology Inc. PCX is a trademark of ZSoft Corporation. VLab is a trademark of Macrosystem US, Inc. Photographs of 'Zebra', 'Portrait' and 'Sea sky' are copyright images of Jane Knight and are example images ONLY, any use af these pictures for any use other than personal should be taken up with the author. Other marks are trademarks of their respective holders. Contents -------- System Requirements and Recommendations Installation Introduction to Photogenics Features Tour for Beginners Tour for Experienced Users General Theory .Transparency/Pressure .Secondary Buffer .Alpha Channels .Compose .Undo Reference .Toolbox .Menus .Images Window .Supported Hardware .Supported File Formats .Brushes .Paint Modes Tutorials .First steps .Compose .Rippling an image .Creating text effects with alpha channels .Artist's Tutorial Appendix I - Introduction to 24-bit Graphics Appendix II - Common Problems Appendix III - Hints and Tips Appendix IV - Keyboard shortcuts Appendix V - Font examples Index Quick reference guide System Requirements/Recommendations ----------------------------------- Minimum System: Kickstart 3.0 and 2Mb RAM. Recommended System: AGA or graphics display card, 4Mb RAM and a Hard Drive. Users with only 2 Megabytes of RAM should be aware that memory will be very tight when running Photogenics. Picture size and number of open images will be severly limited and render some operations impossible. Installation ------------ Floppy disk users 1. Boot from your Workbench 3.0 disk and insert the Photogenics Program disk. 2. Open the disk icon and double-click on the "Photogenics" icon. Photogenics will now load. Please note that this may require several disk swops depending on whether there is an external drive present. Hard disk users 1. Open the disk icon ond double-click on the "Install Photogenics" icon. 2. Follow the instructions given on screen. Included with the installation is a last minute changes file that documents any features that were implemented at the last minute and did not make it to this manual. Please read this as it may also include essential information. Introduction to Photogenics --------------------------- Photogenics is the first full 24-bit painting program allowing the user to spray special effects onto images. Many other packages are limited to applying effects to the whole screen - not to selected areas with such versatility and subtlety. An image might be perfect except for a section that needs sharpening or darkening for example.With Photogenics this operation is simple - just select the desired effect and spray on with the airbrush, draw with pencil or chalk pastel. Photogenics provides many different drawing tools to give your compositions a real life look and feel. If you are unhappy with the result then change the effect or the colour - Photogenics will "redo" your image ond you can see your changes immediately. If you have found that you have overdone the painting you can "spray back" to the original image using the right mouse button easily removing the "paint". An explanation of 24-bit graphics and image processing is given in Appendix 1. This is suggested reading for users who are not familiar with computer graphics. Features .Natural paint tools - airbrush, pencil, chalkpastel and more .Edit multiple images simultaneously - each in a resizeable window .Powerful Undo/Redo .Preview any effect - instantly .Support for multiple file formats: IFF, JPEG, GIF, BMP, PCX, ascii-art, PBM, QRT, Raw, RGB8, RGBN .Paint in 24-bit with real time HAM-8 preview .No 24-bit graphics card necessary (With AGA machine) .Support for additional hardware - OpalVision, Picasso-II, VLab etc. .Easy to use alpha-channel support .Open architecture - add new loaders, savers, paint modes, brushes .Drag-&-Drop user interface .Dozens of effects: AddDust, AddNoise, AlterHue, Antique, Balance, Blur, Brightness, Cloner, Contrast, DeInterlace, DisplaceMap, Emboss, FalseColour, Flip-X, Flip-Y, GradientTint, Greyscale, HeavyBlur, Highlights, HueMap, LimitMax, LimitMin, LineArt, LowLights, MaskingPaint, Matrix Mix-,Diff,Or,Sub,XOR, Monochrome, MotionBlur, Negative, NegBright, Paint, Pixelise, Posterise, Randomise, RubThru, RubMix, Saturation, Sharpen, ShiftHue, ShiftRGB, Solorize, Tile and Tint. Tour for Beginners ------------------ This tour is intended for Amiga beginners and casual users. Experienced Amiga users should skip to the Tour for Experienced Users in the next chapter which is essentially the same as this chapter but there is no extra explanatory text. Some things may be a little unusal at first - if you find anything that you don't understand then please read the 'common problems' section in the back of this manual. Upon starting Photogenics, the program will open it's own screen with an about information window. Click the left mouse button to enter the program. Let's create a picture within the program: 1. Select the "Open as/Other" option which appears under the Project menu or hold down the right Amiga key and press 'L'. A list will open showing the many different types of loaders that Photogenics can use. 2. Click on the "Plasma" item in the list. The Photogenics size requester will appear. From this you can select the size of Plasma to create. Lets create a small one for now - 3. Move the sliders by holding down the left mouse button when the pointer is over the "knob" in the slider and moving the mouse. Make the X and Y numbers indicate approximately 100. 4. Click on OK and a progress indicator will appear showing how long the loader will take to complete. This can be interrupted by clicking on CANCEL - let's allow this one to finish. When complete you should see your first Photogenics image appear in a window - a 24 bit colour plasma. You hove seen just one of the powerful features of Photogenics which allows you to create the program with no effort at all. There are a number of similar loaders to Plasma which create images rather than load them from disk. These can be used to generate images in their own right or as ways to add special effects to other images. We can paint on your plasma by holding down the left mouse button and drawing over the window. The colour shown in the Toolbox will be applied with the default drawing tool - Airbrush. The Airbrush applies your colour in the same way as a real airbrush does - a smooth flow of paint that increases the longer you hold it. It also has smooth edges so you can blend colours into each other. Using the right mouse button we can "un-spray". This can be used to remove any paint we have added. Another powerful feature is the ability to change the colour of the area we have just painted. Open the Palette by clicking on the colourbox in the Toolbox or selecting it from the Windows menu. Here we choose the colour to paint with. Colours can be chosen using RGB (Red, Green, Blue), HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness) or CMY (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) colour models - dont worry about these for the moment because you have a large list of colours to choose from and a colour wheel where you can see the colour you want. Spray some colour onto your image. Now select a different colour and click on the Use button in the Palette window. You should see the area you painted change to the new colour. When you are happy with the paint you have applied then clicking on the FIX button in the toolbox will make our changes permanent. You can now choose a different colour and paint with that over the first colour. Please note that after FIXing, we cannot remove paint with the right mouse button or change the colour of that paint. Close the plasma image by clicking on the top left of the window. Let's load a picture from disk: 1. Select Open from the Project menu. 2. Choose the Girl.JPG image from the list that appears. 3. Click on OK. 4. Photogenics will load the image and you will see a face appear in a window. 5. Apply some paint to the face with the left mouse button. Don't forget we can remove paint with the right mouse button. Let's change the way that the paint is applied to the image: 6. Click on the Mode button in the Toolbox. A window will appear showing all the different ways that paint can affect your image. 7. Choose Negative. This works just like a photographic negative, making all your colours "opposite" - blue becomes yellow, green becomes magenta etc. 8. Add or remove more paint. 9. Click on the Mode button again and choose Tint. Every time we change the Mode, Photogenics will "redo" the paint we have applied with the new effect. Tint has a kind of transparency that allows us to see the original image under the paint we have applied. This tour is finished now. You may continue adding/removing paint and changing the mode. Experiment - some things may look better than others. Remember that once you are happy with an effect then you must FIX it. Then you can add some more paint and a different effect. Tour for Experienced Users -------------------------- This quick tour will give experienced users a brief overview of some of the features of Photogenics. Some things may be a little unusal at first- if you find anything that you don't understand then please read the 'common problems' section in the back of this manual. Start Photogenics and we'll begin by creating a picture within the program. 1. Select the Loaders option which appears under the Windows menu. 2. Click on the Plasma loader. 3. Move the sliders in the size requester so both the X ond Y numbers indicate opproximately 100. 4. Click on OK. When complete you should see your first Photogenics image appear in a window - a 24-bit colour plasma. You have seen just one of the powerful features of Photogenics which allows you to create images within the program with no effect at all. There are a number of loaders similar to Plasma which create images rather than load them. These can be used to generate images in their own right or as ways to add special effects to other images. Paint can be applied to the plasma image with the left mouse button and removed with the right button. The colour shown in the Toolbox will be applied with the default drawing tool airbrush. The Airbrush applies your colour in the same way as a real airbrush does - a smooth flow of paint that increases the longer you hold it. It also has smooth edges so you can blend colours into each other. Another powerful feature is the ability to change the colour of the area we have just painted. Open the Palette by clicking on the colourbox in the Toolbox or selecting it from the Windows menu. Here we choose the colour to paint with. Colours can be chosen using RGB (Red, Green, Blue) or HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness) colour models. Spray some colour onto your image. Now select a different colour and click on the Use button in the Toolbox. You should see the area you painted change to the new colour. When you are happy with the paint you have applied then clicking on the FIX button in the toolbox will make our changes permanent. You can now choose a different colour and paint with that over the first colour. Please note that after FIXing, we cannot remove paint with the right mouse button or change the colour of that paint. Close the plasma image and we will load a picture from disk: 1. Select Open from the Project menu. 2. Choose the Girl.JPG image from the list that appears. 3. Apply some paint to the face with the left mouse button. Let's change the way that the paint is applied to the image : 4. Click on the Mode button in the Toolbox. 5. Choose Negative. 6. Add or remove more paint. Note that we are now applying a different sort of paint that is making the image Negative. 7. Choose Tint. Every time we change the Mode, Photogenics will "redo" the paint we have applied with the new effect. Tint has a kind of transparency that allows us to see the original image under the point we have applied. This tour is finished now. You may continue adding/removing paint and changing the mode. Experiment - some things may look better than others. Remember that once you are happy with an effect then you must FIX it. Then you can add some more paint and a different effect. General Theory -------------- Photogenics works a little differently to conventional paint and image processing programs. When you apply paint to an image it is drawn into a separate "paint layer" that is then combined with the image to give the image you see on screen. To permanently combine this layer with the image you need to FIX your changes making them permanent and clearing the layer so you can apply more effects. This system gives great flexibility for applying and removing paint and changing the effect/colour of the paint to see what the final result will look like. To give an example, you may wish to alter the skin tone of a digitised image of a friend. You could start by selecting a dark tone and drawing over the face with the Tint effect. The affected area can be constantly revised by adding/removing paint with the left and right mouse button. After covering the whole face you may find that the tone is too dark. At this point, before FIXing, you can alter the chosen colour or effect to give different results. You may wish to try some of the special effects such as Solorize to see what that would look like. All this is possible with Photogenics. Once a satisfactory effect has been achieved then the changes can be FIXed. Transparency/Pressure When applying paint, some effects can be too conspicuous. This can be lessened by increasing the level of transparency allowing some of the original image to be seen underneath the new paint. Secondary Buffer Some effects require you to have a picture in the secondary buffer. The obvious example of this is Rub-Thru. This enables you to paint through from your selected image to the image in the secondary buffer. Alpha Channels An Alpha channels is a mask that sits over your image. Any paint or effects you apply will only affect the parts of the image not covered by the alpha channel. Paint will affect the current image in proportion to the brightness of the alpha channel. See the tutorials section for information on how to use alpha channels. Compose Photo_montage can be easily achieved with the Compose function. The following procedure should be used when composing: 1. Put image to be pasted from into secondory buffer by selecting Use As Secondary from the Options menu, or by moving the images icon into the Secondary box on the Images window. 2. Select the image to paste onto by clicking in the title bar or by clicking on its icon. 3. Select Compose from the Windows menu. A window will appear with two radio buttons and OK/Abort. The image in the secondary buffer will appear over the primary image with handles on each of the corners and in the centre. The image can be resized with the corner handles and moved with the centre one. When the image to be posted is in the desired place: 4. Click on Fade In/Out. 5. Activate the picture window by clicking on its title bar with the left mouse button. 6. Use the right mouse button to reveal the old image underneath. At any time during Compose, the mode can be swapped between Edit Points and Fade In/Out but any fading will be lost once the image is resized or moved. When the desired effect has been achieved, click on OK in the Compose window. Abort will clear the image and end Compose. Undo Photogenics has an undo feature which allows the removal of previous FIXed changes. Selecting Undo a second time will replace the changes. Please note that this option has no effect on the paint layer! Reference --------- Almathera has tried to make Photogenics adhere to the Amiga Style Guide dictated by Commodore. This enforces a standard user interface for all programs making learning a new package as easy as possible. All menu options with three periods after the name indicate that a requester will open. An absence of the periods indicates that the operation will happen with no further input from the user. ToolBox ------------- Selected Colour | | ------------- Dotted Freehand | | | Continuous Freehand ------------- Line | | | Filled Freehand ------------- Rectangle | | | Polygon ------------- Circle | | | Ellipse ------------- Zoom In | | | Zoom Out ------------- Cut | | | Fill ------------- Mode | | | Mode Options ------------- Brush | | | Brush Options ------------- Fill Paint Layer | | | Clear Paint Layer ------------- Fix | | ------------- Dotted Freehand Freehand drawing. Allows for fast freehand drawing. Continuous Freehand Continuous drawing. Lines will be drawn with no gaps. Line Line drawing. Hold mouse button at start of line, move mouse, and release at end. Left or right button can be used to add/remove paint. Filled Freehand Use the left or right mouse button to draw a shape. After releasing a button, the shape will be closed and paint added or removed according to which mouse button was used. Rectangle Hold left or right mouse button at corner of shape to be drawn and move mouse to opposite corner. Filled Rectangle Can be selected by clicking on the icon a second time. Polygon Click left or right mouse button start of polygon and release, move mouse to next point. Clicking same mouse button will add another point, clicking other button will close shape. Filled polygon Can be selected by clicking on the icon a second time. Circle Press left or right mouse button in the position to be the centre of the circle and move mouse to desired size. Filled Circle Can be selected by clicking on the icon a second time. Ellipse Press left or right mouse button in the position to be the centre of the ellipse and move mouse to desired size. Filled ellipse Can be selected by clicking on the icon a second time. Zoom In Click in middle of the area to be zoomed in on. Zoom Out Picture will be be shown in full with no zoom. Cut Use left mouse button to drag a rectangle to cut. The area will be copied into a new image. Fill Fill area. Clicking on the icon a second time shows the current tolerance and smoothness settings. A tolerance can be given to fill surrounding pixels based on their "closeness" to the colour of the pixel clicked on, Smoothness will use this "closeness" to alter the intensity of the fill. Mode Unless already open, the Modes window is opened allowing selection of a new effect. Once the new effect is chosen the window will close. Mode Options Many modes have options giving control of how the effect is applied. This button allows access to those options. See the section on modes for descriptions of effect options. Brush The brush window is opened allowing selection of a new brush mode. Once the new brush is chosen the window will close. Brush Options The Brush options window is opened. Size, pressure, and transparency can be altered to give the desired effect. This window may be left open. Fill Paint Layer The paint layer is filled completely. This has the effect of applying the current colour and mode to the entire image. Care must be taken when using this icon as it will obscure any painting not FIXed. Clear Paint Layer The paint layer is cleared. Care must be taken when using this icon as it will clear any painting not FIXed. FIX The current changes are permanently fixed onto the image. Menus ----- Project Menu NEW Black Page Opens requester asking for size and opens a blank image coloured black. White Page Opens requester asking for size and opens a blank image coloured white. Soft White Opens requester asking for size and opens a blank image coloured soft white. Select colour Opens requester asking for size and opens a blank image coloured in the current selected colour. OPEN File load File type will automatically be detected by the program where possible. OPEN AS Secondary File load. File is automatically selected as secondary image. Alpha Channel File load. File is automatically selected as alpha channel. Hidden File load. File is loaded but no window is opened. Icon will appear in Images window. Other Loaders window is opened. Can be used to explicitly specify loader format or to select special loaders such as Plasma and digitisers. SAVE IFF-DEEP Save active image as IFF-DEEP format. IFF-24 Save active image as IFF 24 format. JPEG Save active image as JPEG format. Other Savers window is opened. Can be used to explicitly specify savers such as 24-bit graphic card displayers. Clone Makes a clone of the currently active image. Rename Asks for name to call currently active image. Close Close current image. Close All After asking for confirmation, will close all images. About Progrom and memory information. Quit Asks for confirmation and quits program. Options Menu Undo/Redo Undoes last permanent changes. Option is ghosted (not available) if the active image has not had any changes FIXed. Discard Undo Releases the Undo buffer of the active image to free memory. Option is ghosted if the active image has not had any changes FIXed. Discard All Undos Releases all the Undo buffers for all images. Use as Image Stops image being used as secondary or alpha channel. Use as Secondary Selects active image as secondary image. Use as Alpha Channel Selects active image as alpha channel. Hide/Show Window Hides window of active image. Can be reopened by double-clicking on icon in images window or reselecting this option. Restore Aspect Restores correct aspect ratio of image. Image Menu Scale Scale image to requested size. Option can be selected for smooth scaling: More complex calculations are used to give a better resulting image but the computation will take longer. Rotate 90 degrees Rotates image 90 degrees clockwise. 180 degrees Rotates image 180 degrees clockwise. 270 degrees Rotates image 270 degrees clockwise. Shear Options are given to shear the image in X ond Y by sizes specified. Clear to Black Clear active image to block. White Clear image to white. Soft White Clear image to soft white. Selected Colour Clear image to current selected colour. Tolerance Fill Fill the whole screen based on colour of pixel chosen. The tolerance and smoothness settings are the same as Fill from the Toolbox. Tolerance Fill operates in a similar way to the Fill tool but no boundary checking is done - the whole screen is filled according to the tolerance and smoothness settings. Fill Options When the Tolerance Fill is selected, the Fill Options requester is opened. This allows editing of the Tolerance and Smoothness parameters. This menu option give access to those parameters for further editing. Gaussian Blur A smooth Gaussian blur is applied to the whole screen. Warning : This operation may take a long period of time to complete. Channels It is possible to paint on only one of the red, green, or blue channels. To only paint on the red channel, ensure only the Red box is ticked. Test will apply this to the current point to give a preview of the effect. Each image remembers whether its red, green, or blue channels are active. An indication of the channels for the active image is given in the title bar. Compose Please refer to the special section on Compose. Brush Menu Choose Brush Open brush list. Changing between some brushes will require the image to be FIXed. This is a necessary inconvenience due to the way the brushes work. Brush Settings Open brush settings window. Size is relative to the resolution of the picture. Editing a very large picture will result in a small brush so it should be increased using the size slider. The pressure slider indicates the speed at which point will be applied. A higher value will result in large amounts of point applied very quickly. Smaller values will give more subtle results. The transparency slider is a global setting for the point layer. Altering the value of the transparency will immediately update the paint layer. Pick Colour The mouse pointer will change to a colour selector pointer allowing the current drawing colour to be changed to the colour under the pointer when the left button is clicked. Alpha/Paint Layer Menu Move Paint Layer to Alpha The opposite of Move alpha to Paint layer. The changes in the paint layer are moved into a new image that is designated as the alpha channel. Invert Alpha The alpha channel image is inverted - light areas become dark and dark areas become light. Move Alpha to Paint Layer The opposite of Move Point Layer to alpha. The image designated as the alpha channel is moved into the paint layer applying the current colour and effect. Dark areas will be transparent, light areas will be opaque. Invert Paint Layer The paint layer is inverted - opaque areas will become transparent, transparent areas will become opaque. Fix Paint Layer Same as FIX on Toolbox. The paint layer is FIXed to the image and cleared. Fix & Keep Paint Layer The paint layer is FIXed to the image and kept. Use this operation to build up effects on selected areas of an image. Clear Paint Layer Same as clear icon on Toolbox. The paint layer is cleared. Windows Menu Loaders Opens the Loaders list. Loaders are listed here to allow the generation images within the program : Plasma, Streaks, Interference all generate patterns that can be used as images themselves or for interesting alpha-channels and secondary images for DisplaceMaps for example. Digitising hardware is accessed from this list by clicking on the appropriate loader. Savers Opens the Savers list. Photogenics can save images in a wide variety of different formats they can all be selected from this list. Graphics cards are supported in the form of Photogenics savers. It is possible to utilise a supported display card by "saving" the image to the card for viewing in full 24-bit. Modes Opens the Modes window. When painting, there are numerous modes that can be used to affect the picture in different ways. These range from the standard colour painting to making a picture brighter, darker, or special effects such as negative and pixelise. The mode can also be changed from the Toolbox by clicking on Mode. The Modes window is opened allowing selected of a new effect. The Modes window is immediately closed. The Modes window will stay open until closed with the close gadget, if opened from the menu option. Please see reference section on Modes. Toolbox Opens the Toolbox window. Palette Opens the Palette window. Can also be opened by clicking on the current colour in the Toolbox. Co-ords Opens the Co-ords window. Settings Menu Screen Mode Requests a new screenmode to run in. Preview Mode Allows switching between HAM8, 256 colour and greyscale display when possible. Undo Enabled On low memory systems it may be necessary to disable the undo feature. This will free memory for loading more/larger images but the undo feature will not be available. Save Settings Settings will be saved to disk. Images Window The Images window shows all current loaded images. Images are show in the main area, alpha channel, or secondary buffer. Images may be moved into the alpha channel or secondary buffer by moving their icon into the appropriate slot. Only one image may bein each of the alpha channel and secondary buffer. Supported Hardware The programmers have tried to incorporate as much support for third party hardware as is possible. This list is constantly being updated so if something is not already here then ring almathera and we will try our best to help. We would request hardware manufacturer to send us details so that we may include their products in the support list. Graphics Boards OpalVision from Centaur The OpalVision card is accessed from the Savers list. Picasso-II from VilageTronics Photogenics can be run in 256 colours on the Picasso II card by selecting a Picasso mode from the Screen Mode list. For fastest operation the CHUNKY tooltype MUST be set in the Picasso monitor icon. The Picasso card can be used to view images in full 24 bit by using the Picasso saver. Digitisers VLab MacroSystems The V Lab card is accessed from the Loaders list. Supported File Formats GIO stands for Graphics Input/Output. A .GIO file contains code to handle loading and saving images from Photogenics. As these are external files and not part of the main program other programmers can write .GIO files for other formats that Photogenics does not directly support. Some of these new .GIO files may become available through Public Domain libraries or magazine cover-disks, others will be available on upgrades from almathera. Simply copy new .GIO files into your Photogenics/data/GIO directory and Photogenics will automatically use them the next time it is run. Some GIOs have the ability to autodetect a file. When the 'Open...' option is chosen from the Photogenics menu it will try and detect what sort of file it is loading. Other GIOs do not support autodetect (some files are impossible to identify - they do not carry a unique 'signature' to determine them from other possible filetypes). To lood a file which is in one of these formats you will need to select the 'Open as/other...' menu option and select the file type from the list manually. Other GIOs do not use files at all. For example, the V-Lab GIO controls the V Lab Video Digitizer to create new images, and the Opalvision GIO 'saves' images by displaying them on the Opalvision graphics card (both of these require extra hardware). For these autodetect is irrelevent and they must always be called from the Loaders and Savers lists (opened by 'Open as/other...' and 'Save as/other..') The following GIO files are included as standard with Photogenics: ACBM Format: ACBM (Amiga Contiguous BitMap) Loads: Yes Saves: No Autodetect: Yes The ACBM format is a very old Amiga graphics format, first used with the Amiga Graphicraft paint program (published by Commodore). It become popular for use with Amiga Basic, which had routines to load ACBM format files. Save is not supported as IFF has totally replaced it for modern use. AmigaScreen Format: Grabs an Amiga screen display Loads: Yes Saves: No Autodetect: Not a file A requester opens offering you the choice of Left Mouse button or Joystick Fire button to activate. If you use the left mouse button option click on the quickly and carefully otherwise it will immediately grab the Photogenics screen! Arrange your screens with the Amiga screen you want to grab at the front and top of your display (all other screens should be hidden behind it). Then press the button (left mouse or joystick) that you selected. The screen will be loaded into Photogenics as a new buffer. This can be used as a simple way of transfering images from another graphics program, for example Deluxe Paint IV (remembering to press F10 in Deluxe Paint to hide the menus and toolbar) Unlike other screengrabbers this should work fine with any screenmode, including third-party display cards (Picasso II, Retina, Rainbow III, etc) Ascii Art Format: Ascii Text Loads: No Saves: Yes Autodetect: Does not load. Saves an image as a picture made up of text characters (as if it had been 'typed' on a typewriter, although almost totally useless, this loader is quite fun and can be used to create interesting ASCII art to use on BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) or in Desk-Top Publishing. Backdrop Format: Creates a new image Loads: Yes Saves: No Autodetect: Not a file Backdrop creates gradiated backdrops that are suitable backgrounds for composing images or text onto. When selected the requester gives you two choices - Horizontal or Vertical. With a Horizontal gradient the colour changes from left to right, with a vertical gradient the colour changes from top to bottom. Once you have selected the type you must load in an IFF palette file. The IFF palette contains 256 colours which are spread over the picture to create the gradient. You can create new palettes simply with the Colours window (opened from the Palette requester) in Photogenics. BMP Format: Windows BMP (BitMaP) Lood: Yes (1,4,8 and 24 bit Windows BMP) Save: Yes (24 bit Windows BMP) Autodetect: Yes Windows BMP is the native format of Microsoft Windows 3. As it is an uncompressed format BMP files can be quite large. CDXL Format: PAN format CDXL video stream Load: Yes (one frame at a time) Save: No Autodetect: Yes PAN format CDXL is the video format used by many CDTV and Amiga CD32 titles to store animation sequences. When loading a requester asks you to select which frame of the animation you wish to load. ColourNoise Format: Create a new image Load: Yes Save: No Autodetect: Not a file This creates a new image of random pixels (you specify the size of the image you want). The resulting image can be used as the basis of many textures and effects. GIF Format: Compuserve GIF87, GIF89a (Graphics Interchange Format) Load: Yes Save: No Autodetect: Yes The GIF format is popular on the PC and other computer systems. It is well defined and well compressed, but it is limited to only 256 colours so other formats (mainly JPEG) are now replacing it in common use. HAM8 Format: Amiga IFF-ILBM HAM-8 files Load: No (but HAM-8 files are automatically loaded by the ILBM loader) Save: Yes Autodetect: Does not load. To save files that other Amiga paint programs can easily use, or for fast display on an AGA Amiga, the HAM8 saver is good. It creates a HAM-8 version of the image (note that this results in a little loss of quality so make sure you do not save over your 24 bit original files with HAM 8), displays it if possible and saves it to disk. IFFDeep Format: IFF DEEP (uncompressed) Load: Yes Save: Yes Autodetect: Yes IFF Deep was developed as a replacement for the Commodore IFF-24 format (which is very inefficient and slow). Although it has not gained massive popularity it is a good format, and although it is uncompressed (and therefore takes up lots of hard disk space) it is the fastest way to work with 24-bit files in Photogenics. ILBM Format: IFF ILBM (InterLeaved BitMap) Load: Yes (2-256 colour, Extra-Halfbrite, HAM, HAM8 & IFF-24) Save: Yes (IFF-24 compressed and uncompressed) Autodetect: Yes IFF-ILBM is the standard graphics file format of the Amiga. While it is not ideally suited for 24-bit graphics it is supported by almost every Amiga application that can create or use graphics. If you want to load in a graphics file created by another Amiga program, chances are it will be an IFF-ILBM file of some sort. Only 24-bit IFFs are saved by this loader. There is also a HAM8 saver that will create and save HAM-8 pictures. IMG Format: Gem IMG (Image) Load: Yes (only tested with monochrome colour images) Save: No Autodetect: No Gem IMG is the standard clip-art format for the Atari ST computer JPEG Format: JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) JFIF Load: Yes Save: Yes Autodetect: Yes JPEG is the most popular format currently for 24-bit graphics. It compresses images by applying 'lossy' compression (it cuts down detail in the image). Because of this you will not get an exact copy of the image you created, but it will be very close and only a fraction of the size it would be when saved with IFF Deep, for example. When saving an image you are asked for a Quality level. At 100 the image is stored as well as JPEG can, at lower rates it tries to compress the image down more, so the quality of your saved image is lower. Always save images at 100% quality if you intend to continue working on them (or use a non-lossy saver like IFF Deep). OPALVISION Format: Display image on Opalvision Loads: No Saves: Yes (requires OpalVision card) Autodetect: Not a file. This saver will display the currently selected image as a 24-bit image on an OpalVision card, if fitted. PBM Format: PBM (Portable BitMap)/PGM (Portable Grey Map)/PPM (Portable Pixel Map) Loads: Yes (1-bit PBM/8-bit PGM/24-bit PPM), Binary formats only Saves: Yes (24-bit PPM binary format) Autodetect: Yes The PBM/PGM/PPM formats were defined for the PBM image manipulation utilities (PBMPlus, NetPBM) available for many computer systems. Many programs exist that create images in the PBM formats. Picasso II Format: Display image on Picasso II Loads: No Saves: Yes (requires Picasso II card) Autodetect: Not a file. This saver will display the currently selected image as a 24 bit image on a Picasso II card, if fitted. PLASMA Format: Create a new image Loads: Yes Saves: No Autodetect: Not a file. This creates a 24 bit 'plasma' pattern. QRT Format: QRT (Quick Ray Trace) Loads: Yes Saves: Yes Autodetect: No This loads and saves files used by the QRT raytracing and other similar packages. QUADANIM Format: .Qa Quadanim Loads: Yes Saves: No Autodetect: Yes This loads a single 80x64 frame from a Video Creator Quad Anim. Video Creator is a CD32 title developed by Almathera that allows you to create your own music videos. RAW Format: Raw 24 bit image data Loads: Yes Saves: Yes Autodetect: No This loads and saves raw 24-bit image data. It can be used to transfer data across to other computer platforms that do not understand the other file formats. You have an option of adding a 'pad-byte' to the file. This is an extra zero byte that some systems will require. RGB8 Format: Impulse RGB8 Loads: Yes Saves: No Autodetect: Yes This is a format used by TurboSilver and Imagine raytracers RGBN Format: Impulse RGBN Loads: Yes Saves: No Autodetect: Yes This is another format used by TurboSilver and Imagine raytracers RIPPLES Format: Creates a new image Loads: Yes Saves: No Autodetect: Not a file Ripples creates a new image of concentric circles (ripples). You can specify the size of the final image and the centre point for the circles. The files created are ideal for use with the DisplaceMap operator (see tutorial) SCULPT Format:Raw R,G,B files Loads: No Saves: Yes Autodetect: Does not load The 'sculpt' format (originally used by the Sculpt 3d/4d raytracer) saves data as 3 seperate R G and B planes of raw data. This format can be very useful for transfering raw data to other systems. SHOWHAM8 Format: Display a HAM-8 image Loads: No Saves: Yes Autodetect: Does not load If you have the AGA chipset fitted to your machine, you can use this saver to display the current image on a HAM8 screen at full size. This is useful if you are editing a large image in a small window. You can scroll around large images using the mouse. STREAKS Format: Create a new image Loads: Yes Saves: No Autodetect: Not a file Streaks generotes a new image of a given size containing a random streaked and textured background. TEXT Format: Create a new image from given text Loads: Yes Saves: No Autodetect: Not a file After selecting a font from the standard system font requester and entering some text, a new buffer is created with your chosen text rendered in the selected font. This supports standard fonts, compugraphic fonts and colour fonts. For overlaying text over pictures load text into a new buffer and use the Compose function (with brightness key enabled). This works best with anti aliased colourfonts (see examples on disk 3), or if the text is slightly blurred before composing. Over 200 good quality anti-aliased colourfonts are available on CD-ROM from almathera (on the Amiga Desktop Video CD-ROM) which are ideal for use with Photogenics. V-Lab Format: Digitise image from VLab card. Loads: Yes Saves: No Autodetect: Not a file Grab a frame from the Macrosystems VLab digitiser card. Options are selectable for the image resolution and which VLab input to use. WhiteNoise Format: Create a new image Load: Yes Save: No Autodetect: Not a file This creates a new image of random grey pixels (you specify the size of the image you want). The resulting image can be used as the basis of many textures and effects. Brushes Photogenics comes with a variety of realistic brush types. Different brushes allow you to choose how your chosen colour and effect is applied to the image. Airbrush gives a smooth flow of paint with soft edges, others give different textures to your painting like a chalk pastel. Airbrush The Airbrush is selected by default when you start Photogenics, and is usually the best brush to use for image processing. By default, it is set up to provide a fast flow of paint, which is no good when trying to do smooth shading. The example picture shows the different effects you can easily acheive by changing the brush settings. The left image shows the default settings. You will find that going over what you have already done will quickly cover what was underneath. On the right is the kind of shading you can do with the pressure set low (about 5 - 15%) and the size around 50. Note that the faster your computer is, then the better you can paint with the larger brush sizes. Pencil Pencil is one of most realistic of the artists tools in Photogenics. Altering its pressure can give a good deal of control over what you draw. For instance, if you were drawing a picture you might do a rough outline with the pressure set to 20% and the size set to 1 or 2 To subtly shade in a picture, you should set the size to 3 or 4, and the pressure to 3-5 % . However, if you want to do something like cross hatching, then reduce the size to 1 or 2 and the pressure to 1 - 15%. From left to right, the example picture show what you can do with the pressure set to 4%, and the size set to from 1 to 8. Note that like in real life, pencils work best on white background, although there is nothing to stop you experimenting with other colours. Chalk Pastel Chalk Pastel is best for shading in quite large areas, and works best with a large brush size and a pressure of about 20%. The example picture illustrates chalk pastel with a pressure of 20% and a size of 20, 30, and 40. Chalk pastels are usually used with black paper, but also work well with other colours. This brush is very good at blending colours together, as the colour builds up gradually as you move the mouse, (unlike the airbrush which builds up colour as you press the mouse button) WaterColour WaterColour, like the real thing builds up colour so that it doesnt quite obscure what you are drawing over. For best results, start shading with lighter colours and gradually build up the amount of colour. Also, with large brush sizes move the mouse slowly, at around the same speed you would use a normal paint brush. The example picture shows what you can acheive with pressure at 2%, and size set to 10, 20, 30 and 40. Note that this works best on a very fast machine, due to the large brush size needed. Also note that this brush subdues whatever paint mode is in operation, as if you had set the Transparency to 50%, so some image processing modes may not work as they would do with other brushes. Felt Tip Felt tip may not be the most used artistic medium, but Photogenics will do a good rendition of one anyway. Like the real thing, if you go over a dark colour with a lighter colour, nothing will happen. This means that it will only work on a light coloured background. Also, if you go over one colour with another colour, the colours will mix like real ink. For example if you go over orange with magenta you will get red, and if you go over yellow with cyan then you will get green. If however you go over a colour with one that doesn't mix, then you will get black, ie going over red with blue. The example show what affect the pressure has on the brush, here at a size of 6. From left to right the pressures are 2%, 6%, 10%, 15%, 30% and finally 100%. Note that this brush will not work well with some image processing modes. Crayon The example picture illustrates the kind of effect that using crayon gives. Changing the pressure or size loses the impact of the crayon. Sponge Sponge is a useful medium for covering large areas with an interesting texture. You can create nice clouds and landscapes using it. It works just as well when used on a dark background. The example shown shows sponge with the size set to 30, and pressure at 10%, then size kept the same but pressure set to 4%. Below it shows the size set to 50 with pressure at 4%, and next to it the size was kept the same but pressure increased to 10%. Cloth Cloth is a nice media for covering large areas. Cloth is unusual in that its results can be changed drastically depending on whether you are in the dotted line mode or in continuous line mode. In dotted mode you get the effect of dabbing a cloth over you image, and in continuous mode it has the effect of wiping a damp cloth with a little paint on it over the image. Unfortunately cloth in continuous mode requires a very powerful machine such as an Amiga 4000/040, so by default it is set to dotted mode. The first picture illustrates cloth in dotted line mode. Top left is with a size of 30 and pressure at 20%, then size kept the same but pressure reduced to 6%. Below it shows the size set to 100 and pressure to 6%, and then finally size set to 50 and pressure at 8%. The second example picture shows cloth in continuous line mode. On the left it has a size of 40, and a pressure of 3%, and below it with a size of 25 and a pressure of 3%. The effect on the left was achieved by going over an area several times but with the strokes in different directions. Neon This brush produces glowing strokes of light. It is most used for text or decoration, and works best with contrasting colours such as yellow on black or blue on white. Note that if you increase the size then you may wish to alter the pressure to keep the glow effect. The straight line draw mode works particularly well with neon. Paint Modes Definitions Secondary Whether the effect requires a picture in the secondary buffer Uses Colour Whether the effect uses the currently selected colour Options Variable parameters that can be changed with the Mode Option button (not all modes have options that can be changed) Remember All these modes can be painted on with any brush type with variable transparency. AddDust Secondary: No Uses Colour: No Options: Dust Amount (Percentage) Description: Adds a layer of dust to the image, by randomly altering the brightness of each pixel. AddNoise Secondary: No Uses Colour: No Options: Noise Amount (Percentage) Description: Add multicolour noise. Adds 'noise' to an image (to simulate bad TV reception or a grainy image). 100% is full noise, which is identical to creating a new buffer with the 'ColourNoise' loader. Nice 'stone' effects can be created by using AddNoise followed by Blur. AlterHue Secondary: No Uses colour: Yes Options: None Description: Change hue to current colour. A powerful type of Tint operation that changes the hue (or colour) of an image without changing the brightness or saturation (so coloured pixels change but grey pixels remain grey). Compare with Tint. Antique Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: None Description: Tints a picture with a sepia tint to simulate an old faded photograph. Best used in combination with AddDust, AddNoise and Blur. Balance Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: -256 to 256 for Red, Green and Blue channels. Description: Allows individual adjustment of the brightness of each of the three colour components - Red, Green and Blue to adjust the tone of an image to correct it or to add a new colour scheme. Blur Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: None Description: Blurs an image by averaging the values of each pixel with its surrounding pixels. More subtle than HeavyBlur and good for smoothing a harsh-edged picture without losing too much detail. Brightness Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: Brightness level -256 to 256 Description: Affects the brightness of the selected area. Option values above zero will brighten an image, values below zero will darken an image. Cloner Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: Line to select offset. Description: Cloner is one of the most useful features of Photogenics. Selecting the cloner allows you to duplicate features from one part of an image to another. Use this to copy a feature (a cloud, tree, house, person) seamlessly to another part of the picture, or clone the background to remove features from photographs. Contrast Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: Contrast level -256 to 256 Description: Adjust the contrast level of the image in a similar way to the contrast settings on a televison or monitor. -256 is no contrast (image goes completely grey) and +256 is full contrast. Deinterlace Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: Odd field/Even field Description: This effect is designed to help clean up interlaced video frame grabs from devices like the V-Lab Video Digitizer, but can also work with other images (such as high resolution pictures intended for display on interlaced computer screens). Interlaced frames may appear to "jitter". Deinterlace will remove this error. This option controls whether the 'odd' or 'even' field will be kept in the area (each video frame contains two fields, odd and even. It is differences between these fields that cause the flicker with interlaced pictures) DisplaceMap Secondary: Yes Uses colour: No Options: None Description: Displace pixel according to intensity of the pixel in the secondary picture. This can distort pixels in a variety of unusual ways to create waves, ripples, squashed, stretched and other images. This is a very powerful feature, see the tutorial on how to create a rippled picture with DisplaceMap. Emboss Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: Colour/Greyscale Description: Embosses an image by creating a grey image with the appearance of the image pressed into it. Normally this can maintain some of the original colour of the image, but it can be switched to greyscale (which looks better in some cases). False Colour Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: Load an IFF Palette file Description: Every pixel is converted to one of 256 colours in the palette you select from disk. Dark colours are chosen from the beginning of the list, light colours from the end. This provides a huge variety of ways to remap pictures to different colour schemes. Many example palettes are provided. FlipX Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: None Description: Flips the selected area around the vertical axis running down the centre of the image. FlipY Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: None Description: Flips the selected area around the horizontal axis running across the centre of the image. GradientTint Secondary: No Uses colour: Yes Options: Position (Percent), Smoothness (Percent) Description: Simulates the two-tone filters produced for photography that are coloured on one half of the filter and clear on the other half. These are often used to give skies deep colours (simulating a sunset or making a light sky a deep blue) without tinting the rest of the landscape. This paint mode is very powerful as you can specify both the position of the half-way mark (the boundary between the coloured portion and the clear portion) and the smoothness of the join - at 0% it is a sharp transition between coloured and clear, at 100% the transition is totally smooth. GreyScale Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: Video Levels/Simple Average Description: Convert to greyscale. There are two different algorithms used to create Greyscale. The default is based on the different brightness of the Red, Green ond Blue components of light to give a more accurate conversion, there is also a simple average [(R+G+B)/3] algorithm which can sometimes give better results. HeavyBlur Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: None Description: Apply a heavy blur to the picture. This uses a different blur matrix to provide a heavier blur to the image than with normal Blur. Use this in certain cases when Blur is not enough. If HeavyBlur is not enough to smooth out your image then either use several 'coats' (by Fixing and reapplying blur) or use the Gaussion Blur option from the menu (which is a lot slower but very powerful). Highlights Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: None Description: Any pixel darker than mid-grey is set to black. Other pixels are mapped to different greyscales depending on their brightness. This, with Lowlights, is very useful for creating Alpha Channels. HueMap Secondary: Yes Uses colour: No Options: None Description: Change colour according to intensity of the pixel in the secondary picture. Can create unusual 'rainbow' patterns on an image. With no secondary selected the current image will be used as a HueMap on itself, which can sometimes give very interesting false colour effects. LimitMax Secondary: No Uses colour: Yes Options: None Description: Limits the maximum colour range in the picture to the colour you have selected. If a colour is brighter in either the Red, Green or Blue levels to your selected colour then the components are rounded off to the level of the colour selected (so if medium grey was selected, no pixel brighter than medium grey would remain). LimitMin Secondary: No Uses colour: Yes Options: None Description: Limits the minimum colour range in the picture to the colour you have selected. If a colour is darker in either the Red, Green or Blue levels to your selected colour then the components are raised to the level of the colour selected (so if a medium grey was selected, no pixel darker than medium grey would remain). LineArt Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: Colour/Greyscale Description: Simulates a line-art drawing of the image by detecting the borders of an image. Very effective with photographs. You may want to change the contrast levels of a picture before or after using LineArt to enhance the effect. You can limit lineart to using greyscales by selecting greyscale in the mode options. Lowlights Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: None Description: Any pixel lighter than mid-grey is set to black. Other pixels are mapped to different greyscales depending on their darkness. Masking Paint Secondary: No Uses Colour: Yes Options: None Description: This paintmode is a very simple paint with 20% transparency to show the original picture underneath. It is not meant to be used as a paint mode in its own right, but it is very useful for accurately selecting areas to then process with a different paintmode. Matrix Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: Create matrix (9 input boxes), Load and Save Matrix. Description: Matrices are very powerful image manipulation tools. They work by combining the pixel with the value of its neighbours in various ways. You can load in a variety of pre-defined matrices and save out new ones from the mode options. Maximum Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: None Description: Sets the current pixel to the value of the brightest Red, Green and Blue values from the surrounding 8 pixels. Makes bright objects 'expand' into darker areas. Minimum Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: None Description: The reverse of Maximum. Dark areas expand into brighter areas. Mix Secondary: No Uses colour: Yes Options: Add, Sub, Or, Xor, Diff, Description: Mixes the pixel colour with the selected colour using a variety of different logical operations: ADD: The colour is added to the pixel. SUB: The colour is subtracted from the pixel. AND: The colour is logical ANDed with the pixel. OR: The colour is logical ORed with the pixel. XOR: The colour is logical XORed with the pixel. DIFF. The pixel is set to the difference between the new colour and the current pixel colour. Monochrome Secondary: No Uses colour: Yes Options: None Description: Convert to a purely black and white (2 colour) image. All pixels darker than the selected colour are turned black, others turn white. This works best if the selected colour is Mid Grey, but you can change the colour and Use to find the best value. This can produce excellent Alpha Channels (remember to Blur the image after fixing it!). MotionBlur Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: Length (2 to 50) and Angle (degrees) Description: This powerful (and slow on high lengths) effect blurs an image as if it is a photograph of the object moving in the chosen direction. It is useful for giving an object in an image the impression of movement. Negative Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: None Description: Inverts the selected pixels. The following table will help you understand what the inverse of colours will be: Red goes to Cyan Yellow goes to Blue Green goes to Magenta Cyan goes to Red Blue goes to Yellow Magenta goes to Green Black goes to White White goes to Black. NegBright Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: None Description: Inverts brightness but leaves the colour of an image the same, so red pixels stay red, but dark red pixels turn to light red pixels and vice versa, black turns white and white turns black. Can produce quite unusual ghostly images when applied to photographs of people. Paint Secondary: No Uses colour: Yes Options: None Description: Simple paint. The current selected area is replaced with the selected colour, EXCEPT that certain brushes can work in a different way. Some paint tools (Marker pen, for example) mix paint in a different way, so when a light colour goes over a darker colour the darker colour shows through. Pixelise Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: Width ond height of pixeIs Description: Converts the selected area to a 'blocky' image, this effect is often used to hide the identity of people on TV police programmes. Posterise Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: Colour levels Description : Creates a version of the image using only a few shades (based on the colour levels setting). This produces an effect not dissimilar to the images from 1960s 'pop art' posters. Randomise Secondary: No Uses colour: No Options: Maximum displacement Description: Randomly shifts the pixels in an image up to a chosen distance from their current location. This can make pictures 'explode' into a cloud of pixels (at a high setting), or merely give images a fuzzy, grainy look (at a low setting, best Blurred afterwards). Roll Secondary: No UsesPaint: No Options: X and Y offset Description: Rolls the picture (or selected area) through a set pixel offset. The picture wraps round at the edges. RubThru Secondary: Yes UsesPaint: No Options: None Description: Rub through to the secondary image. Pixels are replaced with the equivalant pixel on the secondary image. RubMix Secondary: Yes UsesPaint: No Options: Mode- Thru, add, Sub, Or, Xor, Diff Description: Mixes the pixel colour with the equivalant pixel from the secondary image using a variety of different logical operations. ADD: The secondary pixel is added to the pixel. SUB: The secondary pixel is subtracted from the pixel. AND: The secondary pixel is logical ANDed with the pixel. OR: The secondary pixel is logical ORed with the pixel. XOR: The secondary pixel is logical XORed with the pixel. DIFF. The pixel is set to the difference between the secondary and primary pixel colours. RubTint Secondary: Yes UsesPaint: No Options: None Description: Tints the current picture using the colour of the secondary picture behind, leaving the texture of the original picture. Rub Texture Secondary: Yes UsesPaint: No Options: None Description: This is the opposite of RubTint, the colour from the current picture is kept and only the texture is rubbed through. Saturation Secondary: No UsesPoint: No Options: -256 to 256 Description: Raise or lower the saturation of a selected part of the image. Colours get stronger with higher saturation (at very high saturation colours turn white) and weaker with low saturation. Sharpen Secondary: No UsesPaint: No Options: None Description: Edges in the current picture are detected and sharpened to enhance the image. This is quite powerful, so you may need to turn up the transparency to get the desired level of change. ShiftHue Secondary: No UsesPoint: No Options: Shift amount (degrees) Description: Any colour can be described as a combination of three components - Hue, Saturation and Value. Shifting the hue can be used to alter the colour component only. ShiftRGB Secondary: No UsesPaint: No Options: Backwards Yes/No Description: Photogenics images are stored as RGB (Red, Green, Blue) data. By swapping the R, G and B values different false- colour effects can be produced. Default is R goes to G, G goes to B and B goes to R. This direction can be reversed with the Backwards option. Solarize Secondary: No UsesPaint: No Options: None Description: This simulates a classical photographic trick, deliberately exposing a negative before developing to produce unusual colouring and shading. This will enhance the darker colours but invert the brighter colours. Tile Secondary: No UsesPaint: No Options: Width and height of tiIe Description: This fills the selected area with tiles, each tile being a miniature copy of the full screen. You can select the width and height of the tiles. TileBrick Secondary: No UsesPaint: No Options: Width ond height of tile Description: This works like Tile, except the tiles are arranged in a brickwork pattern with every other row of tiles offset horizontally by half a tile. Tint Secondary: No UsesPaint: Yes Options: None Description: This replaces the colour of the selected area with the chosen colour while retaining the brightness of the original pixels so the detail (features in the original picture) remain, but tinted to a new colour. Tutorials --------- These tutorials have been written to explain some of the more complex features of Photogenics. Some are here to give you ideas for using the package more creatively. Tutorial: First steps. This tutorial will give you a few ideas for making interesting and colourful backgrounds. The easiest way to create a nice looking background is to use the plasma loader. Firstly, you must open the loaders window by selecting Loaders from the Windows pull down menu. Select the plasma loader by clicking on the word Plasma. You will then be presented with a screen size requester. Select a screen size of 320 x 256 by clicking on the appropriate box or by using the sliders. The plasma will take a little time to generate and once it has finished you will be presented with an image full of nicely blended colours. An effect that works well with plasma images is Sharpen. To add this effect open the Modes window by selecting Mode from the Windows pull down menu. Now select Sharpen by clicking on the word Sharpen Once Sharpen is highlighted click on the Fill Screen button in the tool box (located in the left column above the Fix button). The Fill Screen button will fill the screen with the selected mode, in this case it will Sharpen the whole image. Once the image has been sharpened fix it using the Fix button in the tool box. The plasma will now have much greater definition. From this image you can create a stoney looking texture by using the Emboss mode. Select Emboss from the modes window and turn the greyscale option on. You can do this by clicking on the Mode Options button located to the right of the Mode button in the tool box. A box will now open with the word greyscale in it, click on the button and then click OK. Now Emboss the whole screen by clicking on the fill screen button and then fix the image. You will now have Grey stony texture. If you wish to make the texture stand out, then you can sharpen it in the same way you sharpened the original plasma image. You can also change the colour of the texture to any colour of your choice. To do this select the Tint mode from the Modes window. Next you must open the palette window by clicking on the colour block at the top of the Toolbox. By clicking anywhere on the colour wheel you can select your desired colour, or you could select one of the preset colours in the list on the right of the palette window. The colour block in the palette window shows your currently selected colour. Once you have found the colour that you want to use click on the "Use" button in the palette window. Don't forget to FIX after the desired effect has been achieved. Plasma Text: This effect uses the RubThru mode to fill text with plasma colours. Select Text from the loaders window and you will the be presented with a font requester. Click on the Diamond font in the fonts list and select a font size of sixty by clicking on box at the bottom of the sizes list, typing the number 60 and pressing return. Now click on the OK button. A box will appear with the word Text in it. Click on the word text and delete it, type in your own text and press return. Click on the OK button and after a few seconds the text you typed will appear. Select Blur mode and use it to fill the whole screen and then fix the image. Using the Clone option from the Project pull down menu make a copy of your text image. Put the copy of the image into the alpha channel by selecting the 'Use as Alpha Channel' option from the options menu when the copy is selected. Now select the plasma loader and choose the same height and width as your text image. Once the plasma has been generated make it the secondary imoge by selecting 'Use as secondary' from the options menu. Select your original text image and change the mode to RubThru. Fill the screen. Finally fix the image and you will see that the text has changed from white to plasma. Blue Sky: A quick way to create a sky like background is to create a plasma then select the antique mode and fill the screen. After fixing the image select the negative mode and fill the screen again. This should leave you with a nice pastel blue and white image. Ripple: Nice backgrounds can also be created by using the ripple loader. These look especsially good when used with the displace map mode. To create this effect select Ripples from the loaders window and select a screen size. Select Use As Secondary from the Options menu. Load an image, and select DisplaceMap from the modes window. Fill the image. The ripples will displace the new image giving a very pleasant effect. Tutorial - Compose: This tutorial will show you some of the power of the Compose function, which allows you to easily combine any images inside Photogenics. First load a background image. We will be using SeaSky.jpg from the tutorial directory on disk 2. Now, choose an image for the foreground. We will use the portrait.jpg file. Load this with the 'Open as/secondary..." menu option, it will load straight into the secondary buffer and will not open a window (you will see a new picture icon in the secondary box in the images window). Select the seasky image again by clicking on its window titlebar Go to the image menu and select 'Compose...' The second image (the portrait) will now appear in a box on top of the first image. With compose you can size this box and position the image whereever you want. Hold down the left mouse button with the pointer over the positioning box (the small box in the center of the new image). While keeping the left mouse button held down move the mouse. When you are happy with the new position let go. The boxes at each corner of the image are for stretching the image. Do the same procedure as you did for moving the image, except now it will resize the image instead of moving it. Move and resize the image until you are happy with the position, and then go back to the compose window (you may have to click on the depth gadget in the top right hand corner of the compose window to bring the compose window into view) Note that the boxes at the bottom of the compose window allow you to enter co-ordinates manually for the image width and height. Click on the little button marked 'Blend In/Out'. This will enter blend mode. In blend mode you can blend the image smoothly into the background. Simply use the right mouse button to paint-out the image and the left mouse button to reapply it in exactly the same way as you normally paint. You can even use different brushes to apply a rougher texture to the blends. For now keep the standard Airbrush and use the right mouse button to erase the background of the portrait. If you accidentally erase some of the face then simply use the left mouse button to reapply the image. Once you are happy with your composition, click on the OK gadget in the Compose window and it's finished! Tutuorial - Rippling an Image. One of the most powerful features of Photogenics is the DisplaceMap paintmode. With this you can distort one picture, using another picture, selected as the secondary buffer, as a 'map'. You can use any picture as a displacement map, but it works best with pictures that are primarily greys, and it is best if the background is set to a mid grey. Pictures created with the Emboss paintmode can work particularly well. Here are a few tricks you can do with DisplaceMap... Step 1. Open an example picture, we will use "tutorials/Girl.jpg" for this one. Step 2. Create a displacement map: Do 'open as/other.' ond select "Ripples" from the list. Change the width and height in the requester to match the width and height of the picture you loaded (200 wide and 256 high for the girl.jpg example) and select OK. For the next requester (centre co-ordinates) just press OK. Step 3. The concentric circles image you have just created will be an ideal Displace Map. Select the image (by clicking on the title bar of the image) and select 'Options/Use as Secondary' from the menu (or drag it into the S box on the Images window. It should now disappear. Step 4. Select the main image again. Click on the MODE button in the toolbar and select "DisplaceMap" from the list. Step 5. Fill the screen (with the white button above FIX in the toolbar) for instant ripples! You can mess around with the strength of the ripples by changing the mode options for DisplaceMap (the button to the right of the MODE button in the toolbar). Try different combinations of large and small values for X and Y for different effects. Tutorial - Creating special text effects - using Alpha Channels This tutorial requires the special anti-aliased fonts from disk 3 of Photogenics. To use these fonts Photogenics must be installed on a Hard drive. Alpha channels allow very powerful image manipulations. Here we will show you how to create some different fancy text effects starting from a simple plain font (or for better results an anti-aliased colourfont) The first step is to enter some text. Select "Open as/Other..." from the menu and click on the TEXT loader. Select a font. You can use any font for this, but the larger the font the better the results will look. Choose the Bodocious font (if you have installed it to your hard drive) and select the size 85 from the right hand column. Then click on the OK button. Enter some text now, we will type "Amiga" into the Gadget. A new buffer is created, called Unnamed, with the Amiga text in a plain white font on a black background. If you zoom in with the magnify tool you can see that the edges of the letters are not sharp they have a blurred outline (called anti-aliasing). This makes the font look smoother than other standard fonts. Zoom out again by clicking on the button to the right of the magnify button. If you are using a standard font (not a colourfont) you can blur the edges and smooth it out by using the Blur or Heavy Blur paint modes. The next step is to clone the buffer. Select the Clone option from the Project menu. You will now have two identical pictures. Move the window for the new image to the bottom of the screen so you can see both buffers (they may be overlapped slightly on some systems - do not worry!) Select the second buffer (marked Copy of unnamed) by clicking in the window titlebar (the window border will turn blue). Go to the image menu and choose Gaussian Blur Select a Blur radius of 4 and click on OK. Warning! This may take a long time to complete. Gaussian Blur is a very powerful and complex operator. We are making a heavily blurred version of the text to use as the starting point for our text effects. Once it has finished, select the original text (the buffer you did not blur) and press key '3' to use it as an alpha-channel. Select the blurred buffer again, chose 'Emboss' from the paintmode list (the MODE button on the toolbar), and click on the Fill Screen gadget (the white square above the FIX gadget). Now we have some text that appears to be a raised, embossed text. It looks quite nice as it is, but we can play around some more and try some different tricks... First click on the FIX gadget to make this change permanent. Now try some different paintmodes. Fill the screen again and open the Modes window from the Windows menu (or press Amiga-M) so the window stays open. Click on different modes to experiment - you can see how different modes provide different effects. AddDust and AddNoise turn the boring grey text into a more stone like grainy texture. Monochrome (assuming you haven't changed the current colour) turns the inside of the text dark leaving the outer glow of the letters. Point leaves the glow but fills the inside of the letters with the selected colour. Tint changes the colour inside, but leaves the nice embossed texture. We will do a combination of different effects. First we will select AddDust and click on Fix. Now select GradientTint from the modes list, click on the Fill Screen button and fix again. Now we want to change the outer glow to a different colour. To do this we have to invert the Alpha Channel (the alpha channel determines which bits of the picture are altered. So far we have only been altering the inside of the letters, now we only want to alter the outside). Select Invert Alpha from the Alpha/Paint Layer menu. Now fill the screen again and set the paint mode to tint. The outer glow changes colour to yellow, which was the colour we had previously set. Open the palette requester (click on the Yellow box in the toolbar or press the 'p' key). Select a new colour, try Blue from the list on the right. Then click on the 'Use' button. It's too dork. So we can change it with the sliders. Change the hue slider (H) by moving it to the left until you get a value of around 138. You should now see a brighter, more cyan, shade of blue. Click on Use again. Close the palette requester and click on FIX to apply this change. Now, the outer glow isn't big enough. Simple. Choose the 'Maximum' paintmode and fill the screen again. Now the glow will expand into the dark background. Fix it and fill and fix again. And that's it. A nice colourful logo created in a few minutes. And it's so easy to change this procedure, apply a few Negatives, blurs, different tints or filters to create totally different effects. Artists Tutorial ---------------- This tutorial will teach you how to use the Airbrush more artistically. You will be drawing a nice and shiny red ball, complete with a convincing shadow. Starting from scratch, create a new, white 320 by 256 buffer (you can create new buffers by selecting from the Project Menu/New). Open up the brush setting window by clicking on its icon on the Tool-Box. Set the brush size to around 25, and the pressure to about 20%. Open the Palette by clicking on the coloured box at the top of the Toolbox. Change the colour to black by finding the Black entry in the Presets list on the right of the Palette. You will now create a mask (another term for Alpha Channel) for you to draw through. Draw an unfilled circle in the middle of your buffer, so that it is about a third of the heiqht of the buffer. Fill the inside of this circle by using the filled circle tool. This gives a solid circle with very smooth edges. Now select the menu Alpha/Paint Layer/Move Paint Layer to Alpha. After a short delay, your mask will have been moved to the Alpha Channel. You will find that you picture will be cleared, but dont be alarmed. If you now try and draw on your buffer, you will find that you can only draw in the parts of the picture that you originally drew the circle in. To get a better idea of the area you can draw on, clear the buffer, set the colour to red and fill the screen. To create a guide, set the transparency to around 90%, and fix the picture. Reset the transparency to 0% before you proceed. Set your brush size to around 50, and the pressure to about 10% (Remember, the lower the pressure, the greater the control you have) Starting from the bottom left edge of the circle, gently draw with the mouse around the outline of the circle, decreasing the amount you rub as you get near the highlights. Remember, if you go wrong, you can always rub mistakes out with the right mouse button. FIX to store your changes. Now darken the red using moving the brightness slider in the palette to the half way setting. Repeat what you did before, but be more sparing with your paint. Fix the image. Darken the red a bit more, so its about twice as dark as before, and then just sparingly draw softly around the bottom right. Fix the image of the sphere. We will now give the sphere a shadow. As the Alpha Channel is set up to only let us draw on the sphere, you will need to select Alpha/Paint Layer/Invert-Alpha Set the colour to black. Now lightly draw the shadow as shown. Fix the image, and save your masterpiece! Appendix I - Introduction to 24-bit Graphics -------------------------------------------- The human eye has the ability to distinguish over 16 million different shades and colours. A computer that can display this many colours is said to have true colour capability (or photo-realistic graphics). In technical terms, each pixel or dot on the computer screen needs to have 24 bits (Binary digits) to represent each colour. 24 bit computer graphics are the ultimate in representing photogrophs and images of the real world. Although the Amiga 1200 and 4000 do not posess a real 24-bit display they come very close with the HAM-8 (Hold and Modify - 8 bitplanes) display mode. This is used for the main Photogenics display to provide photo realistic displays while editing images. Image Processing When scanning photographs into a computer, combining images into a collage, or putting together graphics for a presentation, it is often necessary to edit the source material into a form more suitable for the selected application. In it's simplest format this can be the conversion of a picture from a foreign graphics file format into another which can be loaded by the chosen application program. In a more complex situation we might need to sharpen a photograph or make it brighter. Appendix II - Common Problems ----------------------------- Q. When I change the colour in the Palette box and try to paint the colour stays the same. Why? A. When you have decided on a new colour then you must click on either the "Use" or "Fix and Use" button in the Palette box. This is one of the powerful features of Photogenics, allowing you to alter the colour or mode of any paint you have applied to achieve a pleasant effect. If you have applied some paint you are happy with then FIX the image. You may then change the colour and add some more paint. Q. Why is there no "smoothing" option when loading JPEG picture. A. The smoothing operation is no longer supported in code from the Independant JPEG Group. Better smoothing can be applied using the Blur and Heavy Blur PhotoGenics paint modes or the Gaussic Blur menu item. Transparency can be increased to give more subtle Blurs and Heavy Blurs. Q. What is the advantage of the JPEG saver? A. The JPEG format compresses the image using clever algorithms that give a much smaller filesize on disk. However, this compression can lose detail from an image (see below), so use IFF Deep or IFF-24 if you need to keep an EXACT copy of your image. Q. What effect does the quality setting on the JPEG saver mean? A. JPEG is what is know as a "lossy" image format. This means that some picture information is lost when the image is saved. Setting a higher quality will result in a saved image that is more true to the original. Higher quality increases the filesize. Small filesizes can be obtained with lower quality settings but some quality will be lost. Q. What is IFF-Deep format, and why is IFF 24 not the default save format? A. IFF 24 was the first 24-bit file format for the Amiga, developed long before AGA and before 24-bit graphic cards became available. It is badly designed for storing 24-bit Graphics and converting to and from this file format is a slow process. IFF-Deep is a much faster format to work with, although the files are larger. IFF 24 is still provided so you can import and export files for other older Amiga applications. Q. How can I save out pictures that I can use in other Amiga programs? A. Most Amiga programs use the IFF format for loading and saving pictures. Photogenics can save two different standard IFF formats - HAM8 (with the HAM8 saver) and IFF-24. Most modern Amiga packages will be able to load one or both of these formats. Q. When I draw a line, I cannot undo it with the Undo menu item - why? A. The Undo menu item only affects the lost FIXed chonges. To clear the line you just drew use the Clear Paint Layer button on the Toolbox. Q. How do I draw thin lines, boxes or circles? Every time I draw one it uses the spraycan to produce big, blurred lines. A. You need to change the size and pressure of the brush. Set the size to the minimum (1 pixel) and set the pressure to maximum (100%). You may find this is not clear enough, if so try a size of 2 pixels. Q. Why does Photogenics seem to run slower on the new DBIPal and DBINTSC screen modes? A. The new double scan screenmodes have greater system overheads than the old PAL and NTSC modes. Running Photogenics in Pal or NTSC will give faster operation. Q. How do I add text onto a picture? I can only seem to create text into a new image. A. Create text into a new buffer and use Compose with the Brightness Key option selected to smoothly combine text over an image. Appendix III - Hints & Tips --------------------------- Photogenics will paint faster on smaller image windows. Try working on smaller windows. If the painting speed is slow then try reducing the size of the brush and maybe increasing the pressure. When composing it is often useful to turn up transparency so the original image can be seen underneath. This gives a more visual indication of the position of the composition. The Palette window can be made smaller by clicking on the resize gadget (the one next the front-to-back gadget, top right). The colours list will be hidden. Clicking on the gadget again will bring back the colours list. It is easier choosing colours with HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness) than with the standard RGB colour system. HSB uses three sliders. Hue determines the base colour or tone of the colour, Saturation is how saturated the colour is (zero saturation is white, full saturation is the colour at full intensity) and Brightness varies from Block at zero to the full brightness of the colour at the other end of the scale. When shading images you often only need to change the brightness or saturation sliders. Make sure you return your registration card! Not only will this entitle you to technical support and notification of the latest updates, but you will also be mailed with special offers on add-ons for Photogenics and other products that you won't want to miss. We are always happy to hear your suggestions on how we can improve this program, please send any comments to the any of the contact points listed on your registration card. Appendix IV - Key Shortcuts --------------------------- Amiga Q Quit Amiga N Create new image Amiga O Open new image Amiga J Save JPEG image Amiga D Save IFF Deep image Amiga S Save ILBM image Amiga A Save as other image type Amiga C Clone buffer Amiga ~ Erase all undo buffers Amiga L Open Loaders window Amiga B Choose brush Amiga G Open brush settings/transparency window Shift < Zoom out Shift > Zoom in 1 Move buffer to images (cancel secondary/alpha channel settings) 2 Move buffer to secondary 3 Move buffer to alpha channel p Open/close palette window ' Pick a colour from the screen m Choose a new paint mode Shift-M Change paintmode options k Clear the paint layer r Draw rectangle Shift-R Draw filled rectangle c Draw circle Shift-C Draw filled circle e Draw elipse Shift-E Draw filled elipse b Cut out rectangle Shift-B Cut out with freehand knife tool \ Open/close brush options/transparency window s Select freehand mode d Select continuous freehand line mode v Draw line f Select fill option Shift-F Set fill parameters Return Fix changes u Undo/Redo last permanent change + Increase brush size by 1 - Decrease brush size by 1 Shift + Increase brush size by 5 Shift - Decrease brush size by 5 · : ¦ . _________ ________ _____________ ._____¦ | · __ / : ___________/ _ \ \ __ _ / | \ |____: : \_/ -A : \______ \ | \_ _: \_/ \_/ | \ ¦ | ¦ \_ ··D_ / / _/ | / |___/ \_ | : : | |_______/ `N· _/ \ \_________/ | \________/ ¦ |_____¦ ¦ | : \__________/ \ ¦ \_ : : \__________| \___________/ . · .