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'Personal Paint 6.4 - 0. Manual Supplement' 0. User Guide Supplement 1.2 System Configuration 1.3.5 Virtual Memory 1.9.4 Gadgets 1.10.4 The <Shift> Keys 1.12 Configuring and Loading Personal Paint 1.13.1 Automatic Installation: The InstallPPaint Program 1.14 External User Interface Files 2.7 Personal Paint for Authors 3.1.2 The Painting Tools 3.1.3.2 The Font Requester 3.1.4.3 Transparency Effects 3.1.4.4 Alpha Channel 3.1.4.5 Stereograms 3.1.4.5.1 How to Create a Stereogram 3.1.4.5.2 Viewing Stereograms 3.1.9 Clear 3.1.10 Undo 3.2 Moving Around 3.4 The File Requester 4.1 Load Image 4.3 Print Image 4.3.2.1 Dithering 4.3.2.4 Shade 4.3.2.8 Color Correction 4.5 Image and Screen Format 4.8.<3 Copy Animation 4.10 Information 4.10.1 Project Information 4.11 Memory Information <6. The Animation Menu <6.1 Load Animation <6.2 Save Animation <6.3 Play File <6.4 The Storyboard <6.5 Free Animation <6.6 Animation Frames <6.6.1 Move to Frame <6.6.2 Add Frame <6.6.3 Optimize Frames <6.7 Play Animation <6.8 Animation and the Other Program Functions 7.1 Palette 7.2.3 Edit Stencil <8. The Macros Menu 8.<3 Memory Management 8.<3.1 Virtual Memory 8.<3.2 Undo History 8.<3.3 Emergency Closing of Workbench Screen 8.7.2 Pattern Dithering 8.7.4 Best Quality 8.8.6 System (ASL) 8.9.4 Original 8.<13 Graphics 8.<13.3 Smooth Move 8.<13.4 Be Square 8.14 Backfill 9.3 HP DeskJet Drivers 9.4 JPEG DataType 9.5 Fonts A. Program Messages B. Command Shortcuts C.1 Program Settings C.2 Environment Settings C.3 Read-Only Settings 0. User Guide Supplement Since the publication of the original User Guide, Personal Paint has gone through major improvements. We thank all users of Cloanto products for their support and feedback. This supplement describes new program features. Sections are ordered as they appear in the original manual and in the software menus (a '<' sign is used to mark section numbers which have been inserted between existing sections). New features of Personal Paint include: Animation (featuring a storyboard, superior compression, multiple palettes, frame-by-frame timing, ANIM-5/7/8 and hybrid formats, etc.) Sophisticated "behind the scenes" memory management, including virtual memory (swaps inactive image data to Fast RAM and disk storage) and multiple levels of undo and redo New, faster image processing effects, including transparencies, alpha channel and single image stereograms (both SIRDS and custom pattern stereograms, as in "Magic Eye") Support of Retargetable Graphics (display cards like the Picasso, Retina, Piccolo, Rainbow, EGS, Talon, Cybergraphics etc.) Animation on RTG display cards (with or without double-buffering) Direct, high quality 24-bit printing (Color and Black & White) and interface to third-party software such as Studio Print Server Professional and fast modes for converting 24-bit pictures (IFF, PNG, PCX, PBM etc.) to 256 colors or less HAM, HAM8, Picasso and Cybergraphics 24-bit viewer active during color reduction First paint program worldwide to support the new PNG (Portable Network Graphics) file format External input/output modules (loaders and savers) for easy extensions and upgrades. Modules for IFF, PNG, PCX, PBM, Amiga DataTypes and several others are included. GIF module is available from public domain sources. Support and editing of IFF, PNG and GIF project annotations (Author, Copyright and Comment fields, plus Amiga filenotes) Autoscroll painting Workbench Application Icon (Drag and Drop) ASL-compatible file requester More power through machine language code: the software is in part up to 500% faster "New Look" user interface A collection of utilities, including color fonts, new DeskJet printer drivers (up to four inks) and JPEG DataType 1.2 System Configuration On systems having only one Mbyte of total RAM, newer versions of the Amiga operating system (e.g. version 3) and certain custom software and hardware configurations (e.g. permanently resident utilities or multiple floppy disk drives) occupy more memory than the original system configuration, and may leave insufficient free memory to run Personal Paint. If this is the case, an attempt should be made to install Personal Paint to hard disk or floppy disk with the "decompress" option of the installation procedure enabled (section 1.13.1). The decompressed version of the software uses more disk space, but requires less RAM during loading. In general, 1 Mbyte systems benefit more by an inexpensive RAM expansion than by an upgrade to a newer and more memory consuming operating system. 1.3.5 Virtual Memory The term "Virtual memory" is associated with the ability to address a storage space much larger than the RAM normally available on the computer. Personal Paint can use both Fast RAM and/or disk space to store image data which would normally occupy a more "precious" type of RAM (e.g. Chip RAM). Provided that enough Fast RAM and/or disk space are available, Personal Paint can temporarily move all unused items to a secondary storage location. The main items which may be moved are: images, animations, brushes, transparency and stencil planes, storyboard, environment and brush undo buffers. Personal Paint only moves an object to virtual memory if it is not "active", that is, the item must not be currently displayed or processed. Enough Chip memory must still be available for the current screen, the current image (or animation frame) and the current brush. Functions such as Color Merge may temporarily need to access more objects. The Memory Information requester (section 4.11) indicates the amount of virtual memory currently in use and allows the user to manually move data to virtual memory. The Settings menu gives access to the Memory Management requester (section 8.<3), which allows the user to switch RAM and/or disk based virtual memory on or off. 1.9.4 Gadgets Underlined characters indicate keyboard shortcuts to gadgets. Additional new features are described in section 1.14 (External User Interface Files) and appendix B (Command Shortcuts). 1.10.4 The <Shift> Keys Section 8.9.3 describes how to use the <Shift> key to create Workbench icons in up to 256 colors. Section <6.8 explains how to use <Shift> to apply a single color palette when color-reducing an animation. If <Shift> is held down while an animation file is dragged and dropped over the Personal Paint application icon, the file will be only played, and not loaded. 1.12 Configuring and Loading Personal Paint The program disk is no longer bootable. Wide diffusion of different, new versions of the Amiga operating system on different machines made it impractical to use Workbench 1.3 as a common denominator to boot on all systems. Optional additional disks may still be used to store picture and animation files. The install routine can copy these to the hard disk as requested. Personal Paint fully supports Amiga Application Icons (drag and drop). This means that whenever the program is loaded on a system running at least version 2.0 of the operating system, a small "PPaint" icon (AppIcon) appears on the Workbench (the text under the icon also indicates the name of Personal Paint's ARexx port). The program automatically loads any image and animation files dragged and dropped over the application icon. If <Shift> is held down while an animation is dropped over the icon, the animation is only played - not loaded. A simple double-click on the icon brings Personal Paint to the front of all screens. The "PPaint:PPaint_Icons" drawer contains additional icon description files, which can be modified by the user: "def_AppIcon", "def_Drawer", and "def_Animation". While "PPaint:PPaint_Prefs" remains the default location for storing settings files, during startup Personal Paint also scans the "ENV:PPaint" drawer (if it exists). Any files stored in "ENV:PPaint" have a higher priority than those in "PPaint:PPaint_Prefs". The use of Amiga environment variables is especially useful when it is not possible to write to the application storage medium, for example if Personal Paint is run from a CD-ROM. To make these changes persist after the computer is reset, they must be stored in "ENVARC:PPaint". 1.13.1 Automatic Installation: The InstallPPaint Program The Amiga Installer program is used to install the software. Context-sensitive help is available on-line by pressing the <Help> key. 1.14 External User Interface Files All user interface pictures (tools, gadget images, etc.) are stored in a separate and editable file named "UIGraphics.pic" (inside "PPaint_Prefs"). The file may be stored in PNG format to reduce disk occupation. For faster program loading after hard disk installation, it can be loaded as a brush and saved again using the IFF-ILBM format. The user interface text files (UIText.xxx) contain a version number, used to identify the release version of the text file. This number is read by Personal Paint, and should normally not be changed by the user. The underscore character can be used in sections TXW (window texts) and TXG (gadget texts) of the user interface text files. The character following the underscore will be underlined and used as a keyboard shortcut, in accordance with the Amiga user interface specifications. Supported gadget types are: cycle gadgets, checkboxes, sliders, listviews (scrollboxes) and action gadget texts (e.g. "_OK"). When input by the user, lower case letters are treated differently than capitals in cycle gadgets, proportional gadgets and listviews. The former force the gadget to "go forward", while the latter make it "go back". In other gadget types, upper and lower case letters are treated as identical. Due to the new Animation features, more menus have to share the same horizontal screen space. The underscore character can be used to indicate where a menu title text can be abbreviated (this may be necessary when using low-resolution screen modes). For example, the program could abbreviate "Anim_ation" to "Anim.", should this be necessary. Otherwise, the menu would be displayed normally ("Animation"). 2.7 Personal Paint for Authors Personal Paint offers a unique range of features designed for authors of artwork to be distributed on computer files. In this section, we would like to share with you some of the experience collected by leading artists. We also explain some of the settings we at Cloanto prefer in our own configurations. An image or an animation created with public distribution in mind requires some considerations which are normally not relevant when a file is used only on the author's computer. As the public grows wider, compatibility becomes an issue: the image or the animation may have been created using a screen mode different than what a viewer may have available. Some (especially older) picture and animation players had limitations and bugs, and it could be interesting to have access to a range of options designed to prevent potential difficulties before they become a problem for end users. Associating information such as author, copyright, and other comments to files is usually appreciated both by authors and by the public (as well as by possible publishers). Also, there should be no difficulties or formalities in distributing the icons created by the art application, or even replacing these with new default icons. Both the icons and the image file should be product-neutral (no hidden advertising texts inside the file). After more than six major versions, Personal Paint offers experienced answers to these and many more requirements. Most computing platforms use display modes made of square pixels (i.e. an X/Y ratio of 1, as on the Macintosh, or on the PC's VGA) as a standard. This means that the pixels are exactly as tall as they are wide. To be round, a circle drawn on such a screen would be as wide (in pixels) as it is tall. Not so on the Amiga. The original non-interlaced Amiga modes had a ratio close to 0.5 (so-called "tall-pixels"). A "round" circle could be 10 pixels on the X-axis and 5 pixels on the Y-axis. Most artists prefer to work with square pixels. Yet even here there is no exact match on the Amiga. PAL and NTSC screen modes, for example, have pixels of slightly different ratios. Before it draws a circle, Personal Paint queries the Amiga Display Database to obtain information on the ratio. For example, the Display Database could tell Personal Paint that a "round" circle must be 10 pixels wide and... 9 pixels tall. This is not what most artists want. Rather than working with similar approximations, at Cloanto we prefer to activate the Square Pixels option (section 8.<13.4). This ensures that the resulting images appear correctly when viewed using 1:1 pixels, regardless of the screen mode in which the image was created. Normally, when storing an image in formats such as IFF-ILBM, information about the current screen mode is also saved. When the Amiga was first released, associating a screen mode to an image allowed simple viewer applications to quickly open a screen of the same type as the one used by the author. At that time, options were limited: screens could be either low resolution or high resolution, interlaced or non-interlaced. These were common to all Amigas. Minor difficulties would result from images crossing the oceans separating PAL from NTSC video modes. Today, there are not only different generations of Amiga display hardware, but even third-party graphics boards. Even users of identical Amiga computers may have installed different Monitor files on their systems (section 10.4). Furthermore, applications became more intelligent: Personal Paint, for example, excels in automatically picking the best available screen mode to display an image. Over the years, associating default screen modes to pictures has become more dangerous (the default may not be available, or viewable, on the user's machine) and less necessary (software is more intelligent). At Cloanto, we now prefer to store all images without associating a default screen mode to the file. To switch this option, open the Options window in the Save Image requester (section 4.2) and clear the Screen Format setting. File formats which cannot save screen mode information (e.g. PBM) do not have this option. Animations require some additional attention. In accordance with the different Amiga ANIM specifications (standards for animation file formats), a default screen mode must be specified in the file. Personal Paint and the most used Amiga animation players are capable of overriding this information when loading an animation, and can automatically select an appropriate screen mode just as Personal Paint does for images. This is necessary, for example, when an animation's default mode is not supported on the computer where the animation is to be played. Nevertheless, when an animation is saved, the current screen mode is always stored with the animation. At Cloanto, we have decided to associate "DblPAL" screen modes to the animations we create and distribute. These screen modes are supported by all AGA machines, and can be displayed on VGA monitors not supporting 15 kHz modes. Furthermore, the pixel X/Y ratio of PAL is closer than NTSC to 1, which is preferred by most artists. The AGA chip-set is very common among the more active Amiga users. Yet even if the end user's machine does not support DblPAL, the animation can be displayed in other screen modes (the screen mode information is only a hint required by the ANIM standard, not an imperative for applications). Users of original and ECS Amiga chip-sets, as well as users of some display cards such as the Picasso II should consider another issue: color resolution. AGA allows users and applications to define and set colors using 8 bits per color component (red, green and blue). This is 24 bits (or 256 gray-levels, or more than 16 million different color-combinations). Older Amigas only support 4 bits per component (i.e. 16 gray-levels, or 4096 colors). The Picasso II uses 6 bits per component (64 gray levels, or 262 144 colors). This means that on some systems colors cannot be defined with the precision possible on AGA (e.g. on the Amiga 1200 and 4000), for example. Users of Personal Paint can quickly check the color resolution of their system by displaying the Palette requester (section 7.1.3) and setting any color-slider to the maximum. The numerical value indicates the precision of the system (e.g. a maximum level of 15, 63 or 255 would indicate that the system supports 16, 64 or 256 levels for that color component). When a palette is loaded on a system with a lower color resolution, a majority of colors is likely to "snap" to coarser levels. If the image is then saved again, a loss of data may occur. As an artist, you may want to make sure that the colors you see on your system will be loaded and represented the same way by an older Amiga. Or, even if you do not own a system capable of handling 8 bits per color component, you may need to edit images in that resolution without losing precision. Personal Paint offers a solution to all these requirements, by allowing the user to manually set the color precision (number of bits per color component). Even if this is different (higher or lower) than what is supported by the system, Personal Paint can use a custom value for all processing, overriding the Amiga defaults. As explained in section C.3, when the program settings REDBITS, GREENBITS and BLUEBITS are set to 0, Personal Paint uses the maximum color resolution supported by the video device currently used. This is the program's default. Other values, however, force Personal Paint to use specific numbers of bits per color component. For example, setting all three values to 8 allows for precise editing of AGA-resolution palettes even on ECS or Picasso II systems. At Cloanto, where we work with different Amiga computers and graphic boards, we manually set REDBITS, GREENBITS and BLUEBITS to 8 in our own startup files. If you have an AGA computer and you only work in AGA screen modes, you should not need to set these values yourself (by default this is taken care of by Personal Paint), unless you want to emulate a coarser color resolution. When we save an image, at Cloanto we use the IFF-ILBM format if the image is mainly for Amiga distribution. The options we normally set are: compression active, no screen format information. IFF-ILBM is the most supported Amiga image file format, and also offers excellent loading and saving times (e.g. viewers are faster), but its compression is not as good as in other formats (i.e. the files are longer). When space is really tight and excellent compression is a priority, we use PNG (options: compression level 9, no progressive display, automatic mode enabled). Setting a PNG compression level higher than 6 slightly improves compression, but considerably slows down the compression procedure. PNG is also our format of choice when the images are to be read by other computers. We used to prefer GIF for cross-platform distribution, but GIF's popularity was suffocated at the end of 1994, after Unisys Corporation began demanding royalties for software reading and writing GIF (and TIFF/LZW) files. When we write images to be used on an Amiga CD-ROM, we sometimes prefer another format: uncompressed IFF-ILBM (no compression, no screen format information). This can generate quite long files, but on a CD-ROM space is usually not a problem. Due to the minimum software overhead, uncompressed IFF-ILBM files can be loaded considerably faster than other formats, especially on slower machines. When we write animations, at Cloanto we usually store them in ANIM-5 format. This is the most supported standard for Amiga animation files. It also offers good compression. ANIM-7 files can be processed faster, although they are not compressed as well and are not as widely supported as ANIM-5. We use ANIM-7 for 256-color animations, and sometimes to store all types of animations on CD-ROM, when we know that an ANIM-7 viewer is available (e.g. Personal Paint). Very rarely, when a disk is really packed, we store animations in the ANIM-5+7 format. When this format is used, Personal Paint decides whether to use ANIM-5 or ANIM-7 on a frame-by-frame basis, depending on which format yields the best compression. This adheres to the ANIM specifications, but requires that the software loading the animation can handle both ANIM-5 and ANIM-7. We never use ANIM-8. It is neither as popular nor (in general) as good as ANIM-7. Quite often, at Cloanto we use Personal Paint to optimize old animations (use of the Optimize Frames command is explained in section <6.3) before saving them again. This alone can halve the size of certain animation files. Some older and not very popular animation viewers do not support frame-by-frame timing. In this case, the Optimize Frames command cannot be used. These same programs usually also do not support more than one color palette per animation (introduction to chapter 6). Personal Paint marks these palettes with three dots under the associated frame in the storyboard (section <6.4). At Cloanto, we use frame-by-frame timing and multiple palettes without concerns, since neither of the limitations described here is an issue with the most recent and the most used Amiga animation viewers. A few other options can affect the animation format. Before the animation is saved, we make sure that the current screen mode is the one that we want to associate to the animation (see explanation in this same section). Some older programs have a bug which does not allow them to handle certain types of properly-written ANIM files. DPaint (up to release V) is one of these programs. When compatibility with these applications is important, we disable the Full ANIM Optimization option (section <6.2). As an author or publisher of an image or animation, you may want to fill-in the Author, Copyright and Annotation texts, which are supported by most file formats (section 4.10.1). You could put your name as the Author, and something like "Copyright © [Year of first publication] [Your name] - Freely Distributable" in the Copyright text. The Annotation could include a postal or E-mail address. Personal Paint allows for this information to be easily edited at any time. Empty fields are not saved, and do not occupy any space in the file. On the Amiga, Workbench icons are usually associated to files. Personal Paints can save images and animations using the default icons stored in the "PPaint:PPaint_Icons" drawer. These icons also determine the Default Tool, which is the program which will be loaded when the file is double-clicked on. If you like the icons which come with Personal Paint (they are freely distributable), you can leave them as they are, or perhaps you may want to change the default tool, for example by putting "VT" instead of "PPaint:PPView". This can be set with the Workbench Information command. PPView is a short program which uses Personal Paint as a viewer (it loads Personal Paint, if it is not already loaded). Please be careful not to Snapshot (Workbench command) the icons inside "PPaint:PPaint_Icons" to a fixed position. When dropping a new default icon inside the drawer, select the Workbench UnSnapshot command. At Cloanto, we usually set the Icons option to Original (section 8.9.4). This instructs Personal Paint to write the usual default icons, unless the file already has a different icon, in which case the icon is not modified. 3.1.2 The Painting Tools While a mouse button is held down (e.g. to define a brush), cursor keys can be used to scroll the image, and Magnify Mode can be switched on and off using the keyboard shortcut (default = <m>). In animation mode, it is possible to switch to the previous or next frame while a painting tool is in use. 3.1.3.2 The Font Requester A second scrollable list contains the different sizes and attributes available for the currently hilighted font. The sample text can be dragged and scrolled with the left or middle mouse button. Like in the file requester, the mouse can be dragged over the list box (which is automatically scrolled) to highlight one item after the other. A cycle gadget allows the user to quickly switch among three different font paths: "FONTS:", "PPaint:fonts" and a user-defined custom path. 3.1.4.3 Transparency Effects Personal Paint has two image processing effects which can be used to achieve different levels of transparency when copying one object over the other: Environment Transparency and Brush Transparency. Brush Transparency includes a special alpha channel mode. In all cases, the current image is always the one which is modified by the effect (i.e. it is the target image). Environment Transparency uses the other environment as the source, while Brush Transparency uses the current brush (and the following brush, in alpha channel mode). Brush Transparency feels more intuitive after toggling the Image Processing tool on the toolbar to the third position (brush mode, section 3.1.4). Using the mouse, the brush can then be "pasted" over the image, with a variable degree of transparency. If the brush image processing mode is combined with the Environment Transparency, it is possible to create a "Rub Through" effect, as if a brush-shaped hole perforated the current image, making it possible to look into the other environment. This is one of the predefined effects, and is great for progressively bringing up details in animations. Since transparency effects tend to create a lot of new colors, it is recommended to activate the "F-S Error Diffusion" option in the Filter Selection requester. Like all other effects, the predefined filters can be modified, and new filters can be defined. The Kernel and DivFactor parameters of the filter are ignored, while Bias is used to adjust the degree of transparency of the source image (-1 = alpha channel mode, 0 = complete transparency, 255 = no transparency). The Rub Through effect has Bias set to 255 (i.e. the source image is copied over the destination image "as is"). The Bias DX and DY values specify the horizontal and vertical transparency transition, as described for other filters (e.g. Light-Dark Oblique Gradient). The alpha channel is a special feature which is only available with Brush Transparency effects. The alpha channel mode is activated by setting the Bias value to -1, and requires two consecutive brushes rather than one. In this mode, the degree of transparency of each pixel in the brush is a function of the brightness of the corresponding pixels in the second brush, rather than being defined by the plain Bias value. The additional transparency information provided by the second brush is called alpha channel. This data is very useful, for example, to create and manipulate images which must remain antialiased regardless of the background. White pixels in the second brush correspond to complete opacity, while black and undefined pixels indicate full transparency. 3.1.4.4 Alpha Channel The alpha channel is a special feature which is available with Brush Transparency effects. The alpha channel mode is activated by setting the Bias value to -1, and requires two consecutive brushes rather than one. In this mode, the degree of transparency of each pixel in the brush is a function of the brightness of the corresponding pixels in the second brush, rather than being defined by the plain Bias value. The additional transparency information provided by the second brush is called alpha channel. This data is very useful, for example, to create and manipulate images which must remain antialiased regardless of the background. White pixels in the second brush correspond to complete opacity, while black and undefined pixels indicate full transparency. Example. Suppose you want to paste down a brush which is solid in the center and gradually becomes more transparent towards the edges. The alpha channel brush would reflect this and can be created using a gradient fill, white in the center fading to black around the edges. 3.1.4.5 Stereograms What is a single image stereogram? It is a single picture containing different information for the left and right eye. When the eyes look at the picture "normally", the hidden clues cannot be recognized. However, when each eye looks at a different spot on the picture (which is what happens when the eyes pretend to look at an object positioned before or beyond the picture), after some adjusting, matching patterns can be recognized. Acting on eye convergence and divergence, the differences in the pattern provide the brain with depth information. 3.1.4.5.1 How to Create a Stereogram To generate a stereogram, you need to use both program environments: one to provide depth information and one to render the actual stereogram. Stereogram animations are also possible. If you select the Pattern stereogram type (SIPS) instead of the Random Dot type (SIRDS), you need to store a tile-pattern in the current brush. In single image stereograms, the "hidden image" is defined by different levels of depth. The 3D image does not have its own colors: it consists of depth information only. It does however inherit the texture of the "container" image, where very creative combinations of colors and patterns can be used. In the pattern type of stereograms, for example, a pattern can be used to create a forest or a sea, where the 3D shapes can be concealed. Depth information is provided by shapes drawn in different levels of gray. Simple shapes are normally easier and quicker to recognize. If text needs to be written in the hidden image, sans-serif, extra bold type is usually more readable. Black indicates the "most elevated" (closest) level, white corresponds to the "deepest" (farthest) level, while "flatness" is associated to a 50% gray (in the Palette requester: H=0, S=0, V=50%). This is the level which is not distorted when using pattern stereograms. Note that "front" and "back" are subjective, and can be reversed depending on the technique used for viewing the image: cross-eyed or parallel style. Extreme depths, such as those associated to black and white, are not necessarily the easiest to recognize. To the contrary. Highest quality is usually provided by intensities closer to medium levels of gray. For a quick test, draw a black box on a 50% gray background. Then go to the other environment, choose an appropriate screen mode (having the same size as the screen containing the black box) and color palette, select Image Processing from the Project menu and select one of the Stereogram filters. SIRDS (Random Dot Single Image Stereograms) are constructed using random dots, whereas SIPS (Single Image Pattern Stereograms) use the current brush to create a pattern. Personal Paint will render the stereogram in the current environment. Different variants of predefined filters are provided: High Quality filters produce stereograms which are easier to recognize, whereas the More Levels filters are capable of rendering more detailed depth variations (up to 256 levels, associated to gray shades ranging from white to black). The pattern used for SIPS stereograms should be as "fractal" as possible. Smooth color transitions and wide areas of the same color should be avoided. The more color-information per unit of length, the stronger the illusion will be. Since the patterns are slightly distorted to render the stereogram, patterns which are naturally irregular (such as leaves, waves, grass, marble, etc.) tend to be more suitable than other (more geometrical) shapes. Of course it is possible to retouch the resulting stereogram, or paste it into another picture, to create something like a beach with a shark hidden underwater. Help symbols can be placed automatically on stereograms. By default, these are constructed by drawing small squares on top of the image, but they can easily be replaced by pasting a custom brush over the square. For convenience and maximum accuracy, the squares have an odd pixel size, so that in Magnify mode the brush handle can quickly be positioned over the central pixel of the box. Technically, stereograms are created by constructing vertical columns of almost identical patterns. When the eyes are crossed or widened as required to view single image stereograms, each eye focuses on a different column. The difference between the repeated patterns is very similar to the difference perceived by the eyes when looking at an object in the real world. What makes stereograms particularly interesting from a scientific point of view is that perspective information is not required at all. In fact, people who normally rely on perspective rather than on eye convergence to calculate distances have more difficulties than others when viewing stereograms. The wider the pattern (i.e., the columns), the greater the perceived distance. Too narrow or too wide patterns should however be avoided, since the resulting stereograms are not easy to view (the eyes must be able to cross or widen enough, so that two consecutive patterns overlap). The width of the pattern is determined either by the brush width (SIPS stereograms) or by other filter settings (section C.1). In case of SIPS, the current environment should have the same color palette as the brush. For stereograms about as large as a VGA computer screen, 8 columns should provide a good quality/contrast compromise. This means that for SIPS stereograms the brush width would be 1/8th of the screen width, in pixels. Of course a brush can contain a pattern which is already repeated two or more times in the brush itself. The stereogram cannot render any information in the far left and right of the image. This is because there can be no overlapping of patterns when one eye approaches the left or right edge, since the other eye would look outside the image. The complexity, and most of the compromises of computer generated stereogram generation are caused by the fact that each column forms a pair with both the column to its left and the one to its right. When all this information is overlapped, shadows and echo effects may appear. Personal Paint's filter settings (section C.1) provide different options to finely tune the creation process. For example, where "ghost" outlines result from very sharp changes in elevation (more likely to occur in SIPS than in SIRDS), flattening the image, increasing the Quality value or activating the Echo Suppression option should help. Echo Suppression works by using random stripes of the pattern as necessary. As a side effect, the hidden shapes may emerge in the final image. For very small stereograms (e.g. thumbnail format), a High Quality SIRDS style with high contrast image colors (e.g. black and white) could be the best choice, if ease of recognition is a priority. For stereo-animations, SIRDS are usually preferred to SIPS, because large patterns changing position from frame to frame would disturb the viewer. Section C.1 explains how to change the random seed for SIRDS, or automatically use a new seed for each stereogram. One may think that a constant animation background (as could be provided by using positive BiasDx values) would help recognition of animated stereograms. In most cases, practice has proven the opposite to be true: if the random seed does not change from one frame to the other (and thus the pattern remains constant), the brain becomes able to concentrate on the "tricks" employed to render the stereogram. So it is better to use negative values (i.e. "noisy" background). In any case, creating an animation using a positive random seed value remains an interesting experiment. 3.1.4.5.2 Viewing Stereograms Important: Single image stereograms have recently become very popular through posters and best-selling books (e.g. "Magic Eye", "Stereogram" and "3D Wonderland" series). Personal Paint uses some of the most recent and effective stereogram generation techniques, although the first papers dealing with this subject have been published more than 30 years ago. Since stereograms were first used for scientific visualization and in medical tests, research has been conducted on potential side effects of humans viewing such images. Not only have no harmful effects been discovered, but the techniques used for viewing single image stereograms are also sometimes employed for eye training. While even reading a textbook may cause eye strain and mental fatigue, we believe that it remains prudent to consider that crossing eyes, merging two different views into one and separating focusing from convergence are all actions which do not occur frequently in a natural environment. People with ametropia (e.g. hypermetropia or astigmatism) may tire more easily when viewing these images. Also, some optometrists have advised that people with autonomic ataxia and those at the beginning of farsightedness caused by age should avoid attempting naked eyed 3D viewing. While other methods use polarized light or colored glasses to separate the images, single image stereograms can be seen by focusing on a point which is either between the eyes and the picture (cross-eyed style), or much farther away than the picture (parallel style). Some stereograms can be seen in one of the two styles only. Most stereograms have two reference symbols on top of the picture, to ease proper adjusting. When you stare at the page out of focus, the two symbols may appear as four. This is because the eyes do not converge on the same image, and thus see "double". Now slowly adjust your eyes until the two inner symbols overlap, so that you see a total of three symbols. This is the appropriate convergence to see the stereogram. Slowly move your eyes downwards. You should soon begin to recognize some shapes, which your eyes will be able to focus on. The process can be initiated, for example, either by bringing a finger close to your eyes and moving it, or by imagining to concentrate on something very distant (e.g. mountains or clouds), or by putting the picture to the nose, and then slowly moving it forward, leaving the eyes unfocussed. It is very important that the page be perfectly flat and horizontal. All edges should have about the same distance from your face. Try and resist the temptation to focus on the monitor (or paper). Once the brain begins to merge the two images, focusing will slowly follow automatically. Some people experience more difficulties than others when seeing a stereogram for the first time. Here is what William C. Haga had to say on the Internet: "Being one who has used wide-eyed vision on chain link fences ever since I was a kid, I was able to see the images right away. But I've had difficulty explaining the technique to friends. Today I had the latest Games magazine with me at my parents' house. Games is running another contest using SIRDS, so there are three in the latest issue. This time I thought of the reflection idea. So I opened mom's china cabinet, put the magazine against the glass in the door, and told mom to keep looking at her own reflection in the glass until the image appeared. It took less than thirty seconds. When she saw the 3D train engines, I was subjected to a squeal of delight that I hadn't heard from her for a long time..." 3.1.9 Clear When the Clear tool is selected with the right mouse button, the Clear Frames r requester appears. This allows the user to clear (without removing) one or more Animation frames. 3.1.10 Undo The Undo tool allows the user to move backwards and forwards through the history of changes applied to the image and to its color palette. Clicking on Undo with the right mouse button performs a "redo". The maximum number of changes which can be undone (undo levels) is limited only by the available RAM and hard disk space, and can be finely tuned in the Memory Management requester (sections 1.3.5, 8.<3.2 and C.1). The use of Personal Paint's multi-level undo feature is not limited to experimenting and correcting mistakes. For example, it may sometimes be useful to go back a few levels only to copy a piece of an older image with the Brush tool, and then paste the brush on the current image. Copying an area with a brush does not affect the chain of undo levels. The undo buffer can be freed either by pressing <Ctrl-u>, or by clicking on the dedicated gadget in the Memory Information requester (section 4.11), or by selecting the Clear tool twice. This is an extremely useful way of making some memory available in critical conditions. The Brush and Color Palette menus have Restore functions which provide for additional undo capabilities (sections 5.5 and 7.1.6). 3.2 Moving Around The image can be scrolled to the end of the page by holding down the <Alt> key while the cursor keys are used. 3.4 The File Requester The mouse can be dragged over the list box (which is automatically scrolled) to highlight different items. Only the last item is selected. One unified list, associated to a single gadget (or to a click on the right mouse button), includes both logical and physical device and assigned names. The list ends with a pre-selection of the full paths whose contents is already loaded by other file requesters in the same program. For example, if a brush needs to be loaded from the same path already used to load an image, from the "Load Brush" file requester it will be sufficient to click on the right mouse button and click again on the appropriate entry at the end of the list box. The Delete gadget can be used to delete files and (empty) directories. A new directory can be created by extending the Path string (e.g. by editing "Pictures:" into "Pictures:Space"). "def_Drawer" is installed in "PPaint:PPaint_Icons" in order to allow the program to associate a Workbench icon to the drawers which are created. All file requester paths can be saved as default paths in the program settings files. These configuration options are explained in detail in appendix C. 4.1 Load Image Recognition of previously supported file formats has been improved. State of the art color quantization and reduction algorithms have been employed to load 24-bit images and transform them into images having 256 or less colors. The quality of the resulting 256-color images is not easily distinguishable from a 24-bit display. The selected Dithering option (section 8.7) is taken into account by the new 24-bit procedures (Floyd-Steinberg gives best quality, whereas Pattern Dithering combines good quality with high speed). HAM and HAM8 are processed by the program as 24-bit images (just as 24/48-bit PNG, IFF24 and PCX24). Personal Paint also uses the DataType loaders supported from version 3.0 of the Amiga operating system. Personal Paint excels in handling HAM, HAM8 and 24-bit images and transforming them into color-indexed pictures (up to 256 colors). During this high quality conversion process, the program can display the original HAM or 24-bit image in a second screen (HAM, HAM8, Picasso, Cybergraphics, etc.). The two processes take advantage of Amiga multitasking: one program continues working on the image, while the other allows the user to view the original image. When a 24-bit image is loaded, the program presents a requester indicating the format of that image. The top gadget, which is selected by default, tells the program to use the screen size of the new image. If the "Preview" option of that requester is selected, a second screen will open (in HAM or 24-bit mode). While the second screen is displayed, Personal Paint continues color quantization and dithering in the background. The first screen always contains the usual progress requesters indicating the status of the conversion. The preview screen and the main screen can be swapped by pressing the <Space> bar or by clicking the right mouse button. Pressing <Esc>, or clicking on the left mouse button while the HAM screen is displayed closes the preview screen. The more professional settings (sections 8.6 and 8.7) may be slower when viewing and/or color-reducing HAM, HAM8 and 24-bit images, while Pattern Dithering limited to 16 colors is considerably faster. In animation mode, if the image format differs from the frame format of the current animation, a requester appears to allow the user to decide whether to resize the image or the animation. Load Image normally loads the picture into the current animation frame. If animation is no longer desired, Free Animation must be selected before loading the picture. 4.3 Print Image In addition to the system printer and PostScript modes, Personal Paint incorporates 24-bit printing routines, as well as an interface to the Studio Print Server software. This allows users of the Studio and CanonStudio packages (version 2 and beyond) to print directly from Personal Paint. If the Mode cycle gadget is set to Studio, Personal Paint adds each print job to the Studio print spool, and does not need to wait for the printing process to complete. The image data is stored in a temporary file, from where it is printed by Studio. Personal Paint's temporary files are stored in the device having more free space, choosing from those specified in the Virtual Memory settings (section 8.<3.1). Personal Paint's Studio server (message port) name is "PPaint_Studio". This name may be requested by the Studio software (e.g. to save a configuration). 4.3.2.1 Dithering Custom dithering routines have been written using the latest software technologies in order to yield maximum quality in 24-bit printing. Ordered dithering is the default, and gives good print quality at a reasonable speed (dispersed 16x16 matrix - more technical information in section 3.1.4.2). Halftone dithering (clustered 7x7 matrix) may be suitable for pictures containing mostly saturated colors. Floyd-Steinberg gives best results, but takes longer to compute. 4.3.2.4 Shade Personal Paint now features 24-bit printing (16 million colors), which overcomes the traditional limitation of 4096 colors and 16 gray shades of the Amiga printer device. (Personal Paint's PostScript mode has always been 24-bit.) The new modes are activated by the "24-bit Color" and "8-bit Gray" settings in the Shade cycle gadget. 24-bit printing uses special dithering routines to create color shades from a limited set of primary printer colors (more in section 4.3.2.1). A few printers work in "true color", and do not require the program to create dithering patterns. For example, the Fargo Primera dye-sublimation color printer comes with its own 24-bit driver. In such a case, normal system printing can be used. Even in 24-bit printing, it is still necessary to have the appropriate Amiga printer driver selected through the Amiga Preferences (unless Personal Paint is operating in its own PostScript mode). Further adjustments to improve print quality can be made in the Gamma Correction and Undercolor Removal requester which is displayed by clicking on Correct/Set (section 4.3.2.8). Personal Paint's color correction and dithering routines were designed to go directly to the printer. Some "24-bit" printing utilities are available for the Amiga in replacement of normal printer drivers. These utilities do not receive 24-bit data from applications (at least not until version 3.2 of the Amiga operating system). They should not be used in combination with Personal Paint's 24-bit printing modes, unless all of their color correction options are disabled. Otherwise, different dithering patterns and color correction procedures overlap and interfere with each other, with very poor results. Some Amigas are slowed down by system DMA operations when images in 256 colors are displayed. Bringing a 4-color Workbench screen to the front can speed up other programs, including printing with Personal Paint. For optimum results in 24-bit printing, it is advised to set the highest Density supported by the printer driver (section 4.3.2.6). In particular, using the HP DeskJet printers with the drivers included with Personal Paint, Dithering should be set to Floyd-Steinberg, Threshold should be set to 1 (this turns off depletion by the driver) and Density to 7 (maximum shingling). While these settings reduce printing speed, they maximize print quality. With these settings, it is normally not necessary to make further adjustments to Personal Paint's Color Correction tables. Special ink-jet paper, or paper used for color copiers give best results. 4.3.2.8 Color Correction In 24-bit printing mode, the Set gadget can be selected to tune the Gamma Correction and Undercolor Removal settings. Section 4.3.3.11 (Color Separation) has more on printing inks, while section 4.3.3.11.1 (Color Correction and Undercolor Removal) explains undercolor removal, which in 24-bit printing is similar to the same feature of Personal Paint's PostScript mode. Personal Paint can correct each ink component (e.g. cyan, magenta, yellow or black) separately. The Component cycle gadget allows the user to switch between the individual correction tables. Clicking on the graph reverses the notation. By default, low ink-density values are placed at the lower left of the graph. This is the traditional orientation used in the printing industry. The Brightness and Contract knobs act as described in section 7.1.4 (Adjust Palette). Ink smear and overlapping dots ("dot gain") cause the printer to respond in a non-linear way to the color information it receives from the computer. The Gamma Correction function is used to compensate for this. Gamma values smaller than 1 make the image lighter. Values greater than 1 cause it to be printed darker. An appropriate gamma curve can drastically improve image quality, while at the same time limiting the loss of information to a minimum, if any. The program default values can be adjusted in order to obtain a closer match between the picture which is displayed, and the printed image. To further tune the values to suit a particular image, it may be useful to print small, "critical" regions of the image using the Print Brush function. 4.5 Image and Screen Format The Lock Display Mode gadget, to the right of the field indicating the selected screen mode, prevents the Load Image function from changing either the display mode or the setting of the Autoscroll option. By activating this option, together with Autoscroll, it is possible to quickly view a series of images having the most different formats, while at the same time preventing flickering on multiscan monitors. 4.8.<3 Copy Animation This command copies the entire animation to the other environment. 4.10 Information 4.10.1 Project Information This requester provides information on the current image or animation, and allows the user to edit some annotations which can be saved together with the file. The contents of the Author, Copyright and Annotation fields is normally stored inside the file when using the IFF (ILBM, ANIM, etc.), PNG or GIF formats, and as an Amiga filenote (file comment - maximum 80 characters) if other formats are used. No additional file information is stored if all fields are empty. In this case, an existing Amiga filenote is cleared, and no extension chunks (IFF, PNG or GIF) are stored. The Annotation field may be useful to provide indications such as the author's address, trademark information related to the image, or particular techniques employed to create or process the image. 4.11 Memory Information Memory occupied by each animation is included in the respective Environment field. Animations also require some RAM for screen buffers, which is accounted for in the Buffers field. Three gadgets can be used to flush or free RAM in memory-critical situations. When Flush is selected, Personal Paint moves as much RAM data as possible (Chip, Fast and virtual storage) to disk storage. This is useful to launch other software in an unexpected low-RAM condition. Flush All goes beyond this, and its use should be limited to more critical situations: it frees any remaining buffers (such as the one used to display the brush with an image, rather than with a thin border) and may attempt to close the Workbench. Free Undo frees all information stored in the Undo/Redo buffer. This is equivalent to pressing <Ctrl-u> in normal paint mode. <6. The Animation Menu An animation, as the name implies, is very much like a cinema film, or a cartoon made by photographing a series of drawings (called "frames"). Personal Paint offers a unique and powerful set of animation features. It allows users to easily manipulate frames or groups of frames through its visual Storyboard. The program exploits the ANIM standard better than other programs. This leads to improved file compression and gives more space to creativity. For example, it is possible to use more than one palette for different groups of frames, or program the exact time for which an individual frame is to be displayed during playback. It is also possible to resize, cut or stretch an entire animation as if it was a simple picture. The animation which is being edited doesn't even need to fit in Chip RAM, as Personal Paint can store frames in Fast RAM. The program can also quickly play animation files of any size directly from disk. Personal Paint accepts and creates the following animation formats: ANIM-5, ANIM-7 (short and long-words), ANIM-8 (short and long-words) and hybrid files which may contain any combination of these frame formats. In general, ANIM-5 remains the most space-efficient and widely used format. Personal Paint includes the original Auto ANIM save format, which, for each animation frame, selects the best compression scheme (ANIM-5, 7, etc.) Compared to pure ANIM-5 files, hybrid files may be up to 5-10% shorter, and still remain fully compatible with the official ANIM specifications. ANIM-8 is an evolution of ANIM-5, just as ANIM-7 is, although ANIM-7 is generally considered to be superior. Compared to ANIM-5, both formats may achieve faster loading of animation files (and improved "Play File" performance). Animations created with Personal Paint can be displayed by other commercial products, as well as by famous, freely distributable animation players, like Viewtek (which plays ANIM-7 starting from version 1.04) and RTAP (Real Time Anim Player) - both supporting multiple palettes and frame-by-frame timing. Hundreds and hundreds of existing animation files could be made shorter by simply loading and saving them again with Personal Paint. This is because the program does some additional work (compared to other software) when it chooses how to compress bitplanes of frame data. The resulting files can still be read even by most of the very first ANIM-5 players. Optimization can go even further. Many programs insert "dummy" timing frames just to have an image appear for longer time on the screen. All groups of identical frames can be stripped into a single frame with a new timing value. Personal Paint has a function to do exactly this. For example, the original file containing the well-known "Amy Walks 2" animation, by Eric W. Schwartz, is 341 276 bytes long. Saved again by Personal Paint, in the same ANIM-5 format (without frame stripping) it is 45 Kbytes shorter. And the famous "Doggie's Inferno" cartoon originally occupies 153 576 bytes. This is for 317 frames. But, apart from the less than ideal compression, 248 of these frames are identical to other frames, and only serve as time-fillers. With Personal Paint, this is not necessary any more. By stripping these frames and saving the animation again, the file ends up being only 84 782 bytes: almost half the original length. If an animation has smooth "fade-in" or "fade-out" effects, there is no need to have huge global color palettes: each frame or group of frames may have its own individual palette. The Storyboard includes a function to apply smooth palette variations to consecutive frames. Personal Paint can load, manipulate and play animations using any palette-based screen mode. This includes support of all Amiga chip-sets and RTG graphic boards. When using non-Amiga video modes (e.g. a third-party display card), it is important to keep in mind that the selected screen mode must support a feature called double-buffering. The software driver used with the RTG board should support double-buffering through Intuition library calls (this normally requires version 3.0 of the Amiga operating system). On all Amigas, double-buffering is a standard feature, supported by all versions of the operating system. Also, the frame size cannot exceed the maximum screen size (underscan, overscan and autoscroll are OK). If these conditions are not met, an animation can still be edited, but not played. The Play File function supports additional display modes (e.g. HAM and HAM8). Which file format is best? The ANIM-5 file format is the most accepted and widespread of all Amiga animation formats. It also achieves a better compression rate. The ANIM-7 format compensates in part for the additional overhead of playing animations which have large amounts of data per frame (e.g. animations which take advantage of the additional numbers of colors of AGA screen modes) directly from file. Once loaded in RAM, animations end up being the same regardless of the file format. However, if a 256-color animation has to be played from file, it can be much faster if it is stored in ANIM-7 format. While ANIM-7 is faster than ANIM-5 if played from file, it is not as space-efficient, nor as standard. Some animation programs cannot even load it. Two variants of ANIM-7 exist: ANIM-7S (short-word based) and ANIM-7L (long-word based). The latter format may be played even faster than ANIM-7S on some computers, but files are longer. ANIM-8 also has a Short and a Long variant. <6.1 Load Animation This function loads an animation from file. If the current environment already contains an animation in the same frame size as the one being loaded, a requester appears to select how new frames are to be loaded. The following options are available: Load New: clears the current animation and loads the new one; Append: adds the new frames to the end of the current animation; Insert Before: inserts the new frames before the frame specified through the proportional gadget displayed in the same requester; Insert After: just like Insert Before, but frames are inserted after the specified frame. Overwrite: the new frames overwrite existing frames, starting from the specified frame; frames exceeding the length of the current animation are appended at the end. Animations are loaded in double-buffering mode, which allows the frames to be displayed as they are loaded. The <Esc> key can be pressed to stop loading frames (frames already loaded remain intact). <6.2 Save Animation After the usual file requester, a custom requester allows the user to select the file format (among the formats already described) and whether to save the entire animation, or only part of it. An animation can only be saved if the current screen mode supports double-buffering, which is required for playing the animation. The correct screen mode information is stored by Personal Paint together with the animation (as required by the ANIM standard). The "Full ANIM Optimization" flag is normally activated, and in most cases it shouldn't be necessary to change this setting. A few "primitive" pieces of animation software may not completely support certain compression modes, which have always been part of the ANIM standard. If this option is disabled, Personal Paint will not perform certain optimizations which are normally very important to achieve a good compression, but which cannot be processed properly by the incomplete software. This feature has only been added to guarantee full compatibility with all animation players (even the oldest), and should be of interest only to the more technical-oriented users. In practice, it is easier to come across a rare piece of animation software which does not support multiple palettes and frame-by-frame timing (which are not related to this option), than finding one which cannot handle compression properly (e.g. single descriptors for multiple plane-differences). <6.3 Play File Personal Paint can play even the largest animations directly from file, even on computers with a standard memory configuration. This is also useful to view an animation before loading it. Play File does not affect the contents of the current environment (image, animation, etc.) Some animations may impose too much overhead on a particular system to be played in real time (that is, smoothly). If the hardware or software cannot keep up with a particularly data-intensive animation, it may be wiser to store the animation in one of the ANIM-7 formats rather than using ANIM-5, as explained in the introduction to animation. If there is sufficient RAM, Play File temporarily uses virtual memory (if it is switched on) to store the animation in the RAM storage area. This allows the animation to be played faster, and prevents unnecessary wear-out of the peripheral storage device whenever the computer is used for repeating an animation over and over again. The short initial delay usually associated to loading an animation to RAM can be avoided by switching off the RAM Storage (section 8.<3.1) virtual memory setting. This may be especially useful when playing more than one animation from an ARexx script. Play File will continue playing the animation, until <Esc> is pressed or a mouse button is clicked. <6.4 The Storyboard The Storyboard is a powerful visual animation editing tool. The Storyboard requester displays all frames in a thumbnail format, from left to right, top to bottom, as they appear in the animation. If all the frames don't completely fit in the requester, the scroll bar can be used to move around. Both the requester and the frames can be resized. The requester has a resize gadget on the bottom-right corner, while the size of the reduced frames can be selected by pressing the right mouse button, and dragging the mouse to indicate the desired size. This information can be saved in the program settings files. The number under each frame indicates the sequential position of that frame within the animation. During all actions, a parallel process creates, displays, maintains and updates the reduced thumbnail-images. If the frames are very similar to each other, it may be appropriate to select a larger frame size. Three dots under a frame indicate frames having a palette differing from the current one. Double-clicking on a frame makes that frame (and its palette) the current one. One or more frames can be "selected" by pressing the left mouse button and dragging the mouse over a number of frames. Selected frames are highlighted by a light border, and indicate the source or target of a storyboard operation. The current selection can be extended by holding down a <Shift> key and clicking on a frame. A cursor positioned between two frames indicates where frames would be inserted. The cursor is positioned with the mouse. A double-click on a frame makes that frame the current frame in the animation (that is, it is displayed in full-size in the background). In case of animations having multiple palettes, having a current frame with the same palette as the thumbnails improves the quality and speed at which the thumbnails are displayed. The top of the requester contains a series of gadgets. Many gadgets have an equivalent in the Palette requester (section 7.1.3). Others are special to the Storyboard. The first two gadgets are used to add or insert new frames. The number in the string gadget indicates how many frames have to be inserted. The insertion point is marked by the cursor. Insertion occurs whenever the Add gadget is selected. The following gadget is used to delete the selected range of frames. To the right of the Delete gadget is the Insert gadget. It acts on the currently selected frames, and waits until the cursor is repositioned to insert a copy of these frames at the new insertion point (outside the source range). The source frames remain intact. To move a group of frames from one point to another, the Insert and Delete operations can be used in sequence. The following gadget is the Copy gadget, which "copies over" a range of frames. It takes the source range and waits for a target range to be marked with the mouse. Then it copies the source over the destination. If the source contains less frames than the destination, then the source frames are repeated, one after the other. Both the source and the destination can, of course, be a single frame. Copy Palette works exactly like Copy, but only copies the color palettes of the selected frames. Like in the Palette requester, there are two color spread gadgets (Create RGB and HSB Range, section 7.1.3.6), which apply intermediate palettes to the frames between the first and last frames in the range. The Restore gadget restores the animation as it was when the Storyboard was displayed. This function (like the Cancel gadget in the Storyboard) requires virtual memory to be active (section 8.<3.1). Clicking on the Hide gadget temporarily hides the requester (as long as the mouse button is held down), in order to give a full view of the current frame. The Delay string gadget indicates the timing value associated to the selected frame (or to the first of a range of frames). This time value, expressed in ticks (1 tick = 1/60th of a second), indicates for how long a frame has to remain on screen before the next one is displayed. A new value can be applied by typing a value in the string gadget and pressing <Return>. The new value is applied to all frames in the Storyboard range. <6.5 Free Animation This command releases the current animation. The current environment switches from animation mode to single picture mode. This command is required before loading an image, unless the image should be loaded into the current animation frame. <6.6 Animation Frames <6.6.1 Move to Frame These menu subitems respectively allow the user to quickly jump to the previous or next frame, or to a frame specified by number. The keyboard shortcuts to these commands can be selected even while a painting tool is in use. For example, it is possible to keep using the same tool from one frame to the next (using the default <2> shortcut for Next Frame), without even releasing the mouse button. <6.6.2 Add Frame The Add Frame command adds a copy of the current frame immediately after it. The new frame becomes the current frame. Nice effects can be obtained, for example, by alternating "Add Frame" with image processing, resulting in progressive blurring or randomization, or other distortions. If there is no animation, the first issue of Add Frame transforms the current image into a single-frame animation. A normal image is not treated as a single-frame animation. <6.6.3 Optimize Frames The Optimize Frames command searches for duplicate frames, generally created with other animation programs in order to have an image appear longer on the screen (the introduction to animation has a more detailed explanation of this). The frames are merged into a single frame, having a time-value equal to the sum of the time values of the original frames. The resulting animation is visually identical to the original, except that when it is stored to file it can occupy considerably less space. <6.7 Play Animation By default, the current animation is played from beginning to end (in all modes: Continuous, Once and Ping Pong). The Range selection requester allows the user to select a range of frames to be played in the Play Once and Play Ping Pong modes. Play Continuous plays the animation from the first to the last frame. After the last frame, the animation is played again. This is repeated until a key or a mouse button are pressed. Play Once only plays the animation (or a range, if specified) once, while Play Ping Pong goes back and forth from the first frame to the last, and vice versa. In practice, during a "creative" session, the Range option is excellent for quickly checking the result of the most recent changes (using Play Once and Play Ping Pong), while Play Continuous can be used to see how everything fits together. During animation, the standard Amiga keyboard shortcuts can be used to depth-arrange the screen (<Left Amiga>+<N>/<M>) or to drag it up and down (<Left Amiga>+<Mouse Drag>, or whatever specified in the IControl Preferences). <6.8 Animation and the Other Program Functions When the Clear tool (section 3.1.9) on the tool bar is selected with the right mouse button, the Clear Frames requester appears. This allows the user to clear (without removing) one or more frames. The Image and Screen Format requester (section 4.5) can be used to modify the animation format. Animations can be stretched, cut, color-reduced etc., just like an image. When an animation is color-reduced, Personal Paint may assign different palettes to the color-reduced frames, even if the original animation only had a single palette. This is caused by the fact that different frames may use different quantities of some colors, which are therefore assigned different priorities by the color reduction algorithm (section 8.6). This is the best technique to convert single frames, but seeing a common frame-background, or some objects common to more frames changing color from one frame to the other may be disturbing. To force a common palette (based on the palette of the current frame) to be used for the entire animation, one of the two <Shift> keys should be held down while the "New Animation Format" requester is closed (this requester is followed by the progress requester). This also speeds up color reduction (which is performed only once). As a feedback, the "Counting Pixels" progress requester appears. When an image is made smaller without stretching it, it is "cut" between the current top left corner of the screen and the new bottom right corner (provided that the new image format is identical to the new screen format). Animations can also be cut with an offset other than 0:0. First, the screen must be brought to the new size (without changing the image format). Once the screen exactly delimits the area of the frame to be preserved, the image format can be set to be identical to the screen. Load Image (section 4.1) normally loads the picture into the current animation frame. If animation is no longer desired, Free Animation must be selected before loading the picture. An entire animation can be copied to the other environment with the Copy Animation command (section 4.8.<3). When the Palette requester or any other palette manipulation function (section 7.1) are used to modify the color palette, only the palette of the current frame is changed. The Storyboard can be used to apply a common palette to a range of frames. 7.1 Palette It is easy to forget that it is always possible to move the mouse outside the requester and pick a color. In particular, the full palette which appears on the Tool Bar can be used while the palette requester is displayed. 7.2.3 Edit Stencil Multiple colors can be selected or deselected with a single mouse click by dragging the mouse (with the mouse button pressed) over the color boxes in the the Stencil requester (just as in the tool bar palette). This is especially useful with large palettes. <8. The Macros Menu Personal Paint can be controlled by external ARexx programs. The name of Personal Paint's ARexx port is indicated under the program's Workbench AppIcon. The name of the first port is always "PPaint". A list of available ARexx commands is returned by Personal Paint in the RESULT variable when the "Help" command is issued. Documentation of ARexx commands is outside the scope of this manual. Additional developer documentation is available (please send E-mail inquiries to <ppaint_info@cloanto.it>). 8.<3 Memory Management If memory was unlimited, this requester would probably not need to exist. In practice, RAM is a precious resource, and deciding how to make best use of it is frequently a matter of compromise. This requester allows the user to adapt Personal Paint to different requirements and configurations. 8.<3.1 Virtual Memory The Virtual Memory settings allow the user to switch RAM and/or disk based virtual memory on or off. It is also possible to change the minimum amount of memory which Personal Paint will always leave free on each device. The default settings need normally not be changed. It is always a good practice not to allow virtual memory to completely fill a storage device. Two storage locations can be used for virtual memory. One is intended to be in RAM, and one on a hard disk. RAM is usually faster, but more "precious", while hard disk space offers a good space/time compromise. Even using a floppy disk, there would still be a clear advantage: any operation which activates virtual memory would certainly fail if a feature like virtual memory didn't exist. From this point of view, it is always good to have virtual memory. Personal Paint tries to use RAM first. Although the RAM storage path (and device, e.g. "RAM", "RAD" or "VD0") can be selected by the user, the program assumes and may require that Fast RAM be available. The exact behavior depends on the RAM device being used: "RAM" requires Fast RAM, "RAD" does not (since, unlike others, its size is not dynamic). If the RAM location does not provide enough space, disk storage is used. Virtual memory only becomes active when there is a "memory problem". Whenever this happens, a special "clean up" process occurs, in order to have only the most recently used items in Chip RAM, and store the less-used items in the RAM device and on disk. When an object stored in virtual memory needs to be displayed or processed, it is moved back automatically. Personal Paint stores virtual memory items into separate files, which are deleted when they are not used any more, or when the program terminates. These files can be recognized by the ".vmem" file name suffix. If the program is still running when the computer is shut-down, any remaining virtual memory files are deleted when the program is run again. Virtual memory files can be very small, but are more likely to range in the dozens or even hundreds of Kbytes (otherwise, a system with a minimum of free RAM would probably not have required the use of virtual memory in the first place). When handling virtual memory allocations, Personal Paint assumes that RAM is faster than the disk, also considering that it would still be better not to use virtual memory for an object subject to reuse (or at least, to keep it in RAM rather than on disk). The program therefore tries to optimize the combined use of all resources in order to provide faster access to the items which are used more frequently. Although virtual memory is most useful to free Chip RAM, it also handles objects normally stored in Fast RAM (like animation frames other than the current one). The Storyboard undo buffer is always placed in virtual memory. If the undo buffer cannot be created as required (e.g. if virtual memory is disabled, or if there is no space beyond a safe minimum) the Storyboard Cancel gadget is "ghosted". In general, hard disk space does not "breath" as dynamically as RAM. Unless the hard disk is always nearly full, and huge files still have to be written from time to time, it may even be wise to set a lower minimum for the hard disk than for the RAM. In a multitasking, RAM-dependent environment like the Amiga, leaving some free RAM may be more important than having free space on the hard disk. 8.<3.2 Undo History The undo history buffer records all changes applied to the image and to the color palette. Even if Personal Paint is quite "intelligent" in deciding how to keep a record of different types of changes, this can consume a lot of memory. Also, there is normally no need to store actions which are very old. Two program parameters allow the user to set the maximum number of changes to be stored, and the maximum amount of memory which the undo history buffer may occupy. As the limits are exceeded, the oldest levels are freed. Regardless of these settings, Personal Paint will always try to store at least one level of undo/redo. If the limit is explicitly set to a maximum of only one level (use of similarly low values is is in general not recommended), then Undo and Redo become synonymous and, as in other packages, can be accessed with the same Undo command. 8.<3.3 Emergency Closing of Workbench Screen In certain extreme conditions of RAM shortage, Personal Paint may attempt to close the Workbench screen to free some RAM (Chip or Fast, depending on the memory requirement and the system display type). While this is normally acceptable, Personal Paint can be programmed not to automatically close the Workbench screen. Once closed, the Workbench screen can be reopened manually at any time (section 8.16), and is reopened automatically when the program terminates. 8.7.2 Pattern Dithering All pattern dithering procedures have been rewritten and greatly improved. This option is now almost as fast as no dithering at all, with a quality closer to that of Floyd-Steinberg dithering. In particular, if the palette has only eight colors, and these colors are equal or similar to red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, white and black, Personal Paint can use even more efficient routines, which better exploit the even distribution of these colors. Since regular dot-patterns are used, images processed with the Pattern Dithering option are compressed more efficiently when saved in the most popular file formats (compared to the more randomly distributed dots generated by the Floyd-Steinberg algorithm). 8.7.4 Best Quality This option activates a set of professional color remapping procedures. These are slower than the default ones, but were designed using very advanced algorithms, normally used only in the broadcast industry. When this option is off, additional speed gains can be noticed when there is more free memory available (up to 148 Kbytes may be used). 8.8.6 System (ASL) The File Requester menu allows the user to replace the standard Personal Paint file requester with an ASL (Amiga Standard Library) compatible file requester, such as the Magic File Requester. A second requester appears to select the image format when saving a picture, unless the file name suffix indicates a file format. Recognized suffixes include: ".c", ".png", ".gif", ".iff", ".ilbm", ".lbm" and ".pcx". For example: "Clown.png" would automatically be saved in PNG format, but in the case of file names such as "Flower.pic" or "Painting", a format selection requester would appear. 8.9.4 Original With this option, Workbench icons are never created. When Personal Paint overwrites a file that already has an icon, it does not change the existing image, but it does update the Tool Types fields. This is most useful when using Personal Paint for format conversions. 8.<13 Graphics 8.<13.3 Smooth Move Normally, mouse movement messages which cannot be processed in real time are discarded by the Amiga operating system. When this option is active, Personal Paint allows for messages to be accumulated, so that tools like Continuous/Dotted Freehand and Airbrush can process mouse moves without loss of information. This is especially useful in very high resolution screens. 8.<13.4 Be Square This option forces Personal Paint to override the ratio information provided by the Amiga Display Database, and to perform all drawing functions as if the pixels were exactly square (1:1). This is especially useful when the current display mode uses "almost square" pixels, which can easily be compensated for by adjusting the monitor controls. When this option is active, circles, boxes and other shapes drawn by Personal Paint are built to an exact 1:1 ratio, even if the current Amiga display mode would indicate otherwise. 8.14 Backfill This option tells the program to ignore the current background color when a brush is defined. With this setting, brushes defined in Rectangular mode have no transparency (NO_TRANSP flag in IFF-ILBM files), while in Freehand mode the entire region outside the marked area is considered to be transparent. 9.3 HP DeskJet Drivers New HP DeskJet drivers (result of the joint development efforts of Cloanto and Commodore), are included on the program disk. These are the first versions of the drivers without the famous RLE compression bug. The 550C driver uses black ink in addition to cyan, magenta and yellow, and is not bound by the previous 10 inch size-limit. It also features improved cyan balancing code, compared to drivers previously released by Commodore. The DeskJet drivers use the Threshold value to activate a driver-local correction table. Using Personal Paint's 24-bit printing with these DeskJet drivers, Threshold should remain set to 1 (= no correction), and Density values of 4, 5 or 6 (which activate depletion combined with different levels of shingling) are generally not required. A value of 7 only activates shingling, which improves print quality. Several users have asked whether the enhanced HP DeskJet drivers supplied with Personal Paint support 600×300 dpi graphics output. It appears that some owners of DeskJet 560C and DeskJet 520 were misled by incomplete information. The advertised "600×300" printing capabilities of these models are mainly a result of RET (Resolution Enhancement Technology) applied to the 300×300 dpi print data. The printers cannot produce 600×300 dpi color graphics, and there is no documented command to send black & white graphics to the printer in 600×300 dpi. 9.4 JPEG DataType The JPEG DataType software is included with the kind permission of Steve Goddard. It works on Amigas equipped with 68020 or higher CPUs. Additional documentation is provided in the "JPEG.datatype.guide" file, which can be displayed by AmigaGuide. To install the software, the JPEG file must be copied in Devs/DataTypes, and JPEG.datatype in Classes/DataTypes of the system disk. The JPEG DataType may require a lot of memory for temporary files, which it stores in JPEGTMP:. It is useful to put an Assign command in the user-startup file, assigning JPEGTMP: to RAM: (if the system has a lot of memory) or to a peripheral storage unit. 9.5 Fonts Personal Paint comes with several color fonts and a font named "Personal.font". All fonts can be installed by the installation procedures. Personal Paint and the Personal Fonts Maker Color Extensions normally share the same Personal font for their user interface. The font itself has been upgraded a few times. On a system where different versions of these programs are installed, it may happen that one of the programs expects an older version of the font to be available. While minor changes are usually backwards compatible, if any characters appear to be incorrectly displayed it is sufficient to remove the font from the system FONTS: directory. All versions of Personal Paint and PFM2 also search for the font in their local directories, where the font is copied during automatic installation. If Topaz 8 is used for the Workbench icon texts, Personal 8 should be considered as a more readable replacement. A. Program Messages Animation is not possible: image larger than screen As explained in the introduction to animation, the animation frame format cannot exceed the screen limits. It may be possible to open a larger screen by choosing a different screen mode, or by activating an overscan mode or by enabling autoscroll. Animations cannot be merged The Color Merge functions only handle images - not animations. Error in file structure Personal Paint recognized the file format and began processing the file, but at some point the data was inconsistent with the format specification. For example, this could indicate improper use of pad bytes in an IFF file. Error opening diskfont.library version 34 Error opening icon.library version 33 The specified library does not exist, or its version number is lower than the one required. ... frames out of ... would be stripped The Strip Frames function indicates how many frames would be removed, and asks for confirmation, before actually doing so. Image data is incomplete Personal Paint can now load incomplete or corrupt image files. Incorrect version of Personal.font This message usually appears only when a new version of Personal Paint is run for the first time. It indicates that the program, searching for its user interface font (named "Personal"), found an incorrect (probably older) version of the font. Normally, Personal Paint searches for the font inside the "PPaint:fonts" drawer (first choice) and in the system FONTS: directory (second choice). Any old "Personal.font" files stored in these directories are normally updated automatically by the installation procedure. The same should be done in case of manual installation. If different versions of Personal Paint or the Personal Fonts Maker need to be used on the same computer, and these programs require different versions of the Personal font, then the "Personal.font" file should be removed from the system FONTS: directory. This message may also be displayed if a correct version of "Personal.font" has been installed, but the old Personal font is still in use by the system or by an application. If this is the case, executing the "Avail FLUSH" command from a Shell window or rebooting the system should solve the problem. Section 9.5 has more on the Personal font. Incorrect version of the user interface texts It is likely that the program has not been installed properly, since it has found a user interface file belonging to a different program version. This may happen, for example, when testing a new version of the program which has not yet been installed (but another version of the program is installed). No frames to strip The Strip Frames function has not found any duplicate frames. No memory for undo The Storyboard would not be able to undo the selected operation. If the operation is confirmed, the Undo and Cancel functions will be disabled. Path incorrect Virtual Memory uses this message to indicate that the given path could not be accessed. Personal Paint attempts to create the last directory of the path (usually the "t" directory), but the rest of the path name must refer to existing devices and drawers. Studio server cannot be activated The Studio Print mode was selected for printing, but the Studio Server software could not be activated. Most likely, the Studio software was not installed properly, or it is an older version of the software. The Studio Print Server software is supported from version 2 of the Studio and CanonStudio packages. Previous releases of Studio printer drivers can be accessed by selecting Personal Paint's "PRT" (System printer) print mode. In this case, it may be preferable to (also) activate Personal Paint's own 24-bit printing routines (section 4.3.2.4). The animation can be viewed using "Play File" Some animation formats (e.g. some rare HAM and HAM8 files) cannot be loaded and edited by Personal Paint, but only played from file. The animation has been modified The animation has been modified, but not saved yet. By proceeding with the operation requested, it would be lost. The animation will be lost Proceeding with the selected command would imply deleting the current animation. For example, changing the environment's compression mode may cause this message to be displayed. The drawer is not empty Delete was used to remove a non-empty directory. The filter requires a brush Some image processing filters use the current brush to apply certain transformations to the image. This message appears if no brush has been defined. The filter requires an additional brush Image processing effects such as Alpha Channel require two consecutive brushes. The filter requires two environments Stereograms and other effects require two environments (i.e. two images). The filters apply the changes to the current environment, using the other environment as a source. The requested display mode does not support animation The specified display mode does not support double-buffering. The introduction to chapter 6 ("Animation") explains this in more detail. UIGraphics.pic cannot be loaded The file containing the images used in Personal Paint's user interface could not be loaded. Possible causes include: file not found, insufficient memory, file corrupt. When editing the image, it is important that the reference lines used to the delimit the areas in the picture be respected and not modified. Section 1.14. Virtual memory settings cannot be changed There is not enough storage space to move the virtual memory objects which are currently in use. The changes to the virtual memory settings are cancelled. Virtual memory storage limit exceeded This warning message indicates that one or both storage devices used for virtual memory already have less free space than the user-requested minimum. This may happen after changing a virtual memory storage device, or increasing the minimum values. B. Command Shortcuts In program requesters not containing any text gadgets, the <Return> and <Esc> keys can be used instead of the Proceed (or OK) and Cancel gadgets, in addition to other keyboard shortcuts which may appear underlined. Key Command Section <0> Storyboard... <6.4 <1> Previous Frame <6.6.1 <2> Next Frame <6.6.1 <3> Go to Frame... <6.6.1 <4> Play Continuous <6.7 <5> Play Once <6.7 <6> Play Ping Pong <6.7 <7> Add One Frame <6.6.2 <8> Load Animation <6.1 <9> Save Animation <6.2 <Alt-j> Copy Animation 4.8.<3 <u> Undo (One Level) 3.1.10 <U> Redo (One Level) 3.1.10 <Amiga-u> Undo All 3.1.10 <Amiga-U> Redo All 3.1.10 <Ctrl-u> Free Undo/Redo Buffer 3.1.10 <Alt-Cursor> Scroll to End 3.2 <@> Project Information 4.10.1 Program Startup <F1> = Memory Save Mode Drag and Drop <Shift> = Play Animation (no loading) String Gadgets <Right Amiga-Return>, or <Right Mouse Button> = Exit string gadget (e.g. to enter a keyboard shortcut) File Requester <Down>/<Up> = ListView Font Requester <Down>/<Up> = ListView (font names) <Left>/<Right> = ListView (font size/attributes) Mouse Movements <Right Amiga-Cursor> = Accurate Move (ideal to define or position brushes) Preview <Space> or <Right Mouse Button> = Swap screens <Esc> or <Left Mouse Button> = Terminate 24-bit/HAM View Mode Area Settings <Left> = Gradient Mode (<Shift-Left> to cycle backwards) <Right> = Gradient Type (<Shift-Right> to cycle backwards) Filter Requester <Down>/<Up> = ListView Clear Frames Requester <Cursor Left> = Beginning of Range string gadgets <Cursor Right> = End of Range string gadgets Grab Screen <Down>/<Up> = ListView Image and Screen Format <Down> = Copy screen size to image size <Up> = Copy image size to screen size Load Animation <Esc> = Stop Loading Save Animation Requester <Cursor Left> = Beginning of Range string gadgets <Cursor Right> = End of Range string gadgets Storyboard Requester <+> = Add Frames string gadgets <0> = Delay string gadget <Cursor Up> = Scroll Up gadget <Cursor Down> = Scroll Down gadget <Shift-Cursor Up> = Jump to first frame <Shift-Cursor Down> = Jump to last frame During animation <Left Amiga-N> = Workbench Screen to Front <Left Amiga-M> = Cycle to Next Screen <Left Amiga>+<Mouse Drag> = Drag Screen Play Range Requester <Cursor Left> = Beginning of Range string gadgets <Cursor Right> = End of Range string gadgets Color Reduction (Animation) <Shift> = Single Palette Mode Palette Requester <Up> = Scroll color bar to the left (keyboard autorepeat) <Down> = Scroll color bar to the right (keyboard autorepeat) Edit Stencil Show Stencil must be mouse-activated (no keyboard shortcuts) Color Statistics <Left> = Scroll histogram to the left (keyboard autorepeat) <Right> = Scroll histogram to the right (keyboard autorepeat) Virtual Memory Requester <Cursor Up> = Enable/Disable RAM storage <Cursor Down> = Enable/Disable Disk storage Save File <Shift> = Use up to 256 colors for Workbench icons C.1 Program Settings DISPLAY (Amiga DisplayID - Section 4.5) A value of 0xFFFFFFFF indicates to use the same screen mode as the Workbench screen. This was designed with the program startup files in mind. By default, Personal Paint is launched with the same screen mode as the Workbench, which avoids monitor flickering in combination with graphics boards. FILREQ (File Requester Flags - Section 8.8) The 6th bit in the FILREQ program setting is associated to the ASL (system) file requester option. The range for FILREQ is 0-63. FILTER (Image Processing Filters - Section 3.1.4) The second parameter (Filter Type) can be in the range 0-8 (6 = Environment Transparency, 7 = Brush Transparency, 8 = Stereogram). The following notes apply to the Stereogram Filter Type. A value of DivFac (Division Factor, range SHORTMIN .. SHORTMAX) greater than zero generates SIRDS (random dot) stereograms and indicates how many columns are to be created. This means that the pattern of random dots will be as wide as the image width divided by DivFac. Values of zero or less generate SIPS stereograms, which use the current brush as a pattern. Bias (range 1 .. 16) allows the user to make some changes which affect the perceived quality of the stereogram. Lower quality stereograms (low Bias values) allow for more levels of depth, but may generate defects in certain shapes (e.g. thick vertical bars may appear thin). Higher quality images are easier to recognize, but their "flatness" (which is relative, because the contrast is excellent) leaves less room for different levels of depth. BiasDx (range SHORTMIN .. SHORTMAX) is used as a Random Seed for SIRDS in general and for SIPS with Echo suppression. Negative values cause a different seed to be generated automatically each time the filter begins processing. Values >= 0 allow for exact reproduction of SIRDS, as the patter remains constant for each single value. BiasDy controls different other options, which are associated to its individual bits. The range is 0 .. 3, and the values must be added: 1 = Help Symbols (on top of image), 2 = Echo Suppression. PATHBSH (Brush Default Path - Section 5.1) PATHBSH = "Path" PATHSET (Settings Requester Default Path - Section 8.1) PATHSET = "Path" UNDOLIM (Multi-level Undo - Sections 3.1.10 and 8.<3.2) UNDOLIM = MaxLevels, MaxBuffer MaxLevels range: 1 .. SHORTMAX (number of Undo/Redo levels). MaxBuffer range: 1 .. LONGMAX (in bytes: 1 Mbyte = 1 048 576 bytes). MaxBuffer indicates the maximum amount of memory (including virtual memory) which can be used to store the Undo levels (up to a maximum of MaxLevels Undo levels). Once the maximum is reached, the oldest levels are progressively freed to leave room for the most recent levels. Whatever the settings, one level of undo and redo is always guaranteed (even if it exceeds the memory limit set by the MaxBuffer setting). VIRTMEM (Virtual Memory Settings - Section 8.<3.1) VIRTMEM = "Ram Storage", <Ram VM Enable>, <Ram MinFree>, "Disk Storage", <Disk VM Enable>, <Disk MinFree> Storage: quoted storage path. Enable: 0 = disabled, 1 = enabled. MinFree: expressed in bytes (1 Mbyte = 1 048 576 bytes). WBCLOSE (Emergency Closing of Workbench Screen - Sections 4.11 and 8.<3.3) WBCLOSE = Permission Status 0 = Not allowed, 1 = Allowed. In case of RAM shortage, and if allowed to do so, Personal Paint may automatically try to close the Workbench screen to free some memory. C.2 Environment Settings LOCKDISP (Lock Display Mode - Section 4.5) LOCKDISP = Lock Activation 0 = Unlocked, 1 = Locked. PATHANIM (Animation Default Path - Section <6.1) PATHANIM = "Path" PATHCOL (Color Palette Default Path - Section 7.1.1) PATHCOL = "Path" PATHPIC (Picture Default Path - Section 4.1) PATHPIC = "Path" PATHPLAY (Play Animation File Default Path - Section <6.3) PATHPLAY = "Path" PATHPS (PostScript Output Default Path - Section 4.3.3.5) PATHPS = "Path" PATHSTEN (Color Stencil Default Path - Section 7.2.1) PATHSTEN = "Path" PRINTCOR (Printer Color Correction - Section 4.3.2.8) PRINTCOR = GraphType, GrayBrightness, GrayContrast, GrayGamma, CyanBrightness, CyanContrast, CyanGamma, MagentaBrightness, MagentaContrast, MagentaGamma, YellowBrightness, YellowContrast, YellowGamma, BlackBrightness, BlackContrast, BlackGamma, UcrM, UcrY GraphType: 0 = Normal Graph, 1 = Reversed Notation. Brightness and Contrast range: -100 .. 100. Gamma range: 1000 .. 160000 (in units/10000, i.e. 0.1 .. 16.0) UCR range: LONGMIN .. LONGMAX (in percent/10000 - 0% = No Correction) PRINTSYS (System Printer Settings - Section 4.3.2) Shade: 4 = "8-bit Gray", 5 = "24-bit Color". SBOARD (Animation Storyboard - Section <6.4) SBOARD = ThumbnailWidth, Columns, Rows Width: In low-resolution pixels. Columns: Frames (thumbnail-format) per row. Rows: Number of thumbnail rows. C.3 Read-Only Settings The following program settings are dedicated to the more technical users. Personal Paint does not write these settings. They can only be inserted in a file using a text editor or a word processor such as Personal Write. REDBITS, GREENBITS, BLUEBITS REDBITS = RedBits GREENBITS = GreenBits BLUEBITS = BlueBits Range: 0 .. 8 (0 = Display Mode Default; All set to 8 = 24-bit palette) This option forces Personal Paint to use a certain number of bits for each color component in the color palette, regardless of the hardware being used. For example, to emulate the limitations of an Original Chip Set system on an AGA computer, all three values should be set to 4. Conversely, in order not to lose information when working with some common 12-bit or 18-bit hardware (e.g. ECS systems, or Picasso graphics boards), all three values should be set to 8. Interesting image processing effects can be obtained by selecting low values (e.g. 1 to emulate CMYK/RGBW devices). THICKX, THICKY THICKX = HorizontalThickness THICKY = VerticalThickness These settings determine the horizontal and vertical thickness of most user interface items (tools, borders, bars, etc.) A value of 0 indicates dynamic thickness (i.e. selected by the program depending on the screen size), 1 = single thickness, 2 = double-thickness, 3 = quadruple-thickness, and so on. In practice, manual thickness setting never causes objects to appear larger than they would with with the option set to 0. Otherwise, some requesters would not fit on the screen. Range: 0 .. 128.