PPaint.man Changes in Personal Paint version 4.0 since version 2.0 New features of Personal Paint include: - Support of Retargetable Graphics (display cards like the Picasso, Retina, Piccolo, Rainbow etc.) - Professional 24-bit printing (Color and Black & White) - High quality conversion of IFF24, PCX24, HAM & HAM8 to 256 colors - HAM and HAM8 viewer active during color reduction - Loading of files through Amiga DataTypes (JPEG, BMP etc.) - A collection of third-party utilities, including color fonts, new DeskJet printer drivers (up to four inks) and JPEG DataType A description of new features follows. Sections are numbered and ordered as they appear in the manual. The contents of this file can be printed with a word processor, or by typing the following command in a Shell window: Copy PPaint:PPaint.man PRT: 1.9.4 Gadgets Underlined characters indicate keyboard shortcuts to gadgets. See also changes in section 1.14 (External User Interface Files) and Appendix B (Command Shortcuts). 1.10.9 The Key The function is associated to a new "smooth move" mode of Personal Paint, especially useful in very high resolution screens. Normally, mouse movement messages which cannot be processed in real time are discarded by the Amiga operating system. When the light is on, 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. also allows to ignore the current background color when defining a brush. 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. 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. The space previously occupied by Workbench files has been used to move all drawers previously on a second disk to the program disk. Optional additional disks may still be used to store picture files. The install routine can copy these to the hard disk as requested. 1.14 External User Interface Files The underscore character can be used in sections TXW (window texts) and TXG (gadget texts). The following character 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. 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 = ). 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. 3.4 The File Requester One unified list, associated to a single gadget, includes both logical and physical device and assigned names. 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 transforming "Pictures:" into "Pictures:Space"). "def_Drawer" is now installed in "PPaint:PPaint_Icons" in order to allow the program to associate a Workbench icon to the drawers which are created. 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 256-color images. The quality of the resulting 256-color images is not easily distinguishable from a 24-bit display. Color reduction is always qualitative (section 8.6). The selected Color Remapping option (section 8.7) is taken into account by the new 24-bit procedures. IFF24, PCX24, HAM and HAM8 are processed by the program as 24-bit images. Personal Paint now also uses the DataType loaders supported from version 3.0 of the Amiga operating system. Personal Paint excels in handling HAM and HAM8 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 image in a second screen. 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 HAM 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 "View HAM" option of that requester is selected, a second screen will open (in HAM mode). While the HAM image is displayed, Personal Paint continues color quantization and remapping in the background. The first screen always contains the usual progress requesters indicating the status of the conversion. The HAM screen and the main screen can be swapped by pressing the bar or by clicking the right mouse button. Pressing , or clicking on the left mouse button while the HAM screen is displayed closes the HAM screen. The more professional settings (sections 8.6 and 8.7 of the handbook) may be slower to view and/or color-reduce HAM and HAM8 images, whereas Pattern Dithering limited to 16 colors is considerably faster. 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 remains the default, and gives good 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 still 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 grey 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 Grey" 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 allowed 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) of the manual 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 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) of the manual. 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 < 1 make the image lighter. Values > 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 new 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. 4.5.4 Autoscroll The Autoscroll option, which is supported by Amiga operating systems from version 2.0, enables automatic scrolling if the page exceeds the screen format. Scrolling is performed as soon as the mouse pointer reaches the edges of the screen. Some display cards which are available for the Amiga require this option in order to open custom screens in given sizes. In some overscan modes, autoscroll may not be completely supported by the operating system. If the title bar is hidden (section 3.3), menus can be displayed by holding down the key when the right mouse button is pressed. 4.5.5 Retargetable Graphics (RTG) Some display cards store the image data in a region of RAM which cannot be accessed by the Amiga blitter. Other expansion boards use an internal copy of the image data, which is automatically updated by the display driver software whenever the image is modified. Changes applied to the image by the blitter, however, may not be detected under all conditions. Personal Paint may use the Amiga blitter directly whenever this improves performance on standard Amiga computers. Activation of the RTG option inhibits any use of the blitter which might pass undetected by the display card, or conflict with its RAM allocation scheme. In Auto mode, Personal Paint detects whether RTG is required for the particular screen mode, and proceeds as necessary. Unfortunately, due to the lack of standardization, this may not work with all graphics expansions. Whenever a new display card is used, it is best to test the different settings with all video modes. 4.10 Delete File The menu item has been removed. This option is now a gadget in the file requester. 7.1 Palette In the English version of Personal Paint, HSB replaces the former HSV text in the Color Palette requester. The letter "B" was required as a shortcut. 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. 8.7.2 Pattern Dithering All pattern dithering procedures have been rewritten and greatly improved. This option is now almost as fast as Simple Color Remapping, with a quality closer to that of Floyd-Steinberg. Since regular dot-patterns are used, images processed with this option are compressed more efficiently when saved in the most popular file formats. A. Program Messages The drawer is not empty Delete was used to remove a non-empty directory. Image data is incomplete Personal Paint can now load incomplete or corrupt image files. B. Command Shortcuts + or can be used to exit a string gadget (e.g. to enter a keyboard shortcut). Image and Screen Format = Copy screen size to image size = Copy image size to screen size File Requester / = ListView Font Requester / = ListView (font names) / = ListView (font size/attributes) Filter Requester / = ListView View HAM or = Swap screens or = Terminate HAM View Mode Grab Screen / = ListView Area Settings = Gradient Mode (Shift-Left to cycle backwards) = Gradient Type (Shift-Right to cycle backwards) Color Statistics = Scroll histogram to the left (keyboard autorepeat) = Scroll histogram to the right (keyboard autorepeat) Palette Requester = Scroll color bar to the left (keyboard autorepeat) = Scroll color bar to the right (keyboard autorepeat) Edit Stencil Show Stencil must be mouse-activated (no keyboard shortcuts) C.2 Environment Settings LOCKDISP (Lock Display Mode - Section 4.5) LOCKDISP = Lock Activation 0 = Unlocked, 1 = Locked. PRINTCOR (Printer Color Correction - Section 4.3.2.8) PRINTCOR = GraphType GreyBright GreyContrast GreyGamma CyanBright CyanContrast CyanGamma MagentaBright MagentaContrast MagentaGamma YellowBright YellowContrast YellowGamma BlackBright 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 Grey", 5 = "24-bit Color" 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. Notes The installation program now offers the option of installing both the HP_DeskJet printer drivers and the JPEG DataType files. The new HP DeskJet drivers (result of the joint development efforts of Cloanto and Commodore), are included under license or with permission of Commodore-Amiga Inc. 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. The JPEG DataType software is included with the kind permission of Steve Goddard. It only 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. The PPaint file is now compressed using Imploder, rather than PowerPacker. Personal Paint can be decompressed during installation. The executable file decompression routines were written by Peter Struijk and Albert J. Brouwer. 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. If you have both programs installed, and experience difficulties because one of the two programs expects an old version of the font, just remove the font from your FONTS: directory. All versions of Personal Paint and PFM2 also search for the font in their local directories, where the font is normally copied during automatic installation. Are you using Topaz 8 for your Workbench icon texts? Try Personal 8. An original and unique Cloanto serial number should be attached to this product. We use these numbers to identify each individual package and when registering and supporting our users. If you report a problem, we will be able to use exactly the same version of the software which you are using. Given this number, we can track the manufacturing date, the brand of the disks being used, the company who printed the manual and whoever assembled the product. Worldwide, the Cloanto serial number is your guarantee of quality. Packages sold without this number should be considered counterfeit. Please help us fight software piracy and invest in our common future. For more information on upgrades and other Cloanto products, please contact the local distributors named at the end of this file. From time to time, information is mailed directly to users of our packages. To take advantage of this, don't forget to mail the registration card which came with the product. Cloanto Product Presentation: Personal Write Personal Write is an extremely fast word processor packed with original capabilities. It fully exploits unique Amiga characteristics like windows and multitasking. Personal Write does not limit the number of text windows which can be displayed at the same time. A built-in spooler can print even the longest texts in the background, while the program is used to do other work. Personal Write can encrypt confidential documents, which become unreadable to unauthorized users, and save disk space by compressing texts. Personal Write is also a powerful tool for converting texts into different formats. It can load and save texts combining more than 25 character sets of the most widely used computers. Control codes can be added or removed, as required by desktop publishing programs, Amiga system functions or other hardware and software environments. Thousands of combinations of printer settings can be selected to make the best use of features like the PostScript driver, the multistrike print mode, support for automatic justification with proportional characters and Personal Fonts Maker fonts. Alphanumerical labels can be used in the text for mail merge or to reorganize data. Pictures can be loaded and printed. Keyboard shortcuts and the texts which are displayed can be redefined to personalize the user interface (which includes stereo sound effects). An automatic hard disk installation procedure can be selected with the mouse. 512 Kbytes of RAM, 1 disk drive required; 1 Mbyte of RAM recommended Cloanto Product Presentation: Personal Fonts Maker The Personal Fonts Maker is a powerful tool for designing and processing fonts. Amiga fonts and fonts created with the Personal Fonts Maker can be transferred to the printer memory and printed at maximum quality and speed. The Personal Fonts Maker can output fonts in formats which can be read by other Amiga programs, by other computers and by a vast range of differing printers (even 48-pin and laser printers). The program can handle IFF graphics. It is possible, for example, to work on typographical fonts input from a scanning device. Repetitive transformations on characters or entire fonts can be recorded, stored and executed as macros. A special programming language can be used to define the format in which fonts are to be saved or sent to a printer. The Personal Fonts Maker package includes a multitude of original fonts and support tools like the Printer Driver Modifier, which allows the user to personalize printer drivers. It is easy - and fun - to work with the Personal Fonts Maker, thanks to the elegant and intuitive user interface (with stereo sound effects). The manual is full of examples and introductory sections for novice users, and comes complete with technical information for Amiga experts. 512 Kbytes of RAM, 1 disk drive required; 1 Mbyte of RAM recommended Personal Fonts Maker AGA Color Extensions The Color Extensions disk adds powerful color font processing capabilities to the basic package. Most of Personal Paint's editing tools have been incorporated into the package. For the first time, it is possible to process fonts in up to 256 colors and no size limit. Among others, special functions for anti-aliasing (even using an Amiga vector font as a point of departure) and right-to-left fonts are provided. This makes it an ideal companion to video applications, and a must in the titling environment. The Color Extensions are part of the new Personal Fonts Maker package (version 2). 1 Mbyte RAM, 1 disk drive required; 1 Mbyte of Chip RAM recommended Cloanto Personal Paint, (C) Cloanto Italia sas 1992-1994, All Rights Reserved. Parts are (C) Nomad Publishing Corporation, 1994. Cloanto, Personal Paint, PPaint, Personal Write, PWrite, Personal Fonts Maker, PFM: (R), (TM) Cloanto Italia sas. Please refer to the user manuals for further information. Cloanto Italia sas Tel +39 432 545902 PO Box 118 Fax +39 432 609051 I - 33100 Udine Bbs +39 432 545905 User and dealer inquiries should be addressed to the national distributors. Great Britain: Ramiga International Tel +44 690 770304 Stablau 'Rin Fax +44 690 770266 GB - Pentrefoelas, Clwyd LL24 4LE German Area: Casablanca Multimedia GmbH Tel +49 234 72035 Wiemelhauser Straße 247 a Fax +49 234 72060 D - 44799 Bochum North America: Haitex Resources, Inc. Tel +1 803 852-0750 PO Box 20609 Fax +1 803 852-0650 USA - Charleston, SC 29413-0609 Bbs +1 803 852-0650 Italy: CTO spa Tel +39 51 753133 Via Piemonte 7/f Fax +39 51 753418 I - 40069 Zola Predosa Sweden: ProComp Tel +46 472 70845 Box 46 Fax +46 472 71680 S - 340 36 Moheda Bbs +46 472 71270 French Area: Adept Marketing Tel +41 21 7022626 Rte. de Renens 1 Fax +41 21 7022629 CH - 1030 Bussigny-prés-Lausanne Greece: Multi-RAK Tel +49 234 9489411 Karnassiotis & Radouniklis GBR Fax +49 234 9489444 Prinz-Regent-Straße 70 D - 44795 Bochum Pacific Rim: Amadeus Computers Tel +61 2 652-2712 34 Tecoma Drive Fax +61 2 652-1515 Glenorie NSW 2157 Australia Mail Order and Upgrades Worldwide: Lago snc Tel +39 31 300174 Via Benzi 18 Fax +39 31 300214 22100 Como Italy Please indicate the serial number of your product when asking for an upgrade. For your protection, your date of birth may be requested when ordering with a credit card.