Contents

Features

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Foreword

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Tip of the day

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A Bird's Nest

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Snap Happy

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The SCSIDRV programming interface

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Sprite Editor

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Atari UK

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E-Jag Day 2k1

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Put some Charm in your Chaos

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Anodyne Competition results

Reviews

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PhotoTip 3.10

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AtarIRC and AtarICQ

News

PhotoTip 3.10

Derryck Croker finds the ideal companion for digital photography on his Atari

Take any digital camera out of its box and give the packaging a good shake. It's a very safe bet that no software with the Atari logo on it will fall out.

Durs Locher has taken pity on us with his tour-de-force PhotoTip - it's what every Atari or compatible user with a digital camera has been waiting for.

PhotoTip's easy to use interface is based on one or more preview panes, where thumbnail pictures downloaded from the camera (or from a disk drive, PhotoTip also makes an excellent librarian for images stored on disk) can be individually downloaded and saved to disk.

If you're lucky enough to own a Compact Flash or Smart Media card SCSI reader then PhotoTip is just as happy to load pictures directly from that, and even has provision for forcing a media change where necessary. Otherwise downloading is through the serial interface, where owners of faster machines such as TTs and Falcons can expect to be able to use speeds as high as 115,200 baud. Be prepared to wait some time to download more than a few pictures. It's probably best to use an external mains supply for your camera while downloading, if you have one.

Once some pictures have been downloaded and saved to disk, one of PhotoTip's other great features comes into play - HTML catalogues, which can be viewed in your favourite browser. With some forethought and a few folders, it's easy to make themed groups of your favourite subjects. Better still, and if your browser supports the installation of client programs to view certain file types (as CAB does), you can double-click a catalogue picture and have PhotoTip load with the corresponding full-size picture loaded for further processing, or just to have a good look!

Part and parcel of digital photography is manipulating the resulting images - and PhotoTip has plenty of tools along with a preview pane for adjusting your picture - there's contrast, brightness, colour and many more. It has to be said though that you'll need something better than ST low for making other than the very coarsest of adjustments. The block feature is very handy for clipping out sections, say for web graphics, and if a block has been defined PhotoTip's image processing controls work only on the blocked out region.

If none of the above have failed to fire your imagination, PhotoTip even offers a photocopying function using the GDPS scanner driver protocol, the Atari platform's answer to the Windows TWAIN system. Or if you're a remote control freak, most if not all PhotoTip's functions can be controlled via GEMScript - how about taking time-lapse photographs, maybe to prove that your cat actually does move from time to time?

You can expect all the latest standards such as DHST protocol, drag'n'drop and BubbleGEM help - in return, PhotoTip expects NVDI 5, HSMODEM and Wdialog (for single-TOS or versions of MagiC before 5) or N.Dialog for N.AES users, and the appropriate applications for the hypertext and BubbleGEM help.

Using the program is a real doddle (or no-brainer, for our American readers). I still find it hard to believe that such a thing is possible on our platform. For day-to-day management of my camera it's invaluable, all I have to do is to plug my Olympus' serial lead into the back of my Falcon and I have access to all the pictures stored there - no more staring at the LCD screen trying to decide if it's the right picture for deletion. Even camera functions like LCD screen brightness and the camera shut-off time can be set, and if the time or date isn't right then that's only a mouse-click away.
 

MyAtari magazine - Review #1, December 2001