ﾊﾊﾊﾊDithering Idiot is SHAREWARE - purchasing and upgrade information is available directly from the Control Panel by selecting About Dithering Idiotﾉ in Dithering Idiot itself, or at the end of this file. To install Dithering Idiot, just drag it into your System folder, and it will immediately be available on the Control Panel. To run Dithering Idiot properly, you should have System 6.0.5 or later, and 32 bit Quickdraw v1.2 or later installed (which is included with System 6.0.5). It may also work with Systems 6.0.1 or later with 32 bit Quickdraw v1.0, but this is not recommended. I regret that while I am confident about Dithering Idiot's ability to harmlessly force images to dither, I cannot assume any responsibility beyond that required by law for any damage caused by Dithering Idiot (I am not independently wealthy). So please, always work with duplicates of files, and keep backups of essential unmodified files.
ﾊﾊﾊﾊDithering Idiot is a utility for modifying pictures ﾑ specifically colour bit map images ﾑ so that they dither when drawn in environments where all the required colours are not available. It does this by taking advantage of a built in feature of the Macintosh 32 bit drawing routines (32 bit Quickdraw). Many colour paint programs do not allow you to take proper advantage of this feature, so Dithering Idiot steps in and implements it. The changes that Dithering Idiot makes are very straightforward, so that modified images are identical in size and almost identical in make-up to the originals. Unfortunately, some colour programs strip down images before dithering can take effect, while others automatically raise the number of colours to accomodate pasted images (Canvasｪ, in particular, does not seem to allow dithering under any circumstances). When pasting dithered images, if you are unsuccessful pasting into a new file with the desired colour environment, try drawing something (anything) first and see if that doesn't force the image to dither. In DeskPaintｪ (Zedcor), which I used for much of my testing, PICT file images are not stripped if the colour environment is changed immediately after opening; and pasted images dither to the current colour palette when pasted into non-empty (not all white) documents.
ﾊﾊﾊﾊWhat does a dithered image look like? In general dithered images have a slightly grainy, speckled appearance. The degree of graininess varies depending on how much dithering is required to match the colours available. Colour dithering allows users who change colour depth often or who have limited colour depth to view good approximations of images containing more colour information. This means that if you only have an 8 bit (256 colour) monitor, you can see a good approximation of what a 24 bit (Millions of colours) original looks like, rather than what is generally seen otherwise - a blotchy image with poor shading. Dithering gray scale images gives black and white images suitable for printing on laser printers, for fairly good looking gray scale on a 300dpi printer.
ﾊﾊﾊﾊI have set up Dithering Idiot to perform dithering on three kinds of images: the Clipboard, where images go when copied or cut; PICT files, which can be output by a wide variety of colour paint programs; and PICT resources, which are found in a wide variety of files associated with applications and many utilities. Note that some applications, as stated above, do preprocessing that strips away dithering commands, and this may interfere with changes made to the Clipboard and/or PICT files. The last mode of change ﾑ PICT resource files ﾑ is not generally dangerous, but can produce results in certain applications (in particular, when you force paint images containing colour text to dither to black and white) which are not ｾsthetically pleasing. If you aren't sure where an applications pictures are stored, first try the application, and then associated files (working always on duplicate files) ﾑ Dithering Idiot will let you know if there are no pictures in the selected file. Once again, if you try to modify an application, make a copy first so you can test if dithered images are ugly or illegible when you use your normal monitor set-up.
ﾊﾊﾊﾊDithering Idiot beeps a single time each time a dither is performed. If you don't hear a beep (or see the menu bar flash - if volume is set to zero), and no error message appears, then nothing was done to your file (or the clipboard if that option was selected). The reason for no dither modification being done is usually that the file is not a colour picture (black and white pictures cannot be dithered as that would make no sense). Dithering Idiot will dither multiple pictures in resource files, but in all cases will only dither the first appropriate image within a single picture. In some cases, pictures may contain drawing instructions that are too complicated for Dithering Idiot to pass by, and in such cases, no dithering will be performed (the few rare instances of this will likely be corrected in a future release). Some older PICT images were stored as several horizontal strips, which was transparent to the user, but when dithering is attempted only the first strip will be set to dither. The remedy for this is to open or paste the image into a 32bit paint program and then save it as a PICT file. Note that this will also sometimes reduce the size of the PICT file.
ﾊﾊﾊﾊAs stated in the purchase information (About Dithering Idiotﾉ in the Control Panel), Dithering Idiot costs $10US or $10Canadian, payable as a cheque or money order (payable to Brian Lowry), sent to Brian Lowry, T Tauri SoftSystems, 366 Glen Manor Drive, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 2X8. I can be reached on an informal basis at home at (607) 277-0948 (please consider that this is an Eastern time zone and neither myself nor my wife is an insomniac). Once you have sent payment for this utility, you may distribute images and/or files modified or indirectly created by it freely. This does not include rights to distribute previously copyrighted/trademarked images and/or files, however, as Dithering Idiot makes no copyright modification on files other than restricting distribution of all files directly or indirectly created by Dithering Idiot, IN ADDITION TO any existing restrictions (for unpaid users; for paid users the distribution/use restrictions on images/files merely remain the same as prior to modification).
ﾊﾊﾊﾊFor those who are wondering, the name Dithering Idiot in no way refers to any person or group of people, either real or imaginary, and is intended only as a silly name for this utility. Those who are somehow offended by my choice of words please send your constructive criticisms to the above address.
